If you’ve ever felt frustrated with your CRM, you’re not alone.
Most fundraising teams know they should be using Salesforce more effectively. But between bad data, overcomplicated setups, and inconsistent logging, it often feels like more of a burden than a benefit.
Here’s the truth: your CRM is the lifeline of your business.
It’s where every relationship, every call, and every dollar raised should start and end. When configured and used the right way, Salesforce becomes more than just a system of record. It becomes a system of revenue, empowering you to fundraise with clarity, accountability, and efficiency.
In this article, we’ll review how top-performing fundraising teams are transforming their Salesforce environments into their most powerful asset. By the end of this, you’ll have a better understanding of the top 10 Salesforce best practices every fundraiser should know.
1. Configure Salesforce for Your Business
Most frustrations with Salesforce stem from poor configuration. Customize fields to match your workflow (think AUM, account type, geography, or a custom “Golden Field”) to track sales stages.
The goal: remove clutter and make Salesforce work for you, not against you.
2. Keep Your Data Clean and Current
Bad data kills productivity. Outdated contact info, old accounts, and incomplete notes make Salesforce feel like chaos.
Regular data maintenance and integrations like the Dakota Marketplace App ensure your CRM stays accurate, giving you confidence in every outreach.
3. Log Every Call, Email, and Meeting
Consistency builds accountability. Every touchpoint, from an intro call to a follow-up, should live in Salesforce. This creates a complete relationship history, ensures continuity, and helps your team identify engagement patterns and next steps.
4. Use Activity Reports to Measure Engagement
Activity reports aren’t just for managers, they’re your personal performance dashboard. Reviewing past meetings, calls, and notes helps you spot inactive accounts, track coverage, and ensure consistent outreach across your territories.
5. Leverage Data for Smarter Decision Making
Salesforce is your command center for trend analysis and targeted prospecting. Use data to identify which client types (RIAs, family offices, institutions) are most engaged, and double down where you’re seeing traction. Data-driven selling beats gut instinct every time.
6. Master the “Golden Field”
Dakota’s Golden Field is a single dropdown that shows where every account stands: Prospecting, Due Diligence, Red Zone, or Closed/Won. With one click, you can see your entire pipeline, identify bottlenecks, and focus on what’s closest to the finish line.
7. Build and Review Your Pipeline Weekly
Your pipeline is your future revenue. Use Salesforce opportunity reports to visualize deal flow, flag stalled accounts, and ensure the next steps are always clear.
Schedule weekly review meetings to stay proactive and avoid surprises.
8. Incentivize Salesforce Adoption
CRM adoption struggles are common, but fixable.
Tie Salesforce usage to compensation so if it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t count. This reinforces accountability and helps leadership maintain an accurate picture of activity and performance.
9. Celebrate Success and Share Wins
Highlight real examples of how Salesforce helped close a deal or uncover a new opportunity. When your team sees Salesforce as a revenue tool rather than a data chore, adoption skyrockets.
10. Integrate Dakota Marketplace for Instant Industry Data
The Dakota Marketplace for Salesforce App transforms your CRM into a powerful fundraising hub. It syncs pre-configured, industry-specific fields and integrates allocator and contact data directly into your Salesforce, saving hours of manual research and copy-pasting
Turning Your Salesforce into a Revenue Engine
At the end of the day, Salesforce is only as powerful as the data and discipline behind it. A well-configured, consistently used CRM gives you complete visibility into your pipeline, deepens relationships, and helps you close more capital with less chaos.
Start small: clean your data, define your Golden Field stages, and log every interaction. When you treat your CRM like the lifeline of your business, it becomes exactly that — your single source of truth, your productivity engine, and your biggest advantage in the fundraising world.
For more information on the Dakota Marketplace for Salesforce App, book a demo here!
