5 Steps to Making the Most of the Power of Us Hub

If you’ve read our blog before, you know that the capabilities of the Salesforce platform are immense. Salesforce is a complex CRM out of the box, and when you take into consideration the additional effort it takes to have your CRM reflect your fundraising or program management, it can begin to seem overwhelming.

Fortunately, if you are a nonprofit Salesforce user, you have an incredible resource available to you to help resolve your Salesforce-related issues -- the Power of Us Hub. The Salesforce Foundation describes the Hub as “a one-stop resource center where customers of the Salesforce Foundation can find resources and training specific to nonprofit and higher education users, engage with one-another, and connect with employees, MVP’s in our community, and relevant partners.” In this post, we will take you through the in’s and out’s of the Hub and how to best leverage the vast community of knowledge available to you!

1. Create a Profile and review Settings

The first step (after logging in, of course!) is to establish yourself in the Hub. Much like your other social media profiles, you can add an About Me overview of yourself, a description of the work your organization does, and importantly, a profile picture!

Once you’ve created your profile, you are able to adjust the frequency of emails you will receive, either daily or weekly. These emails may be segmented a number of ways, and you can set the criteria for when you receive emails. When you subscribe to updates from a group, you will receive an email digest that highlights what conversations occurred during the chosen duration.

2. Join Groups and follow Experts

The next step is to start digging into the Hub by joining groups and following specific people. Here are a few introductory groups that are great starting points:

• About the HUB
• Success: Getting Started with Salesforce
• Nonprofit Starter Pack

When you follow a group, the posts related to that group will appear in your Chatter feed. Groups are a helpful way to get faster, stronger responses to your questions, as they relate to specific sectors, issues, or applications. 

Beyond groups, you can also follow individuals who are experts in any area you may need support (we’re especially fond of some of our own Idealist Consulting experts like Michael Smith and David Cheng). Following these individuals will ensure that their posts are showing up in your Chatter feed.

Pro tip: Seek out Salesforce MVPs and your Idealist Consulting consultants -- many of them are active on the Hub.

3. Ask a question and chime in!

Now it’s time to join in on the conversation! Whether you are running into Salesforce issues, have a question about application functionality, or are wondering about the latest version of the Nonprofit Starter Pack, you can find and get answers to all of your questions on the Hub. Begin typing your question into the Search box, and you will begin to see questions that have been previously asked that may be the solution you are looking for. If it hasn’t previously been answered before, post your question and await for the responses to begin pouring in!

Pro tip: To get the best response possible, it’s helpful to add hashtags for the topics that your question relates to and to @mention any group or individual that may have expertise in the topic area. You can also use topics to locate answers for questions you may have.

4. Knowledge Articles

The ability to communicate with a mass of fellow nonprofit Salesforce users and consultants is the greatest value of the Hub; however, there is another major value to the Hub. The Salesforce Foundation regularly posts Knowledge Articles, which provide education on a broad range of topics. Whether you just installed the Nonprofit Starter Pack or are looking to find the best data cleaning tool, you can find related Knowledge Articles on the Hub.

5. Area User Groups

One final way you can interact on the Hub is through your local Nonprofit User Group. Many cities and regions are operating their own user groups and regularly have in-person meet-up opportunities. Essentially, these are the “live versions” of discussions on the Hub! You can network with local nonprofit Salesforce users in your area and learn more about the topics featured at the meetings. These topics range from presentations by third party application providers to the latest Salesforce release notes to best practice recommendations on user adoption.

Ready to get started? We’ll see you on the Hub!