The Nonprofit Cloud Consultant Certification is designed for consultants who have expertise as cloud computing implementation consultants with a specialty in nonprofits. Over time, this certification has evolved from a 1-2 year experience level to a 2-5 year experience level due to the increased number of options available for nonprofits implementing Salesforce solutions.
Much of the content is related to consulting and understanding concepts as opposed to the administration of the platform. However, a key grasp on differences between the Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) and Sales Cloud as well as additional products like Volunteers for Salesforce (V4S), Program Management Module (PMM), Outbound Funds Module, and Grants Management Module, are key to supporting the Nonprofit implementation and ongoing administration of a non-profit org that could have any number of these products enabled.
To note, Nonprofit Cloud is not covered in this exam; it’s part of the new Nonprofit Cloud Consultant (NPC) certification, so an awareness of differences between the two would be beneficial for your general awareness of Nonprofit Salesforce offerings.
Who’s the Ideal Candidate?
Any Salesforce Administrator or Consultant who is working with, or may have the opportunity to work with, a nonprofit should take this certification.
Although the exam guide expects you to have experience in implementing the solution, provided you have a good grasp of Salesforce (i.e. 2-5 years as an admin), and put in the time and effort to learn about the world of nonprofits rather than just the setup of the org, this will put you in a good place to ensure you “do no harm” should you have the opportunity to work with a nonprofit client.
Key Topics
The exam (as of May 2025) has 60 multiple-choice questions over 105 minutes. The passing score is 67%, requiring a candidate to be successful in 40 out of 60 questions. The exam is made up of 6 topics with various weightings as detailed below.
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Where Should I Begin?
A good starting point is to take a look at the Prepare for Your Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud Consultant Credential trailmix, along with the Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud Consultant Exam Guide. Both of these resources will be key for your preparation.
1. Domain Expertise: 20%
This section is all about Salesforce solutions and identifying the appropriate Salesforce solutions for different requirements.
You will need to understand the different options for fundraising and donor management, marketing and engagements, and program and/or volunteer management, and have knowledge of resource sites such as the Trailblazer Community, Trailhead, and AppExchange.
You will need to understand the correct solutions for various nonprofit requirements. There will be a number of scenario-based questions, and you will need to understand what solutions are available and when you would implement each one.
For example:
- What solutions are there for Volunteer Management? Maybe Volunteers for Salesforce?
- Marketing and Engagement? A high-level knowledge of Marketing Cloud vs. Pardot would be useful!
- Fundraising and Donor Management? Knowledge of the functionality for soft credits, hard credits, and recurring donations would be good to have here!
- What about Program Management? Would PMM be suitable?
- How about Case Management? Would Nonprofit Case Management be the best option?
As you work your way through the Trailmix, make sure to note down the scenarios and the solutions that are provided for each, along with the functionality that each solution provides to help you understand what the recommended options are.
2. Nonprofit Cloud Product Configuration 22%
This topic is all about the settings and administration of NPSP, so this is where you want to go through the NPSP Documentation. Embedded into the documentation are a number of videos from the ‘Nonprofit Salesforce How-To Series’, which are great for understanding the overview of some functionality that you might not regularly use. Y
You can take a look at all of the videos available on the Nonprofit Salesforce How-To-Series YouTube channel.
You need to understand the additional custom objects that NPSP provides (such as affiliations and recurring donations), so reviewing the NPSP Entity Relationship Diagram will definitely help.
It is important to understand the out-of-the-box settings of NPSP. These settings include customizing household name formats, relationship settings, and address management functionality. You will also want to understand the capabilities of customizable rollups and their benefits over the standard rollups.
You will need to understand how to configure the different aspects of people management and fundraising. Make sure you understand the different account models available, including how to manage households (merge/split, etc.) and the difference between hard credits and soft credits, and contact roles.
I would expect them to want you to know about NPSP error management and how to resolve these. There may also be questions on how to mass update naming or re-run rollups, so make sure you’ve taken a look at these different settings and given them a try.
Ensure you know what TDTM is, at least at a high level. You’re likely to have questions on TDTM, so knowing that it allows you to disable specific pieces of code, add your own custom code, and for that to work with NPSP is really key.
As this section is all about configuration, if you don’t already have access to an NPSP org, I would definitely suggest you spin one up so you have something to play with. Please do not use a production org!
NPSP, along with PMM, Outbound Funds, Grants Management, and Volunteers for Salesforce (V4S) can be installed from this page into a Trailhead Playground: https://install.salesforce.org/products#salesforce.org-products (Note: you’ll probably want to install NPSP first).
3. Implementation Strategies and Best Practices: 18%
This section is more about consulting than the core Salesforce for Nonprofit products. Here you will need to be able to answer questions around requirements gathering, user stories, business processes, change management and testing, and deployment.
If you’ve not achieved your Business Analyst Certification, now might be a good time, as these are covered in depth. There is a good Trailhead badge on Salesforce Nonprofit Vision and Value Mapping that can support here.
Other items that often pop up here are around CumulusCI Basics and Experience Cloud basis – both of these also have modules in the Prepare for Your Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud Consultant Credential Trailmix.
4. Solution Design: 20%
Now we are into Solution Design. Much of this is going to be supported by your learning from previous sections. You will want to have done all of the hands-on modules related to NPSP, including Nonprofit Cloud Case Management (NCCM).
You will need to be able to identify the appropriate Salesforce solution(s) to meet customer requirements. There are lots of scenario-based questions for this section; you’ll need to be able to identify which solution is the best fit for the organization’s requirements.
You’ll need to be able to identify where declarative development, custom code, or third-party (AppExchange) solutions are required. The usual rule of ‘if you can’t create it declaratively, then an AppExchange solution is recommended’ applies here. They may also throw in a security question here.
5. Integration and Data Management: 15%
This section is all about data. Here, you will need to understand duplicate management tools within Salesforce (i.e. Duplicate and Matching Rules), data migration, and/or integration strategies, which probably include the cleaning up of data before import, including deduplication and a consideration of the age of historical data.
You will also need knowledge of the NPSP data import tool. Getting hands-on with this would set you up for success, as there are often questions on dry runs and mapping of custom fields.
You will also want to understand the difference between the NPSP data import tool and data loader, and data import wizard. Completing the Trailhead badge on Large Data Volumes would also be helpful here!
6. Analytics: 5%
The final section – which is around three questions long – is around analytics. Here you will need to know which analytics solutions are best for which scenario, so knowledge of Reports, Dashboard, Tableau, CRM Analytics (formerly Tableau CRM – and potentially still referred to as this!), and other third-party solutions will be needed.
I doubt any specific third-party solutions will be referenced, so knowing when you need to ‘go to the AppExchange’ vs. any of the Salesforce tools will be needed.
I would also recommend you know about LYBUNT/SYBUNT reports, the NPSP Household Mailing list actions, and reports for direct mail campaigns. Reporting snapshots might also be on the exam. This is definitely an area you could ace 100% on by knowing some basics on Nonprofit and general Salesforce reporting.
Study Strategy
There is a lot of content to cover, with many specific nonprofit concepts. The Trailmix mentioned earlier, which is Prepare for Your Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud Consultant Credential, will cover the key topics.
Download the Trailhead Exam Guide and use this as your master revision list. I would suggest you use the Trailmix as a guide, but don’t just complete the badges; you will want to follow along with an org or two.
Unlike other core certifications, you may struggle to find exam guides and practice papers; however, Sarah Epting has put together a Nonprofit Cloud Consultant Exam Study Guide (https://www.technopath.io/for-salesforce-admins) to fill this void. You do need to note that many resources were written before the additional certification was released, so any reference to Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) learning can be discounted.
Exam Strategy
The exam strategy is very similar to that of any Salesforce Certification. You need to use the process of elimination to take out those answers you know are incorrect – and watch out for questions where Salesforce is really trying to test your knowledge. For example, person accounts do not work with NPSP, and I can guarantee they will want to test that you know that!
Make sure you use the “mark for review” option for questions where you feel unsure, so you know to revisit them later (particularly early on in the exam). One tip I have is that if you really have no idea, just go with the most likely answer and move on. If you don’t know and have no idea, there is little point in “marking for review” when you aren’t likely to know in 30 minutes’ time either!
Whether you review every question at the end is a personal choice. Personally, I wouldn’t do this, as I would start to doubt answers and make changes to questions I was previously confident about; however, others find this a great way to spot mistakes.
Final Thoughts
The Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud Consultant Certification is a must for Salesforce professionals in the nonprofit space. This is especially true if you are working with NPSP and have a corporate background. You really do need to understand how NPSP works and how best to support the NPSP-enabled nonprofit you are working with.
Now, get studying and ace that exam!
