How I Passed the Nonprofit Cloud Consultant Exam

​I’ve been sick for nearly two weeks now. And last weekend while I was cooped up inside, I decided to study for the Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud Consultant exam. I had thought about taking the beta version when it was announced, but because I wasn’t working at a nonprofit, I didn’t think I would be chosen to participate. I even had some imposter syndrome about signing up to take the exam all, since I’ve been working in the for-profit space for the past four years.

But in case you didn’t know, my first encounter with Salesforce happened while I was working at a national education nonprofit called Citizen Schools. At Citizen Schools I was  working in the Development department (aka fundraising) and I was responsible for implementing NPSP (back in the day when it was still the Nonprofit Starter Pack).

​There are a ton of community created trail mixes for NPSP, but I decided to focus my energy on a few specific modules in order to prepare. I was already very familiar with the account (household) model of NPSP. If you aren’t, I would definitely spend some time reading about it, as well as understanding basic fundraising concepts. Even if you’re a seasoned Salesforce admin in a for-profit org, trying to pass this exam without knowing the NPSP data model or how a nonprofit works will be pretty tough.
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About The Exam

​NPSP Settings and Administration: 20%

• Given a set of requirements, use NPSP Settings for people (Leads, Contacts, and Accounts) management defaults.
• Given a set of requirements, use NPSP Settings to set up and troubleshoot Relationships.
• Given a set of requirements, use the NPSP Settings to set up donation (Opportunity) management defaults.
• Given a user requirement to track on-going (more than one) donations in Salesforce, use the NPSP Settings to enable recurring giving functionality that meets the requirements.
• Given an error message through NPSP, determine whether it is an NPSP issue and appropriate next steps.
• Given a requirement to ensure system cleanliness, run the Health Check tool and implement recommended changes.
• Explain the differences between the NPSP release schedule and the Salesforce release schedule, including considerations for declarative and custom development during the deployment stage of implementation.
• Given a requirement to manage multiple addresses for a nonprofit constituent, be able to define the Address Management functionality and configure the standard state and country picklists functionality to work with the Address, Contact, and Account objects.
• Install and configure NPSP according to best practices in an existing Salesforce org.
• Create or modify customizable rollups using best practices for a Salesforce org with NPSP installed and on the latest version.

Nonprofit Cloud Data Management: 11%

• Given a specific data requirement from a nonprofit, explain the use cases and considerations for using Salesforce Data Loader, NPSP Data Importer, or the Salesforce Import Wizard.
• Given customer requirements, explain the data integration use cases and considerations for a Nonprofit Cloud implementation.
• Given the size of records and files for an implementation, identify if the implementation will require additional solution design due to large data volumes.
• Identify which duplicate management tools to use for a Salesforce implementation, considering common nonprofit needs and compatibility with the various NPSP data models.
• Given a set of business requirements, recommend data management strategies that align with Salesforce best practices.
• Given a situation in which data needs to be imported to the system, use the NPSP settings at appropriate times during the data loading process to refresh opportunities, recurring donations, and levels.

​Nonprofit Cloud Analytics: 6%

• Given a business requirement to create a report that shows donors who previously donated money but have not yet this year, identify the best way to approach that situation.​​
• ​Given a set of desired metrics (including roles, levels, account data model), determine the appropriate report, dashboard, or reporting snapshot solution.
  

• Given a scenario that involves reporting on year over year giving at a point in time, determine the correct way to achieve that situation.

​Domain Expertise: 18%

• Given a specific business challenge, identify the correct Salesforce solutions that satisfy customer requirements for fundraising and donor management.
• Given a specific business challenge, identify the correct Salesforce solutions that satisfy customer requirements for marketing and engagement.
• Given a specific business challenge, identify the correct Salesforce solutions that satisfy customer requirements for program management.
• Given a specific business challenge, identify the correct Salesforce solutions that satisfy customer requirements for volunteer management.
• Given customer requirements, build role-based analytics that satisfy customer requirements.
• For customers seeking Salesforce resources, distinguish and rationalize the purpose for resource sites like the Power of Us Hub, Trailblazer Community, Trailhead, and AppExchange.

​Nonprofit Cloud Solution Design: 24%

• Given a set of business requirements, determine the Salesforce product(s) to be used for the solution.
• Given a set of business requirements, determine when it is appropriate to use declarative development (clicks), custom code, or a third-party solution.
• Given a scenario, analyze customer requirements to determine an appropriate solution design considering capabilities, limitations, and design trade-offs.
• Given a set of fundraising business requirements, determine which functionality in NPSP should be used for the solution.
• Given a set of business requirements related to data security, determine which security features should be used.

​Nonprofit Implementation Strategies and Best Practices: 21%

• Given a set of requirements, design a case management solution from case creation to closure including case assignment, case escalation, case resolution, and case disposition.
• Given a scenario, determine how to facilitate a successful Nonprofit Cloud consulting engagement (plan, gather requirements, design, build, test, and document).
• Given customer background information, gather requirements, create user stories, and develop business processes into system requirements.
• Given customer requirements, design a solution based on best practices for governance.
• Given a simple set of business requirements, determine the appropriate account model for a nonprofit customer.
• Given a planned solution, create a test environment plan with specific environments.
• Given a solution scenario, determine which deployment tools and strategy would be used.

If this seems like a whole lot of content...it is. Here are my tips on where to focus

• Know what settings live in the NPSP settings vs what settings live in the standard Setup area. Seriously. This is my #1 tip because it comes up in SO many questions. I would recommend getting hands on with the NPSP settings tab if at all possible.
• There is a lot of core admin knowledge that is assumed in this exam! You will do best if you have brushed up on your core admin skills.
• Master engagement plans and levels. This was new for me since the NPSP version I worked on years ago didn’t yet have this really awesome feature. 
• Get familiar with the Salesforce nonprofit ecosystem. Thing like NPSP sprints and the Power of Us Hub come up on the exam.
• Understand fundraising at a high-level and the different tools in NPSP that make managing donations in Salesforce a cinch (for example: soft credits, GAU allocations and grant management).
• Know what volunteer management tools comes OOTB with NPSP.
• Understand merge capabilities of OOTB Salesforce vs. NPSP and when you should use each.
• Know the household model inside and out, for instance, will the household model work with person accounts? How does household naming work?
• Focus on limits, features and best practices for Campaigns and Opportunities.
• Have a baseline understanding of LDV (Large Data Volumes) and the impact of LDV on your Salesforce org.
• Know when to recommend Pardot vs. Marketing Cloud (both from a budget and features perspective).

More Resources

Here is the Trailmix recommended in the study guide. I personally, I think it is a bit too broad and it's missing two very important modules.

If you already have a pretty good grasp on Salesforce administration, I would recommend  doing this trail instead to get up to speed quickly on NPSP.

In Conclusion

This exam was a really good one. I enjoyed catching up on the advancements that have been made in the last several years to NPSP. It has improved SO much thanks in great part to the Salesforce Community. This exam tests a wide range of admin knowledge in addition to your skills with the Nonprofit Success Pack. I highly recommend  it to anyone working in the nonprofit landscape, or to anyone who is planning to work with a nonprofit in either a consultant or volunteer role.