Beyond Export: How Salesforce Reporting Will Change How You Use Data
- Ohana Focus Team
- Jan 21
- 9 min read
By Ohana Focus | January 7, 2025 | 13 min read
For many nonprofits, the workflow is familiar and comfortable. Staff know exactly which query to run for monthly donor reports — the annual giving spreadsheet formula has been perfected over the years. When board meeting prep rolls around, data is exported to Excel, massaged into the proper format, charts are created, and the presentation is ready.
The reason is simple: it works. Organizations have been operating this way for years. So when someone suggests that Salesforce will 'transform how you use data,' the natural reaction is often skepticism. After all, the current approach to data works just fine.
But Salesforce reporting isn't simply a different way to accomplish existing tasks. It represents an entirely different way of thinking about data interaction. Once organizations experience it, returning to the export-everything-to-Excel workflow feels antiquated—like navigating with a paper map after discovering GPS.
The Export Habit and Its Origins
There's nothing inherently wrong with exporting data to Excel. Excel is powerful, flexible, and familiar. When donor lists are exported, they can be sorted any way imaginable, pivot tables can be created, and custom charts can be built. Users maintain complete control.
However, consider what happens in this workflow:
A development officer needs to identify donors who gave this year but not last year. A query runs in Raiser's Edge. The data exports to Excel. Columns are created for 2023 gifts and 2024 gifts. Formulas are written to identify donors appearing in one column but not the other. Formatting makes the data readable. A filter is applied. Finally—45 minutes later—the answer appears.
Then the executive director asks, 'Can this be broken down by gift size? And show the trend over the past five years instead of just two?'
The process starts over from the beginning.
The export-to-Excel habit exists because Raiser's Edge and most traditional databases are fundamentally built around one concept: store the data, then let users extract it and manipulate it elsewhere. Salesforce flips that model completely.
What Makes Salesforce Reporting Different
The difference becomes clear through a real-world scenario.
It's 3 PM on a Thursday. The board meeting is scheduled for tomorrow morning, and the development committee chair emails requesting 'a quick update on major gifts progress this quarter—maybe something visual to share during the report.'
The Traditional Approach
Using Raiser's Edge, the process involves running a gift query for Q4, exporting to Excel, creating a pivot table to sum gifts by range, building a bar chart, saving it as an image, and emailing it. If follow-up questions arise about Q3 comparisons, the entire process repeats.
Time investment: 45-60 minutes, plus another 30 minutes if additional questions arise.
The Salesforce Approach
With Salesforce, staff simply open the 'Major Gifts Progress' dashboard that was configured once, three months prior. It already displays Q4 progress compared to goals, broken down by gift size, with comparisons to Q3 and year-over-year trends. A dashboard link is sent. The board member can view it on their phone, click into any section for details, and project it during the meeting directly from their laptop.
When questions arise about Q3 comparisons, the response is simple: it's already there—just toggle the date filter at the top.
Time investment: 2 minutes to send the link.
This is the fundamental difference. Salesforce dashboards and reports aren't static documents that get created and distributed. They're living views into organizational data that anyone with access can use, customize, and explore.
Real-Time Data Updates
Consider a fundraising campaign at a community health center. The development director displays a dashboard on a screen in the office showing campaign progress—total raised, gifts by size, top donors, progress to goal, all with visual gauges and charts.
Someone calls in a $10,000 pledge. The gift officer enters it into Salesforce. Within 30 seconds, everyone in the office watches the dashboard update in real-time. The progress bar moves. The total changes. The 'Days Since Last Major Gift' counter resets to zero.
The executive director walks by and stops, surprised: 'Wait, did that just update automatically? Without someone running a new report?' Yes, it did.
This real-time nature fundamentally changes the relationship between users and data. Instead of data being something that must be requested from a database administrator, it becomes something that's simply viewed—whenever needed, however needed.
The 'What If' Factor
In the export-to-Excel world, answering the same question five different ways is frustrating because each variation requires starting the process over.
In Salesforce, it's just a few clicks.
Want to see donor retention by acquisition source? Click. Want to filter by donors who gave more than $1,000? Click. Want to view trends over three years instead of five? Click. Want to see it as a chart instead of a table? Click.
The data doesn't change. The report structure doesn't change. Users are simply viewing it through different lenses.
This is the 'what if' factor—the ability to ask questions of data conversationally, trying different angles until insights emerge, without rebuilding the entire analysis each time.
It's the difference between having a conversation and sending formal written letters.
Democratizing Data Access
In most nonprofits running Raiser's Edge, there are typically one or two people who truly know how to run queries and create reports. Everyone else sends requests to them. 'Can you pull a list of lapsed donors?' 'I need the event attendee report.' 'Could you get me giving totals by program?'
These data gatekeepers aren't intentionally hoarding access—they're usually just the people who invested time to learn the system deeply. But it creates bottlenecks. Data requests stack up. Simple questions take days to answer. People make decisions without data because it's faster than waiting for a report.
Salesforce's visual, intuitive reporting interface changes this dynamic.
Program officers can build their own reports showing participant demographics. Major gift officers can create dashboards tracking their portfolios without asking database staff. Board members can log in and view real-time campaign progress without waiting for monthly reports.
When everyone can access the data they need, organizations make better decisions faster—not because people suddenly care more about data, but because the friction between needing information and having it drops from hours to seconds.
The Dashboard Revolution
If reports are detailed analysis tools, dashboards are at-a-glance command centers.
Imagine opening Salesforce and seeing, without any additional clicks:
• This month's fundraising total vs. goal, with a visual gauge
• Number of gifts by size range, as a bar chart
• Donor retention rate, as a trending line graph
• Pipeline of major gift prospects, with stages clearly shown
• Campaign progress across all active campaigns
• This week's pending acknowledgments requiring attention
All on one screen, all updating in real-time. All clickable for drilling into details.
Different Dashboards for Different Roles
The beauty of dashboards is that different people can have different views tailored to their needs. For example:
The Executive Director's Dashboard: High-level organizational metrics, total revenue vs. budget, program success indicators, major donor activity, board-ready visualizations.
The Development Director's Dashboard: Fundraising pipeline, campaign progress, team activity metrics, upcoming deadlines and tasks, grant proposal status, etc.
The Major Gift Officer's Dashboard: Personal portfolio status, upcoming visits and touchpoints, proposal stages, and cultivation progress toward asks.
The Program Manager's Dashboard: Participant outcomes, program enrollment trends, volunteer engagement, service delivery metrics.
Everyone sees what matters most to their role. No one wades through information meant for others. And everyone views the same underlying data, just through different lenses.
Excel Still Has Its Place
A common question arises: 'What if Excel is still needed for something?' The answer is straightforward: organizations can absolutely still export to Excel whenever needed — the difference is when and why exports occur.
In the Raiser's Edge world, exporting happens because that's how analysis is performed. In the Salesforce world, exports serve specific purposes:
• Creating mail merges for personalized letters
• Importing data into other systems requiring spreadsheets
• Performing specific complex calculations easier than in Excel
• Creating custom visualizations for special presentations
• Archiving data snapshots for audit purposes
Most nonprofits find that after becoming comfortable with Salesforce reporting, Excel exports drop by 70-80%. Not because Excel has lost value, but because it's simply needed less frequently.
The Learning Curve Reality
A natural concern emerges: 'This sounds complicated. Is learning an entirely new reporting system really necessary?'
The truth about the Salesforce reporting learning curve is that it's front-loaded with interface differences, not conceptual complexity.
Anyone who can decide what information to view, filter data, group information, and choose display formats already understands the concepts behind Salesforce reporting. The mechanics are simply learning where the buttons are located.
Most users become comfortable with basic reporting within a few hours. Creating a first dashboard might require a day or two of practice. Becoming truly proficient—building complex reports with formulas and sophisticated cross-object analyses—takes longer, but that level is optional for most users.
Common Reporting Wins After Migration
Nonprofits consistently experience several 'breakthrough moments' after switching to Salesforce reporting:
The Instant Donor List: Generating a list of donors who gave between $500-$1,000 in the past 18 months but haven't given this year takes seconds instead of requiring a carefully constructed query and export process.
The Self-Service Board Report: Instead of spending hours before each board meeting preparing data, a board dashboard stays perpetually ready. Board members access it anytime, reducing 'quick question' emails between meetings by 60-70%.
The Campaign Tracking Transformation: Real-time campaign dashboards mean staff always know exactly where things stand. No more 'let me check the database and get back to you.'
The Major Gift Pipeline Visibility: Gift officers can finally see their entire portfolio on one screen—who needs a visit, whose proposal is pending, who's approaching their next ask anniversary.
The Complete Donor Journey View: Viewing a donor's complete giving history—including soft credits, event attendance, volunteer hours, and committee service—all appear on their Contact page with full filtering and sorting capabilities.
Making the Mental Shift
The hardest part of embracing Salesforce reporting isn't learning technical skills. It's making a mental shift from thinking about reports as documents that get created to thinking about them as windows that get looked through.
In the old paradigm, a report was something created. Queries ran, data exported, formatting occurred, and a finished product was delivered. That report was frozen in time—a snapshot of data at the moment of creation.
In the Salesforce paradigm, a report is something accessed. It's not a static document but rather a live view into organizational data. It gets built once, then viewed whenever needed, with data always current and the ability to slice it different ways on demand.
This shift takes time. For weeks or even months after migration, staff might still feel the urge to export things to Excel 'just in case.' Reports might get screenshotted instead of sharing live links. Separate reports might be built for questions that could be answered with filters on existing reports.
This is normal. Organizations should give themselves permission to bridge between both worlds during transition. But gradually, as the power of living data is experienced, old habits fade.
What This Means for Organizations
Better reporting translates into tangible organizational benefits:
Faster decisions: When executive directors can see real-time dashboard data, strategies can pivot mid-campaign instead of waiting for end-of-month reports.
Better decisions: When program staff can explore data themselves rather than working from summary reports, patterns and opportunities that might otherwise be missed become visible.
More strategic fundraising: When development staff spend less time preparing reports and more time analyzing what reports reveal, cultivation strategies improve.
Stronger board engagement: When board members can log in anytime to see organizational progress, they become more informed advocates and more engaged in oversight.
Reclaimed staff time: Those 20-30 hours per month previously spent running queries, exporting data, formatting spreadsheets, and creating charts return to mission-focused work.
The technical benefits—faster reports, attractive charts, automatic updates—are valuable. But the organizational benefits—better strategy, deeper insights, freed-up staff capacity—truly transform how nonprofits operate.
Moving Forward
For organizations preparing for Raiser's Edge to Salesforce migration, or those recently migrated and still learning reporting capabilities, the path forward is clear:
Start small. Select the most frequently requested report—perhaps monthly donor summaries or campaign progress tracking. Build it in Salesforce. Add it to a dashboard. Share it with the team. Observe what happens when people realize the data updates automatically and they can filter it themselves.
That one success builds momentum. Questions start coming: 'Can we do this for program metrics?' 'Could we build one for major gifts?' 'What about event attendance?'
The export-to-Excel habit fades—not through force, but because teams discover that living inside the data is simply superior to extracting it. Give it time. Be patient during the transition. Remember: this isn't just learning new software. This is changing an organization's relationship with its data. That transformation is worth the learning curve.
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Ohana Focus specializes in helping nonprofits design dashboards that drive decisions, build reports that answer real questions, and train teams to become confident with data.
Our reporting experts understand both the technical side of Salesforce and the practical realities of nonprofit fundraising. We help you build reporting systems that actually get used—not ones that gather dust. We bring:
• Dashboard design expertise
• Custom report development
• Team training on reporting best practices
• Ongoing support for complex reporting needs
• Strategic guidance on data visualization
About Ohana Focus
Ohana Focus is a certified Salesforce consulting partner dedicated to helping nonprofits harness the power of their data. We believe great reporting isn't about fancy dashboards—it's about getting the right insights to the right people at the right time.
Our reporting practice has helped hundreds of nonprofits transform how they use data, from designing executive dashboards that drive strategy to training frontline staff to find their own answers. We make complex data simple, accessible, and actionable.
Topics: Salesforce Reporting, Dashboards, Data Visualization, Nonprofit Analytics, Salesforce NPC, Fundraising Data, CRM Reporting
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