When growth outpaces your systems, every growing business eventually reaches a point where the systems that once supported the team begin to hinder progress. Reports take longer to load, teams rely on side spreadsheets, and leadership starts questioning whether the data reflects reality. Most organizations do not outgrow Salesforce as a platform.

Salesforce gives nonprofits something incredibly valuable: ten free Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) licenses that are worth more than ten thousand dollars each year. For many organizations, this feels like a complete solution. But the truth is that licenses are only one part of the total cost of ownership.

Almost every organization reaches a point where the team spends more time updating Salesforce than using Salesforce. Hours disappear into admin work, double entry, rechecking data, and chasing visibility that should already exist in the system.

The real question is not how to add more people. It is how to automate the work that slows your team down in the first place.

Implementing Salesforce is only the beginning.
Once your system is live, the real question becomes:

“How much does it cost to maintain, optimize, and improve Salesforce after the project is complete?”

The truth is that the ongoing cost of Salesforce support depends on how you manage it. Some organizations attempt to handle it internally, relying on stretched IT staff or assigning Salesforce tasks to team members who already have full workloads. Others choose to invest in Managed Services to keep their Salesforce environment efficient, secure, and aligned with business goals.

There is one question almost every client asks us at this stage:

“We don’t have a dedicated Salesforce admin or IT team. How can we manage the system once you leave?”

The good news is that you do not need a full-time admin on day one to run Salesforce effectively. What you do need is a smart maintenance plan, clear ownership, and the right partner to help you scale with confidence.

Every business using Salesforce eventually arrives at a fork in the road:

Should we build a fully custom solution to mirror our unique process, or rely on a managed package built for scalability and maintainability?

If your IT leader, VP of Marketing, or Salesforce Admin is asking this question, you’re not alone. In fact, the decision you make here has a major impact on the long-term health of your Salesforce org. Technical debt, operational agility, cost of change, resource dependencies, and scalability all depend on it.

Most nonprofits never unlock the full value of their 10 free Salesforce Licenses

Some users never log in, while others continue relying on spreadsheets because Salesforce feels too complex. Automation remains unused, reports become outdated, and before long, the platform that was meant to save time becomes another tool that requires maintenance.

This blog explains how nonprofits can leverage their 10 free licenses to create real mission value by applying Salesforce.org's best practices and insights from hundreds of nonprofit implementations.

Dreamforce 2025 opened with a major step forward for the age of AI.

Salesforce officially launched Agentforce 360, the most complete version yet of its agentic AI platform, bringing humans, data, and AI agents together on one trusted foundation.

The company called this release its boldest evolution, shaped by thousands of real-world customer deployments and more than a year of enterprise-scale experimentation.

Every mid-market leader running Salesforce has asked the same question:

“Can you provide a clear starting point, something predictable, structured, and proven, instead of an open-ended consulting engagement?”

The short answer: yes

Every Salesforce leader has lived through it.

The project is moving along, sprints are planned, and then the requests start creeping in. Marketing wants “just one more” automation…

Everyone wants the same thing when it comes to Salesforce projects: predictable costs, no surprises, and ROI that actually makes sense.

But here’s the truth nobody likes to admit: cost isn’t a fixed number. It moves up or down, depending on a handful of key factors.

When marketing, sales, and service operate in silos, the customer experience suffers. Marketing launches campaigns without knowing what actually drives the pipeline, while Sales pursues leads with little insight into which messages truly resonate.

One of the biggest worries leaders have when investing in Salesforce:

“What if our team doesn’t actually use it? What if this turns into another system we paid for but no one adopts?”

The truth is, Salesforce only delivers ROI when people engage with it

If you’ve ever watched a sales team finalize a deal while Finance is still triple-checking margins…
…and Ops is asking, “Wait, what exactly did we promise the customer?”

Then you already know: misalignment costs time and revenue.

Every nonprofit and enterprise team faces the same hidden tax on impact: messy CRM data.

Duplicates that make reporting a nightmare. Outdated donor records that tank deliverability. Static reports that look good but don’t drive action. And they are all expensive.

Studies show 55–65% of CRM data goes stale every year, and bad data costs organizations an average of $12.9M annually.