Comprehensive Guide - Internal Stakeholders

Internal to the Organization

Executive Director / CEO: Final decision-maker and budget authority

Goals:

  • Ensure the organization’s mission delivery is not disrupted

  • Make a financially sound investment decision

  • Build organizational capacity for the long term

Challenges:

  • May not have deep enough technical context to evaluate the decision confidently

  • Balancing this initiative against competing organizational priorities

  • Owning the outcome if the migration goes poorly

Questions to Ask:

  • What is driving the interest in migrating now?

  • What would a successful outcome look like for the organization?

  • What level of disruption to operations and staff is the organization prepared to absorb during the migration?

  • What does the organization need to have in place before committing to this project?

CFO or Finance Lead: Owns budget approval and cost/ROI analysis

Goals:

  • Understand the full cost of the migration, including licensing, implementation, training, and ongoing support

  • Ensure there is a clear return on investment or organizational justification

  • Protect the organization from financial surprises mid-project

Challenges:

  • Technology costs are often underestimated in initial proposals

  • Difficulty comparing the true cost of staying on NPSP versus migrating

  • May not have context for what “good” looks like in a Salesforce implementation budget

Questions to Ask:

  • What budget has the organization set aside for this project, and does it account for implementation, training, and ongoing support?

  • What financial metrics or thresholds would make this investment feel justified to you?

  • What would you need to see in order to feel confident approving this level of expenditure?

COO or Operations Lead: Responsible for process change and organizational impact

Goals:

  • Ensure day-to-day operations are not disrupted during the migration

  • Identify process improvements that the new platform could enable

  • Make sure staff are supported through the transition

Challenges:

  • Migration timelines often conflict with organizational busy seasons like fundraising or program cycles

  • Process documentation is frequently incomplete or out of date, making migration planning harder

  • Change management is often underfunded and underestimated in project scopes

Questions to Ask:

  • What periods of the year would be most disruptive for a major technology transition, and which would be most manageable?

  • How well documented are the organization’s current processes, and who owns that documentation?

  • What does the organization have in place to support staff through a significant system change?

Development Director or Fundraising Lead: Heavy NPSP user, most directly affected by migration

Goals:

  • Maintain uninterrupted access to donor data, giving history, and fundraising workflows

  • Understand what Agentforce Nonprofit offers that NPSP does not, and whether it solves real pain points

  • Ensure campaigns, appeals, and acknowledgment processes continue without gaps

Challenges:

  • NPSP was built largely around fundraising needs; any regression in functionality is a serious risk

  • May have deeply embedded workflows, reports, and third party integrations that need to be rebuilt or replaced

  • Migration timing is high stakes. A disruption during a major campaign or year-end can have real revenue consequences

Questions to Ask:

  • What fundraising workflows, reports, or integrations are you most dependent on, and what would it mean if any of them were unavailable during the migration?

  • Are there pain points in your current setup that you are hoping this migration would solve?

  • What time of year would be most damaging for a disruption to your fundraising operations?

  • What tools do you use and why?

Grants Manager: Distinct reporting and data needs tied to funder requirements

Goals:

  • Ensure grant tracking, reporting, and compliance workflows survive the migration intact

  • Understand whether Agentforce Nonprofit improves or complicates grant management capabilities

  • Maintain continuity of funder relationships and reporting deadlines during the transition

Challenges:

  • Grant reporting structures are often highly customized and fragile

  • Funder deadlines do not pause for a migration – data must be accurate and accessible throughout

  • May rely on third party grant management tools that need to be evaluated for Agentforce Nonprofit compatibility

Questions to Ask:

  • What grant reporting deadlines fall within the anticipated migration window, and how would you manage if data was temporarily inaccessible?

  • How much of your grant tracking and reporting lives in Salesforce versus other tools, and how are those connected?

  • Are there any funder requirements that dictate how grant data must be stored or reported that the migration team needs to understand?

  • What fundraising workflows, reports, or integrations are you most dependent on, and what would it mean if any of them were unavailable during the migration?

  • Are there pain points in your current setup that you are hoping this migration would solve?

  • What tools do you use and why?

Program Staff / Program Director: Largest user group, highest change management risk

Goals:

  • Continue serving constituents without interruption during and after the migration

  • Have tools that actually match how program work gets done day to day

  • Be heard in the process rather than handed a finished system to adapt to

Challenges:

  • Often the last group consulted during planning but the first to feel the impact

  • Program data models in NPSP can be highly customized and vary widely across organizations, making migration complex

  • Staff turnover during a long migration can mean institutional knowledge is lost mid-project

Questions to Ask:

  • What does your day-to-day use of Salesforce look like, and what would break your workflow if it changed or disappeared?

  • What are the biggest gaps or frustrations in how the current system supports your program work?

  • How would you want to be involved in the migration process, and what would you need to feel prepared for the transition?

Communications or Marketing Staff: May rely on Salesforce for campaigns and constituent engagement

Goals:

  • Maintain continuity of email campaigns, audience segmentation, and engagement tracking

  • Understand how Agentforce Nonprofit affects any marketing automation tools connected to Salesforce

  • Ensure constituent communication does not lapse during the migration

Challenges:

  • Marketing integrations are often among the most complex and fragile connections to migrate

  • This group may have limited visibility into the migration plan until something breaks

  • Audience lists, campaign history, and engagement data may not map cleanly to the new data model

Questions to Ask:

  • What tools do you use for communications and marketing, and how are they connected to Salesforce?

  • What campaign or communication activity would be most at risk if your Salesforce integration was disrupted?

  • What data do you rely on in Salesforce to segment audiences or track engagement, and how critical is the history?

Database Manager or Data Staff: Owns data integrity and migration quality

Goals:

  • Ensure data is clean, complete, and accurately migrated to the new platform

  • Understand the differences between the NPSP and Agentforce Nonprofit data models before migration begins

  • Have a clear data governance plan in place before, during, and after the migration

Challenges:

  • Data quality issues that have been tolerated in NPSP become harder to ignore during a migration

  • The data model differences between NPSP and Agentforce Nonprofit are significant and require careful mapping

  • Often expected to do migration-related data work on top of existing responsibilities without additional capacity

Questions to Ask:

  • How would you describe the current state of your data quality, and are there known issues that have not been addressed?

  • What data governance processes does the organization have in place today, and who is responsible for maintaining them?

  • What additional capacity or support would you need to participate meaningfully in the data migration process?

  • What historical data do we need to migrate?

Internal Salesforce Admin: Inherits and maintains whatever is built

Goals:

  • Be involved in the migration from the start, not brought in at the end to maintain someone else’s decisions

  • Build skills and familiarity with Agentforce Nonprofit before go-live

  • End up with a system that is documented, sustainable, and manageable with available resources

Challenges:

  • Often under-resourced and expected to absorb migration-related work alongside existing responsibilities

  • May feel pressure to agree to a scope or timeline set by leadership or a consulting partner without adequate input

  • If the implementation is over-customized or poorly documented, they are the ones left holding it

Questions to Ask:

  • How involved do you expect to be in the migration process, and what would meaningful involvement look like to you?

  • What parts of the current implementation do you find most difficult to maintain, and what would you want done differently?

  • What training or ramp-up time would you need to feel confident administering Agentforce Nonprofit after go-live?

  • Do we have an “over-customized” NPSP instance?

  • How will we handle Person Accounts?

  • How will we train users, and what is our plan to ensure they adopt the new system?

IT Staff: Responsible for security, integrations, and infrastructure

Goals:

  • Ensure the migration meets organizational security and compliance requirements

  • Understand how Agentforce Nonprofit affects existing integrations with other organizational systems

  • Have a clear picture of the technical architecture before and after the migration

Challenges:

  • May not be consulted early enough to flag integration or security concerns before commitments are made

  • Integration dependencies are often underdocumented and surface as surprises mid-project

  • In smaller organizations this role may be a single person or a fractional resource with limited bandwidth

Questions to Ask:

  • What are the organization’s security and compliance requirements that any new system configuration must meet?

  • What systems outside of Salesforce does the organization rely on, and how are they currently connected?

  • What would you need from a consulting partner or implementation team to feel confident the technical architecture is sound?

Board Members: Governance and fiduciary oversight, may hold budget approval authority

Goals:

  • Understand the organizational risk and financial commitment before approving the investment

  • Be confident that leadership has done appropriate due diligence

  • Ensure the migration aligns with the organization’s strategic direction

Challenges:

  • Typically have the least technical context of any stakeholder group

  • Dependent on leadership to frame the decision accurately and completely

  • May underestimate the scope of the project or approve a budget that does not reflect true costs

Questions to Ask:

  • What level of detail does the board need in order to feel confident approving this investment?

  • What organizational risks are you most concerned about, and how would you want those communicated to you during the project?

  • What would you need to see in a board presentation to feel the due diligence has been done?