SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey, welcome to the CRM Success Show. Today we're talking with Susan uh Susie Campbell, Assistant Director of Salesforce at Start Early. So welcome, Susie.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

So Susie, uh, we first met uh rather recently. It was at the uh Chicago World Tour in December, just gone. I remember it's absolutely freezing cold, as you'd expect. Um, and we we were able to sit down and talk a little bit more about the the idea of the podcast. So uh a couple months later, it's great to have you join us. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Thank you so much. I know it's it's it's been a long time coming, at least it feels like it.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

We got there in the end, that's all that matters. So um, and you obviously you listened to a few episodes, you wanted to you know get a feel for it. So um, all right, fantastic. Well, thank you. Um, we're looking forward to learning a bit more about you and your your your story. So just to kick us kick us off, um tell us a little bit about you, Susie, how long you've been in the ecosystem, what you do, what your role entails, and who is start early.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so I'm Susie Campbell and I'm the assistant director for Salesforce at Start Early. Um I first joined the Salesforce ecosystem six years ago. Um, I had been working in higher education for a decade and found it really unsatisfying and um heard about this crazy thing called Salesforce. And uh so I did a Salesforce Academy boot camp and started working at Start Early as a junior admin um a couple weeks later. So um Start Early is a nonprofit based in Chicago, and we do research that helps inform policies and programs um related to early childhood education. We have um a national impact and and support babies and families in all 50 states. So um it's a really great mission, a really great organization. I'm excited that I've been there for six years.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Amazing. And you started, you mentioned you you pivoted from the university space, but how how uh you were do you supporting projects, you you you were doing you know that program coordinator role. Um, did you did you find that was a natural move into Salesforce administration at the time? A lot of overlap, just different kinds of languages, let's say.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

You know, the thing that I've always said in my career, my entire career from working at Starbucks right out of college to now is that I just like to help people. And um, and there are lots of different ways to help people. And so when I was in administrative roles um in the higher ed space, that was helping to make other people's jobs easier. I, you know, made sure the copy machine was running and that conference rooms were all set up and that was all to support the people who were directly supporting our students. And now working in the Salesforce ecosystem as an admin, I was helping to um help users have a better experience in Salesforce and to get their work done and be able to support the the great work we do and our mission and start early. So at the end of the day, I just really like helping people, no matter where it is and what what kind of uh role it's in.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Perfect. We're gonna talk a bit about um how you got your break in a moment, but um three three promotions in in four or five years. Um you're now assistant director. Um how big is the org? Like give us an idea of the number of users, how big is the the organization as a whole, um, and what what do you what do you use when it comes to Salesforce?

SPEAKER_02 3:52

Yeah, so Start Early has about four hundred, four hundred and fifty employees nationwide. Um, we operate in, I think, main hubs in four different states, three or four different states. And we have right now um 120 Salesforce users, but our our max recently has been about 170 to 190. We just had a little change in priorities for the organization and who's using Salesforce and who's not, um, plus some overdue user maintenance, um, which I think everyone can identify with that there's those users that aren't using it anymore and you need to deactivate them. Um, so we use Salesforce, um, we use NPSP, the Nonprofit Success Pack, um, to manage our fundraising and grant management efforts, and then our program management is also in Salesforce. So we um have professional development courses that we offer to early childhood educators, and we track some information from our learning management system and Salesforce related to that, and then um technical assistance is um a common thing nonprofits do. It's we essentially have office hours at other nonprofits in order to support their mission as well and give them professional support. Um, and those are in Salesforce as well as um some traditional sales. So we have uh consulting services that we sell as well as those learning courses, and so we track that in Salesforce as well. So lots of different things.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Perfect. Um, so I want to rewind the clock a little bit, Susie. So uh we're gonna go back uh to January 2020. And at that time you were in between, you know, trying to learn what you needed to learn to get that first break into Salesforce. Um, and one of the things that really stuck out, and I don't think it's by accident that we we met um was the power of networking. Um but but that's something you're passionate about in general, and we're gonna talk more about that, but also how important it was to get in your first break in the ecosystem six years ago. Um at the time of the pandemic, there's so much uncertainty, right? So tell us a little bit about you made this decision to get in the Salesforce ecosystem, walk us through what did you do next? You mentioned boot camp, um, but but get into the Pacifics of that. How did you go about um you know starting that journey?

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Yeah. Um, so the journey actually started in July of 2019, so a little bit further back. Um, and I was at this, I don't know, I'm gonna call it like a woman's empowerment retreat. It's like part professional development, part personal development. Um, and I was learning a lot about myself, about my career. And that's when somebody mentioned Salesforce and like she pulled out her phone and said she was a Salesforce administrator and is showing me all the different things that she could do and what she manages. And it was literally a 90-second conversation. And I'm like, wait, this seems like something that that would like I would be good at this. And but I didn't really know anything about it. And I was looking for new roles and I saw a scholarship for the Salesforce Academy boot camp from a company called the Mom Project. So they helped to place moms in jobs at companies that want to hire moms, and so they had sponsored this boot camp. So I was delivering groceries, I was taking care of a baby and a preschooler, and um I was doing this boot camp in the evening, and it was really resonating because it just fit like immediately. I'm like, I can do this. Like this, this, this is my next step. So I got on LinkedIn and I just searched uh Salesforce administrator to see if I had any first level connections of somebody who does this job already, and I didn't, but I had one single second-level connection. And um, and so I reached out to our mutual contact and I said, Hey, can you put me in touch with this person? Because she wasn't responding to my LinkedIn messages. And uh, and so I'm like, I really want to talk to her. So um Sam, Link, and I got lunch uh a few a couple weeks later, and halfway through our conversation, she said, there's an opening on my team and you should apply for it. And I hadn't even thought to look on their website to see if there were any job openings before that call because I I just wanted to learn more. I wanted to learn about her job and what she likes about it, what she does every day. And um, it turned out to be the best decision I've ever made.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Probably the best lunch you ever went to, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:02

Yes. Totally worth uh, you know, $30 or whatever it took to buy us lunch.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Yeah, fantastic. I mean, I mean, look, you you can say you're one for one, right? You know, the chance of that happening for somebody today may be a bit bit slim, but I think there's um there's a lot there, right? It's being proactive first and foremost. Uh the job's not gonna come find you. You got you got to go out there and find it for yourself. Uh being brave, putting yourself out there, um being a bit vulnerable perhaps, and and being open, like, look, I I need help. Can you can you help me? Um be not being afraid to ask ask for help um and and introductions and um more more importantly, I think I think taking that first step by offering the you know to meet somebody in person with a coffee or a lunch or or or whatever is so much more uh authentic than just a telephone call with a random person, right? So um let's say let's say that didn't materialize, what would you have done next? Uh would you have continued to focus on like the people you were connected to locally, do you think? Or um and I know obviously did you fall into nonprofit or was that a selective decision to focus in the nonprofit industry?

SPEAKER_02 10:20

Um all right, you had a couple questions there. So um, I mean, higher ed is its own kind of nonprofit. Um, we support students in their education, and so I'd already been in this mission-driven space for 10 years, and so it felt natural for me to continue to look at nonprofits before I decided on Salesforce as my next uh path, I guess I was applying for jobs at other nonprofits because it was comfortable and it fits my values. And so um I think Sam being at a nonprofit was really great coincidence um because it did fit me so well. And if that hadn't worked out, if I had never gotten in touch with her, um it would have definitely taken me longer to find a role for, I mean, for two reasons. One, because I did feel a little lost. I'm like, this this is brand new to me, and I've got this good gut feeling, but I don't really know anything about it. And also, this was, you know, February going into March of 2020. I started at start early March 4th, 2020. And so 10 days later, um, the world shut down and I was suddenly a remote employee for the first time and a brand new career for the first time. So having a supportive team was so critical in my success because I I really loved the team, I loved the work I was doing, and even though that time was so stressful for all of us, it felt uncomplicated to just kind of join and and and get started.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Were there and are there any community groups that you've found along the way were particularly useful in brainstorming different ideas, or I've got this issue, what do you do in your organization? Because the Ohana in itself is very uh collaborative, but I know nonprofits especially, they like to help each other out too. So what what did you go to in those scenarios?

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Yeah. So at that lunch, Sam had actually told me about the Chicago nonprofit user group, and they had a meeting, I think a week later. And so I decided to go. And I remember meeting the leaders at that meeting, um, Cassie and Rob, and everyone was just so nice and supportive. And they started every they start every meeting introducing yourself, saying something that you know you're looking to get for that day, what you need support on, what what are you looking for, and then also what can you offer? And so everybody had something to bring to the table of, you know, well, I'm good at, you know, service cloud, or you know, if you need help navigating grants management or whatever it may be. And I immediately felt connected in the ecosystem. And I think that happening before I even got my first job was, I mean, it's so important. I almost just said it was magical because that's what this community is about. And now, six years later, I'm you know, I would say very involved in the Chicago nonprofit user group. I pop over to the San Francisco nonprofit user group meetings because they're supportive too. Same with St. Louis occasionally, because it doesn't matter where you live, it's you want to talk about the same stuff and learn from each other. And and and that's I think the goal of all of these groups now that everything is mostly virtual.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Agreed. I think you hit something uh on the a nail on the head there um a moment ago. Obviously, we still speak to a lot of people trying to get their break into the ecosystem. And it's looking at like, let's say you're a teacher targeting higher ed, you know, at least you know the industry context. You know, uh, if you're in if you started as a personal banker and you want to become a Salesforce admin, target banks, right? At least you know the industry knowledge, uh, the the the acronyms, uh, the process. Um start within the verticals that you know, and then you can decide once you've got the actual physical experience, you've got your foot in the door for a couple of years, then you can go outside of industry. But people overlook that and also locality as well, being targeting you know those in-person jobs. I think in an ideal world, that's an ideal way to start because you learn a lot quicker from being around people, right? You didn't have that choice, you were forced into going remote. So um, fantastic. Okay, well, talking about things in your user group that people um put their hand up and say, look, this is my strength, this is where I want to wanna learn. I know, um, because we talked about it before, uh, that one of your strengths is data, or one of your areas you're passionate about. So also an area that our co-host Maz Rie is passionate about is data. So uh Maz, over to you to talk about data.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Yeah, so um I know you're on the board of uh Dreaming in Data, which you get to the conference in Chicago. Um, and I believe it's upcoming next month in May or month and a half from now in the actual recording. Um yeah, why don't you tell us a bit about that and uh how someone who wants to go should sign up?

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Yeah, absolutely. Um so Dreaming in Data is the only data-focused uh Salesforce community conference. Um the first one was held in November of 2024, and that was the first place I actually ever presented at a conference. So it holds a special place in my heart. But um we are really focused on conversations around data that support all forms of data. So we're gonna be talking about MuleSoft and Informatica. We're going to be talking about data strategy, data health, data um, you know, structures, data 360, formerly known as data cloud. And over the course of two days, we're gonna have 50 sessions that all have different topics. And why I love this conference so much and you know, joined the board as a secretary is because we all just want to, you know, from the first conference and and from the board working together and conversations I've had, we all just want to learn and we're all just kind of data nerds and we want to talk about data. And that first dreaming in data, I think was the first place that I really realized that data was my passion. Um, you can't have, you know, strategy, sales for strategy without data strategy. And so really focusing in on data, data quality is kind of what keeps me going now. Um to come to Dreaming and Data. Our website is dreaminganddata.org. And you can register today for early bird pricing. Um, it's May 19th and 20th, and then on the 21st, we're gonna have um uh workshops that day. I think it's going to be um six half day workshops um or three full-day workshops. I I should know exactly how we're framing that. Um, but those are those details are being worked out still. But uh Chicago is my city. It's a fantastic city, and everyone should come because May is gonna be gorgeous, and there's lots of stuff to do beyond just the conference.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

So you're actually speaking, right, this year?

SPEAKER_02 18:17

I am, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah, what do you give us a little?

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Um, so I am doing a presentation called The Art of Letting Go. So I will be talking about um my strategy for data migration um and doing um in creating new orgs. And so I have a three-part data strategy of data to store, data to toss, and data to keep and bring with you. So um I'm gonna be going into how that's going to work for start early as we consider, you know, what's the future of our CRM.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

So store, I I assume you mean archive somewhere else outside system, which is bring with you is migrate into and toss is just out. Yeah. Um cool. Yeah, so um, yeah, let's let's dive into that. How how how do you decide on what category to put something into?

SPEAKER_02 19:17

Yeah, so a good data governance policy um and data retention policy is is kind of key in this. So there has to be organizational uh alignment on what data can and should be archived. Um, but I use um a tool called CUNYform. Um it's a the only native data profiling tool um in Salesforce that brings in metadata dependencies. So we've been CUNYform customers for a couple of years now, and it allows me to see if a field is being used. So what the field level population like, how how often it's populated, um, and if it's used in any reports, on any page layouts, or in any automations. And so by being able to look at our fields so granularly, we can see what data points do we actually need. So we currently um at start early, we have over 500 fields on um contacts and opportunities, and it's been a big sticking point for us. And by using CUNY form, we can see what we're actually using so that we don't have to bring over the stuff we're not using. We can archive it. And then as far as records go, you know, thinking um about how to determine if a record can be archived completely, you know, is it because there hasn't been activity on it for three years or more? Is it because um, you know, like whatever reason um we we determine that it can be archived, being able to do that um is the second way of cleaning up that data and getting this limited data set. Um, and so that's where I start.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

So CUNY lives in Salesforce, right? So if you're coming from another system, I guess you can't really use it. Um personally, I personally I do something very similar, um but I have like proprietary tools that I would I would just run against like a standard database to check like population density, something very, very similar. Um, but usually I would do that to determine um like the mapping doc is part of the mapping procedure for the data for the the data migration. Um so so it's interesting because Salesforce doesn't charge you per rows, they don't really charge you storage, right? They charge you per record. So if you have additional fields on the record, it doesn't really cost you anything. Um did that go into your uh into your strategy?

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Um I mean it's not about cost, it's about data quality. So especially Especially if you're moving to AI, you know, having fields and records that you're not using anymore makes it so your data is less reliable. And our cost, so we were reaching storage capacity. Um, we were at 86% of our storage capacity at one point. Um, and so we were we were getting up there and we we'd have to archive a whole bunch of stuff or upgrade that's we were facing. And um and really a lot of that was emails. And so if you have a contact and you have, you know, a hundred emails associated with them, if you archive that contact and all records associated with it because you haven't actually emailed them in seven years, then that's also a good way to clean up storage because not just fields or you know, records take up storage, but it's all those attachments and files and everything too.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Yeah, it's actually a pet peeve of mine with Salesforce. Um particularly like mail blasts, you have the same email stored like sometimes hundreds and hundreds of times. Um yeah, so that's that's definitely an area to clean up. Like nobody nobody cares about newsletter newsletter blasts and that kind of stuff. Um awesome. So uh so uh CRM CRM quoted a very unique, very unique data challenge. Um, and that's that data goes stale without doing anything. Um where right, so if you're looking at an ERP system, companies aren't really moving, their phone numbers aren't changing, um, order history obviously set in stone, that ain't changing. Um when you're talking CRM, they say that CRM data goes stale at like uh 20% a year almost just because people switch companies, they move, their phone number changes, um, right? All sorts of that kind of stuff. Um so do you have a strategy for for dealing with that? That's probably probably the biggest um I don't think one of the biggest contributors to bad CRM data. It's just that it uh by nature of time passing, it kind of goes stale or bad. Um the other one is obviously just people entering bad stuff or not entering it at all.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Yes. Um not logging something in Salesforce leads to that stale data. Um, because somebody can be emailing someone out of Outlook and then not putting it in Salesforce, and then nothing happens. So definitely not logging things. Um, it's big there. But uh to answer your question of um let me repeat it back, of uh so I can remember what you said, um, of going scale just by pass time passages. Uh so one thing about NPSP um is it uses a household account model and it has affiliations. So the goal is to have one contact and then multiple affiliations connected to it. So if someone does move to a different company, you know, and we know that, then we can add an affiliation to say, you know, this place used to be your place of employment, this is where it is now, and still be updating the same contact. So we can track over time people's engagement with us, regardless of where they work and where they're associated with. And so in theory, all of that should continue to be updated if someone does move um companies. Um, I think that this probably isn't something that I've started thinking about very directly yet. I will now, obviously. Um, but one thing that I have struggled with with the nonprofit data model in general is this concept of affiliations and and having one contact be for everything. And so thinking about different ways people are engaging, you know, maybe the base CRM, like your email address, your personal email address is potentially always going to be the same, you know, some people switch over time, but I've had my Gmail since, you know, 2008 or 20, you know, uh 2002 something. Um, and uh I feel like I'm rambling a little bit, but having um different ways people are engaging with you through um kind of a different data model, I think, can help with stale data. So if it's um an intentional duplicate model or the way you're looking at your integration separately, um that I think you know can be uh an influence too. I don't think that actually answers your question, though. I just talked about it it it does, it absolutely does.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

I uh I think basically what you're saying is that um the staleness, let's say in air quotes, if that's uh a thing, uh, is really field dependent, right? So email address is probably going to last longer than phone numbers. Phone numbers are pretty sticky nowadays, work email address not as much, employer not as much. Um and you are right, the the account contact history object, I believe if you change it, it ends one and then moves it automatically. I think that's a core feature now. Um it's it's actually a pretty nice one uh that'll handle through you can see their employment history just by nature of changing the company on the contact.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

Go ahead, Kira. Susie, quick question. So um when you were talking about establishing what good data looks like, uh data management, data maturity, etc., um you you basically really between the lines, you talk about data governance, right? Um and and there are a few frameworks out there that exist uh around that in a formal sense. I was curious if you're using one, for example, like DCAM is one that I've heard a lot about, um, which for those might who might not know what it stands for, I had to double check myself. Uh, but kind of knew the acronym, but I didn't necessarily know what it broke down to data management capability assessment model. Um, so I was curious, are you uh you are you going down that path of a formal framework? Uh and if so, is there any particular framework you're using?

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Um yes, start early is really in our, it's a teenager phase of forming data governance committees. Um, so it's something historically that uh we've struggled with for a variety of reasons. I think that's common at organizations to not have strong data governance. But so we're working on organization-wide data governance and then Salesforce specific. I am not using a specific model, um, data governance model. We're kind of figuring out what we need right now. And um I built a roadmap a couple of years ago that I've presented on um how to build a roadmap when everything has gone wrong. Um, because that's totally what it felt like everything went wrong. And so it's really a um a remediation roadmap. And so I put on there everything that we needed to be thinking about. So um data um standardization, you know, are all teams using data points in the same way? Um, sorry, I need a drink really quick. Um data retention policies, we already talked about that. Um, data um management, you know, who's responsible for updating, taking care of data, data ownership, how do we decide who a contact, you know, is owned by? Um, so all of these sorts of things fit together. And that's kind of what I'm building my governance around is is how do we take all of these individual parts of like a good data strategy and bring it into a governance so that everyone kind of is that has view into it. I don't want this to be a Susie Gamble thing, like our business partners need to be part of this. And the part that we're formalizing first is our backlog prioritization method. And so we are going through making that more formal right now. Um, we had a test run last fall that was very rushed and um did not go great. Um, I will be honest, it was not my shiniest moment as a Salesforce director, but it um it taught me a lot of things. And so as I'm developing these systems and policies and practices, sometimes you have to like do something wrong to figure out how to do it right. And so now we're getting into this next phase where we can really start talking about all of our projects and priorities as an organization together and not just as my team trying to figure out whose thing goes first and who needs to wait.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

So look, I again um with to what extent you feel comfortable sharing, uh, because it might help somebody else out there who's going on this journey. Um was there something that perhaps you overlooked in that scenario that you thought afterwards, oops, um, you said it wasn't your greatest moment. And look, we appreciate you being honest and sharing and being vulnerable for a second. Um what was that? Like, why do you think you didn't get the outcome that you were hoping to get in that moment?

SPEAKER_02 31:50

Um confusion due to lack of communication on my part. So I'd been talking about how this was coming, and we were gonna do this project prioritization stuff uh for months, but I wasn't really describing to people what we were gonna be doing. And so in my head, everything made sense. And I came into this meeting and I'm like, all right, this is what we're doing. And people didn't really know what I was talking about, I didn't give enough detail, and there were a couple other like key hiccups along the way. Like some people had forwarded the meeting invite, and I didn't really realize it. So then we're voting on things, and two people from marketing were there, but only one from development, or for example, and I didn't catch it. So these were all things that I now realize oh, that that should have been obvious to me back then, but I was thinking about myself, not about my business partners in that situation, and that happens. Like we get busy, we get overwhelmed, or even it's just something new, and you have to learn from your experience to do it better. So now I have a more detailed document that I'm going to be distributing to our business partners. We're going to try this again in the next couple weeks, and I think we're gonna set ourselves up for more success because I made those mistakes, and I don't I I think I learn, I accept mistakes as necessary evil sometimes because it's how I learn the best. Unfortunately, when you make a big mistake, you're like, okay, we're not gonna repeat that again. Um, and honestly, I don't think people talk about that enough. Like, no, no one sits on a podcast here and says, I screwed up real big, and my business partners were not happy with me, but we're getting past it.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

Um, we've had a few of that on the show, particularly. We try we tried to we try to get, you know, um the the the hurt stories too. I mean, look, if you don't have failure, if you don't have failure, you're not aiming high enough at the end at the end of the day. It's it's just a metric. Anyone who's never fails, they're they're not they're not aiming high enough. Um, which means they're not reaching your full potential, right? To reach your full potential, you have to overshoot and and have some level of failure. That's okay. Um, the other thing I think is a big part of what you're what you're saying, um, and honestly being a little bit too hard on yourself for is people are just not that predictable. Um they're just not. Um and it's hard to know how you know how they're going to react or or behave in uh in various situations. Um, I do have another quick question on governance. Um are you a fan of like data stewards or having the record owner be responsible for maintaining their own data? I mean, that's kind of kind of the two schools, right? Either you own your data, you maintain your data, or you have a data steward or data stewarding team whose job it is to kind of enforce and keep things up to date.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

I think the complicated thing about start early is we have so many people using the same data in different ways. And so somebody may, you know, be a donor and they have attended one of our events before and um, or they are a program participant and attended, we have a national home visiting conference, and so different teams care about data in different ways. So we're figuring this out. There's no good way right now how we're managing this um because it's I mean, business models are complicated, just as complicated as data models are, and um we need to figure it out. But I will say that we are not going to put four user lookup fields to show ownership of a record as it was uh suggested a couple years ago. So um I don't know, we'll get there.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Use account teams.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

Oh, yes. Yeah. Um, that we've thought about a lot of things and we just we're gonna figure it out. But one, and I don't know, we didn't actually talk about this before. One thing I did um do is I did a data cloud proof of concept um in a week and found that there was an overlap between our um donors and our program participants, and that was super, a super helpful first step of figuring out how how we talk about this even. And and so I gathered more data so I can make data-driven decisions, and um that's been sitting in my pocket as we do everything that we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

I want to ask you a quick question on the go back to the failure side, right? Expensive lesson learned, maybe we'll call it that instead. But but um how basically what you were saying was is the way I interpreted it was maybe too many people, too many voices at the table and a lack of equal representation from each department. Some voices were louder because there was more. Is that what would you agree with that? Like, you know, is that was that the reason why it failed? Because you maybe the data champions in each work stream were not established beforehand, and then it was kind of like let's say you have five from marketing, nobody from sales, and it's like it's skewed a bit more that way because of that reason.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

We tried to have one person from all of the major like departments that use Salesforce. Uh, we have 24 different business unit units who use Salesforce in slightly different ways. Um, and so we didn't have 24 people at the table, but it wasn't far off. And so part of that too is we wanted director level and above giving us feedback on is this aligned with the organization's goals right now to be able to do this project. But maybe those people aren't the ones that are using Salesforce day to day, and so then they want to bring, you know, their super user who is uh using Salesforce day to day and have them vote too. So um that I think is a big part of it. Uh, another big part is that um we just historically haven't been talking about this, so no one had to think about it. And there are certain business units that would represent multiple departments. So our business development operations unit would bring in information for marketing and development and you know, our earned revenue streams, and but we wanted somebody from each of those units there too, but they weren't responsible for managing this data for a long time. So there's both like an onboarding, I think, that that needs to be set up of why is this important, why are we doing this, and how can you help us as well as the I guess equity across departments to be able to make sure everyone's voice is heard um at the same level.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

Yep. Okay, so shifting gears. Um, I want to talk for five minutes about 24-7 Susie. Tell us more about that for our listeners. You've got to start from the beginning because we've got inside info. Um, so what is 24-7 Susie, Susie?

SPEAKER_02 39:26

Yeah, 24-7 Susie. So um last summer, summer of 2025, um, I was considering doing some consulting on the side, and I was talking with some friends, and somebody made the joke of having a Slack agent that sounds like me and can just respond to people without me even being a part of it, and then like we'll escalate things to my email when needed. And I'm like, huh, like I can make an agent that sounds like me. Like, that's totally a thing that I can do. Um, so I started making a custom GPT and I didn't really know what it was gonna be for at first, but I was working on my road mapping presentation for Dream Force, and um and I I realized that it was going to be a road mapping agent. So, how to assist people um as they are creating their own remediation roadmaps because after my presentation, there are always people who come up to me and tell me that they feel seen, that that's their instance too. This is how messy they are. And and then there's questions, and then there's LinkedIn messages, and then there's, hey, Susie, can you meet with me? And I like to help people, so I want to say yes, but I'm one person and I have a day job and I'm doing you know these user groups and conferences and stuff, and I'm a single mom and I have a life. Um, so I thought, why not build this agent that can answer people's questions and support them through this? So I was working on this in the evenings, um, mostly after my kids went to bed, and um and one of the things that was most important to me is support because I mean I've had people cry during my presentations because they just they get it, they they feel that. And so when you're talking to somebody, you don't just want them to say, okay, here's step by step, how you set this up, and these are you know the different um time frames you should use, and these are the categories, like that's like this helpful. So I also made Susie, which I've got my little sticker here, um made by Pete Schweiss. Um uh he he helped me with that. Um I made her be able to give emotional support too. So if somebody is saying, okay, I'm really overwhelmed, I don't know where to start. She will stop by at first asking, Do you what kind of industry do you work in? Because talking to someone who's at a nonprofit is very different than like a financial services firm or you know, a consultant or something. And um, and so she wants to know the right language to use in order to connect with somebody, donors versus customers, et cetera. Um, and then you know, she'll kind of get into what is it that you're doing right now? Are you in the building phase or or you know where you're at? And so um she knows my methodology and she can walk people through step by step how I created my roadmap. Or if you just say, I don't know, I just go home and cry every night because this job is terrible, then she'll go into this emotional support and like compassionate mode where you know the goal is still to get you back to like what's your next step, what's your first step? Um, because I really think that any big project that you're doing, no matter how complicated and messy it is, it just you need what your first step. You just one thing that you can control, and then other stuff falls into place. So that's kind of why I created her and what she does. And um she sounds like me. And uh so yeah, she she will respond using words and um the way I do, and I'm I'm really proud of it.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

Super cool, really, really cool. Uh hopefully we're not we're we're speaking to the real Susie Campbell, not 247 Susie right now. Who knows? Um but but um but but so so like where does what is where does Susie live? Where's she sitting? Like how do people reach out to 247 Susie if they need support? What it just like they download something and you know I got no idea. idea like you download something you ping ping it has a LinkedIn page you ping it a message or what what what happens?

SPEAKER_02 44:07

Well right now it's just a custom GPT. So I have a website 247Susie.com and that has a link to the custom GPT. I think with all passion projects you have to hit a point where you realize it's done. This is really cool and I'm proud of it. And I think that the way I built it could be a really great template to build similar agents for nonprofits to be able to provide that practical and emotional support. But I would love to make it a Slack like agent or you know something that um will like respond to emails or you know messages like on a chat on a website but I don't have time for that. So I will sit in a dream world where we're 2447 Susie has a bigger reach.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Amazing. So check that out any of our listeners that are uh listening are thinking you know I wouldn't mind uh experimenting with that and see what 247 Susie uh will advise um very cool um I guess you mentioned that might have a shelf life you talked about maybe Slack um integrations or something along those lines uh next um but while I'm curious why do you think it has a shelf life? Because there are admins out there developers every day that go into new orgs maybe struggling etc um I mean I'd imagine these are questions that are gonna get asked time and time again so um I I think you got something you know I think I think there's a great idea there maybe we'll talk offline about partnering on it I don't know but what what what um I guess what what what's your thoughts on that? Like why do you think it's got shelf life?

SPEAKER_02 46:01

I mean I don't when you have too many projects and passions you have to pick and choose what's your most important and I think that's the only reason that I've put it to the side um I can imagine a future and maybe I just um need the right people to work with on it but I imagine a future where 247 you know like Sally or whatever sits on a nonprofit's website and she helps to um schedule an appointment and then says you know how are you feeling what else do you need and can have that conversation to maybe it's um for STI testing or something and to be able to say like okay well these are the things that are going to happen when you come to your appointment and get someone feeling comfortable and confident and like that is what I would love to do it. I think it's just capacity is the only reason that this is on the back burner.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

Uh in the space of 60 seconds I actually plugged in uh a few questions into 247 Susie um and um pretty pretty good uh I'll I'll be honest I think um you know uh pretty surprised it's pretty pretty pretty thorough in terms of you know recommended practices and my use case was uh my I've lost my Salesforce admin I'm a startup um no technical know-how uh what what should I do? Um and uh I got four key starter points to be honest. So um could be good for non-technical users especially right so um amazing all right um moving on from 247 Susie which we will include in our notes uh for the podcast that when it goes live so anybody wants to have a play around uh with 247 Susie and check that out on the GPT side they can um one of the big topics for nonprofits right now um is mpsp versus nonprofit cloud should I stick should I twist which one's better which one's gonna work for us what are the benefits pros and cons yeah what are your thoughts uh Maz I'll let you lead this section um but that's that's what we're gonna talk about a little bit over the next 10 minutes yeah yeah I know you're currently on NPSP um which is the older managed packaged uh version of it um yeah so what what do you think of the two of them and the direction that Salesforce is moving with the core clouds yeah I I think nonprofit cloud is something that kind of has a bad rep right now um when it has since it came out because people say it's complicated it's different you know and um and therefore it's bad like why would we move to this and I personally don't think complicated is a bad thing.

SPEAKER_02 49:03

Like just because something is hard doesn't mean it's not worth doing. And there are different reasons why you would stay in MPSV versus go to NPC. And part of this is going to be um capacity like are you a small organization with one admin or maybe half an admin or a couple hours a month with managing services like maybe you're an ideal candidate to stay in MPSP because the data models are different. MPSP um is based on householding model so that you can know you know not just what um one person you know if if I give a donation and then my daughter also gives a donation you can look at our household and see what we gave together. Where in NPC it's a person account model and so it's just different architecture. It's just very different. And the way that donations are handled in both systems are different but it doesn't mean it's bad. And personally I do think nonprofit cloud is is where everyone will end up eventually. If it got messy like mine and we're currently exploring nonprofit cloud or you know whatever we want our future of our CRM to be remediating our current org, going to a different solution legacy orgs are a thing. And if you like go to another NPSP instance are you going to continue to repeat the same mistakes or is going to a different data model actually a positive thing to be able to make um business process changes and really evaluate like what data you need and and what's important to the org? So you're evaluating nonprofit cloud now so you might be asked how that's going yeah um I mean I'll make it easy is it are are you guys are you guys thinking yeah we have to do this now maybe next year or two years out or never you know for the last two years I've been talking about we need something we need help for our Salesforce instance at start early and been talking with leadership with business partners to see what it is that we could do to like bare minimum of just get by to like go to a whole new instance. And so I have been running um CRM Discovery mini RFP however we're gonna think about it um to see if we stay in nonprofit or sorry stay in mpsp move to nonprofit cloud or go with an entirely different CRM and so um I've learned a lot and I have talked with a lot of vendors about why their product is better than Salesforce and um and I've talked with our Salesforce um account team to really understand what what do all systems have to offer and bring to us and to be able to make a decision based on you know features and support and how much staff does it take to manage and it's a lot it's a big project it's not something that's simple to do but it is something that's important and um it's going. It's it's I'm trying to be very tactful here.

SPEAKER_00 52:45

It's challenging it's very challenging I mean look I get it it's not an easy upgrade path um unfortunately anytime you have a hard upgrade path you're forced into a product selection you're almost forced into it I would understand why you're looking outside of Salesforce right um right that the upgrade path is just that difficult um back in the day when cloud systems were becoming big and you had an on-prem system and then that same company came out with a cloud offering again the migration was so painful that you basically had no choice but to go back on the market and see what else is there because what do you um because it's just as easy and or gested hard at the migration to a new product. So um that's not surprising um that's not surprising at all. So so to to get to the chase of the or the or the the meat of the question do you feel you need to upgrade because that's where Salesforce is doing all of its feature investment in right I believe that they're no longer investing in the managed packages across any of the industry uh the industries and all of the investment and on the core the core cloud versions of the industry the verticals um or or is there some killer feature or set of features that you feel are needed um that or that you can benefit from that it pays to move?

SPEAKER_02 54:08

The biggest thing that I like about nonprofit cloud is that you can more directly link programs to revenue so um if you have your program management in nonprofit cloud you can use the outcomes and indicators um modules in order to connect what um what are the outcomes of our programs you know what how effective they are how many people are we serving and you can take that information and bring it straight back to the opportunities that are funding those programs that's not something you could do natively in NPSP and um that I think can have such an impact if you are able at you know like quick report to be able to show your your donors your um you know people your um I can't think of the name for for people who uh give you grants um if you're able to show them easily this is what your impact is huh donors no donors are individual donations um I'll think of it funders that's that's the word I'm looking for is funders um but if you're able to show them easily like what is the impact without doing reporting gymnastics of bringing information from a bunch of different systems together in a data warehouse and using you know a data visualization tool to do that like if you could bring that straight into an email with a donor then what can that do to fundraising I see so much opportunity there and I that's something that I would really love to dig in but it has to align with organizational you know goals and priorities to do that but that's where I see a lot of potential in nonprofit cloud okay real cool any other uh differences stick out any other differences stick out um I mean it's just a whole different system but I I think for me in thinking about switching is that you know change management would be huge because it is different it's a different data model and end users don't really know what a data model is um but when I um have you know done demos and stuff with nonprofit cloud it organizes information differently straight out of the box that you know you have to build out an NPSP so if you want a different home page an NPSP to be able to show somebody you know their portfolio like what's coming up on the pipeline all day you have to build that out your admin has to do that and build this custom page right and um our home pages you know have historically been kind of plain and boring um and don't give much information and so it's something that um user experience is lacking but when if you have well managed data um and you log into nonprofit cloud you can see you know like right there on your home screen like who everyone is that um you know is in your pipeline who do you need to talk to today what um what your your dashboards you need to pay attention to um have them all right there and be able to look at things more by Teams I think than is available right out of the box like you have to build that right now and MPSB since at least in our instance it wasn't you know set up right away.

SPEAKER_00 57:50

Okay cool.

SPEAKER_02 57:51

So before I move on uh I wanted to ask you um if you can tell us though Salesforce is right is really inter philanthropy um they have the one percent program which hits SIs um they don't the one percent program I think it for Salesforce at least right it's one percent to think of revenue of time and of licenses that they give away for free um and then on the nonprofit side you also have the Power of Us program wanna tell us a bit about that yeah so the Power of Us program gives nonprofits 10 free licenses to Salesforce um doesn't matter how small or big your nonprofit is you get 10 if you apply for the program it was for MPSP licenses and they have extended that to nonprofit cloud licenses as well um so this is a huge impact because if you are a tiny little nonprofit and you have one FTE then you're not paying for your CRM if you're a big nonprofit like us and you know those 10 free licenses come in that's you know thousands of dollars that are not added to our um order form every year. And so it's something that I think can really impact especially that small nonprofit um market and that can have a huge impact.

SPEAKER_01 59:09

So small nonprofits should give it a go uh nonprofit cloud if it's the free licenses try it out test the waters um because my my understanding for if my takeaway interpretation was um if you are a smaller nonprofit sub 30 40 50 users uh you have a part-time admin a power user probably it isn't worth it um you know stick to what stick to what you've got um but if you're growing nonprofit you have a full-time resource then you could definitely handle uh nonprofit cloud um in theory would would you agree with that sentiment or with the free licensing is it worth at least exploring a little bit and taking that step I mean I think it depends um what resourcing would look like for it and so if you're able to get away with not having to do a ton of customization moving from something like uh a a different CRM or an MPsporg to nonprofit cloud um I mean it could be beneficial but I think when I'm thinking about the small ones it's it's you know that person that's just by themselves.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:22

But the thing to um and there is somebody in Salesforce um ecosystem who talks about this he says you know it's free like a puppy um where you know you may get the free licenses but there are other costs and stuff that has to go along with it. And that phrase has stuck with me because he's right um but again that doesn't mean it's bad. It just means you have to make sure that you have you know the business support to be able to have something like it. Having just done you know all these demos with alternative vendors for CRM vendors, there are a lot of people out there that like could really benefit from a simple CRM. And then there are people who have more complicated business where they're growing or they just need something straight up free. And that's where you know I think it could really Salesforce can really support nonprofits.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:16

Amazing so for those that are listening um you won't see the incredible mascot collection uh that Susie has my final maybe the most difficult question we're gonna ask you today Susie who or which one is your favorite mascot out of the collection you have behind you.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:34

Goodness let me move my camera a little so you can see them all. Who is my favorite? I'm gonna say Ruth is my favorite um because I got her at Dreamforce last year after like and presenting on the architect track. So Ruth is the mascot for Salesforce architects and um and so that's gonna hold a special place in my heart. Plus she is big enough to hold all of my conference badges and not fall over. So um I have to like her for that too.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:11

I think you're the only one who knows the elephant's name. So Ruth is the elephant for those who would need to Google it like myself yes Ruth is the elephant.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:24

Elephants are honest right that is that what they say all of the mascots are honest.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:33

Amazing well Susie thank you so much for giving us your time uh today great great story um you know I think uh a true testament of um somebody who put themselves out there worked hard along the way and is is reaping the rewards right um that's the way it could be done in the ecosystem and and kudos to you for uh grabbing the ball by its horns so um thanks for sharing your story thank you so much for having me on guys I I had a lot of fun this was great amazing thank you