SalesForce is a great tool to track all of the interactions you are having with your clients and donors. This tool is highly customizable, which allows you to make it as complex and robust as you wish, but the drawback is that the complexity adds additional time for setup and maintenance. This snapshot shows one of the customization pages. SalesForce is designed for people in the sales industry, so some of the tabs and names are not language that is consistent with the nonprofit industry. However, you can change the names of all the tabs to be appropriate for your organization and the business processes that you have.
SalesForce organizes contacts into leads and actual clients. In each category, the information to track is very different and the tool has the flexibility for you to designate fields per your needs. For example, if you are tracking a potential volunteer, you would enter information captured through a screening or application process and you would track that person as a “lead.” For actual volunteers, you may want to track hours participated, special skills, or activities of particular interest. You can flip the designation from lead to actual, when appropriate, without having to reenter any information.