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Road to DF15: ICAN AZ

Dreamforce logoWe covered the reasons you should go to DF in a previous post. This time, we want to let nonprofit organizations tell you what their Dreamforce experience has been. We sat down with Shelby P. from ICAN AZ to discuss her experience going to Dreamforce last year.  More to share from another organization in a following post.

Any creative ways to justify or find funds in the budget?

The first year we attended (2014), we did not have funds in the budget, so we asked a funding partner of ours to help. We know they enjoy funding training opportunities, so they were eager to help. After attending, we realized that it had a lot of value and that we would like to attend again. So we planned for the expenses in our current budget and will be using general funds to attend the conference this year.

What were your favorite sessions and why?

My favorite sessions were those focused on online giving and the large variety of apps that help integrate your website giving with Salesforce. We were planning a monthly giving program when we attending DreamForce in 2014 and those sessions helped us develop and launch our program.

 

What type of preparation would you recommend to attendees this year?

Decide in advance what sessions you want to take and make sure you leave some time to walk around the expos and talk with some of the experts…this was helpful to us. Also, I can’t recommend highly enough that organizations actually budget to attend DreamForce…otherwise, it just won’t happen!! Treat it like a mandatory training and give it a high priority.

 

What would you do differently this year? (what have your learned)

Spend more time talking with the other nonprofits there that are using DreamForce to get ideas. How did Dreamforce improve your use of Salesforce? (2 or 3 points) We learned about several great apps that we are now using to make our system better. Also, we gained a ton of new ideas about how to use Salesforce beyond just data housing – for example, how to integrate it with our existing products for email marketing, etc.

 

What new apps, areas, or functionalities did you discover at Dreamforce?

We didn’t discover Click and Pledge at DreamForce, but we had the opportunity to play with it and ask the employees a ton of questions…so DreamForce helped us make the decision to go with Click and Pledge. We are pretty happy with it so far!

Stay tuned for a similar post from other nonprofit organizations. Hope to see you at Dreamforce 15.

About Road to DF15: ICAN AZ

Dreamforce logoWe covered the reasons you should go to DF in a previous post. This time, we want to let nonprofit organizations tell you what their Dreamforce experience has been. We sat down with Shelby P. from ICAN AZ to discuss her experience going to Dreamforce last year.  More to share from another organization in a following post.

Any creative ways to justify or find funds in the budget?

The first year we attended (2014), we did not have funds in the budget, so we asked a funding partner of ours to help. We know they enjoy funding training opportunities, so they were eager to help. After attending, we realized that it had a lot of value and that we would like to attend again. So we planned for the expenses in our current budget and will be using general funds to attend the conference this year.

What were your favorite sessions and why?

My favorite sessions were those focused on online giving and the large variety of apps that help integrate your website giving with Salesforce. We were planning a monthly giving program when we attending DreamForce in 2014 and those sessions helped us develop and launch our program.

 

What type of preparation would you recommend to attendees this year?

Decide in advance what sessions you want to take and make sure you leave some time to walk around the expos and talk with some of the experts…this was helpful to us. Also, I can’t recommend highly enough that organizations actually budget to attend DreamForce…otherwise, it just won’t happen!! Treat it like a mandatory training and give it a high priority.

 

What would you do differently this year? (what have your learned)

Spend more time talking with the other nonprofits there that are using DreamForce to get ideas. How did Dreamforce improve your use of Salesforce? (2 or 3 points) We learned about several great apps that we are now using to make our system better. Also, we gained a ton of new ideas about how to use Salesforce beyond just data housing – for example, how to integrate it with our existing products for email marketing, etc.

 

What new apps, areas, or functionalities did you discover at Dreamforce?

We didn’t discover Click and Pledge at DreamForce, but we had the opportunity to play with it and ask the employees a ton of questions…so DreamForce helped us make the decision to go with Click and Pledge. We are pretty happy with it so far!

Stay tuned for a similar post from other nonprofit organizations. Hope to see you at Dreamforce 15.