If your nonprofit is gearing up to move from Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge (RE/RENXT) to Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, you’re not just switching systems you’re transforming how your organization manages relationships, fundraising, and impact.

Salesforce unlocks more flexibility, automation, and integration potential than traditional donor databases, but you’ll only realize that value if you prepare strategically before the migration begins.

Whether you’re working with a partner or managing an internal transition, here are the five most important steps to get your organization migration-ready.

1. Align on the Vision: Define Your Future-State Operating Model

Before discussing objects, fields, or data mapping, you need organizational alignment. A migration is not just a data exercise, it’s a business transformation.

Key questions to answer:

• What processes do we want to improve (e.g., gift entry, stewardship, major gifts, soft credits, pledges)?

• What pain points in Raiser’s Edge must not follow us to Salesforce?

• What new capabilities do we want to adopt (automation, omni-channel comms, segmentation, self-service portals, reporting, etc.)?

• Who are the executive sponsors and business owners?

  
  

Deliverables that help:

• A future-state architecture diagram

• Updated business process flows (gift lifecycle, event lifecycle, donor stewardship, etc.)

• A consolidation plan for shadow systems, spreadsheets, and third-party tools

A shared vision prevents teams from merely “rebuilding RE in Salesforce,” which is the #1 reason migrations fail.

2. Clean, Standardize, and Rationalize Your Data

Bad data becomes expensive data in Salesforce, expensive to migrate, expensive to maintain, and expensive to undo.

Before migration, invest in:

• Deduplication: Resolve household vs. individual records, merge duplicates, and standardize naming.

• Field Standardization: Reduce free-text fields, normalize values (states, salutations, constituent codes, gift types).

• Data Governance Decisions: Who approves new fields? What’s the golden source of truth? How do you maintain householding rules?

• Archival Strategy: Not all RE data should move. Decide what is:

  • Required (active donors, gifts, pledges)

  • Nice-to-have (years-old event attendance)

  • Archival only (exported but not migrated)

    
    

Salesforce’s data model is more flexible but also requires intentional structure. Clean data is your foundation.

3. Prepare a Detailed Data Dictionary to inform a RE to Salesforce Plan

This is where nonprofits often underestimate the complexity.

Ideally, you’ll have a full data dictionary that describes:

• Every table and field in RE you plan to migrate

• Data type

• Field purpose and usage

• Required transformations

• Any system logic tied to that field

  
  

We will work with you to map RE data to Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud objects such as:

• Person Accounts or Contacts

• Organizations

• Opportunities

• Payments

• Recurring Donations

• Soft Credits & Contact Roles

• Affiliations

• Campaigns

  
  

A good mapping plan prevents surprises during build and testing especially around subledgers, gift batches, and recurring gifts.

4. Engage Stakeholders Early & Set Expectations About What Will Change

A migration changes how people work day-to-day. Don’t wait until UAT to reveal new processes.

Things that often change when moving from RE to Salesforce:

• How gift entry works

• How major gift officers track portfolios

• How communications teams manage lists

• The distinction between Household vs. Person Accounts

• How pledges, tribute gifts, recurring gifts, and soft credits behave

• Where event data “lives” in Salesforce

• How appeals and campaigns map to Salesforce Campaign hierarchy

  
  

Stakeholders to engage early:

• Development & fundraising

• Finance & gift processing

• Communications/marketing

• Events

• Programs (if integrated)

• IT/data teams

  
  

Conduct working sessions around:

• Pain points

• Must-have vs. nice-to-have features

• Reporting requirements

• Stewardship & moves management needs

• System and Data Governance

  
  

Change management is not optional successful migrations build adoption before go-live.

5. Build a Strong Test Strategy: Don’t Leave It to the End

Testing is the most underestimated (and most painful) part of a migration if you don’t plan up front.

You’ll need:

• Unit tests (validating each mapping)

• Integration tests (payments, online donation tools, marketing tools, finance integrations)

• UAT scripts that imitate real fundraiser use cases

• Reconciliation procedures for:

  • Gift totals

  • Campaigns/appeals

  • Pledges

  • Recurring gifts

  • Soft credits

  • Tribute gifts

    
    

• Parallel gift entry testing for at least 1–2 batch cycles

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You need absolute confidence that fundraising revenue and donor history are correct and auditable before cutting over.

Final Thought: A Successful Migration Starts Long Before the First Data Load

Organizations that thrive in Salesforce do so because they invested early in:

• Business alignment

• Data readiness

• Stakeholder engagement

• A clear mapping strategy

• Rigorous testing

  
  

If you do these five things before the project even begins, you won’t just transition systems you’ll elevate how your nonprofit operates, engages supporters, and measures impact.