Knowledge Base

Nonprofit Cloud uses two kinds of accounts, Person and Business accounts, because Nonprofits engage and transact with organizations and individuals.

Person accounts track an individual. They combine fields from the Account and Contact objects into one record.

Business accounts track an organization, such as a grantmaker, company, government entity, or collaborating nonprofit. The people working at those organizations are tracked using related person account records.

In Nonprofit Cloud, you store information about a nonprofit partner organization or a foundation from which you seek grants in a business account. You use person accounts to track your relationships with people—program participants, individual donors, volunteers, and other individual stakeholders.

Person accounts take fields from two Salesforce objects—Account and Contact—and combine them into one object representing a person. Person accounts use fields from the Contact object to track details about an individual, such as their first name, last name, and gender identity.

When you create a person account, you create two new records: a person account and a contact. Both exist in Salesforce, and depending on your configurations, an individual can appear in Account and Contact list views. The two records are both updated when you make any changes. A person account record is your single—and only—destination for all the information about each individual’s program enrollments, donations, and more.

You can also set up different record types for person accounts. Record types enable you to use fields and page layouts for program participants, donors, volunteers, and others. Person accounts can be connected with the organization the person works for, their household, and other person accounts—like spouses, friends, and other connections. 

Note: Your Salesforce admin enables person accounts for your Salesforce org. And, after you enable person accounts, they can’t be turned off. 

    1. Find and select Accounts from the App Launcher.

    2. Click New.

    3. Select Client - a Person Account representing a Client of this organization, and click Next.

    4. Enter details about the individual you are creating a person account for. By default, you must enter at          least a last name. The person’s name becomes the name of the account.

    5. Optionally, add other details if the fields are available, such as the individual’s phone number, email              address, physical address, salutation, gender identity, and more. 

    6. Save the new person account.