Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) is the most widely used CRM in the nonprofit sector. Some organisations use it for grants management — either because they already use Salesforce for other functions, or because Salesforce Grants Management is marketed as a solution. This comparison is honest about when Salesforce makes sense and when it doesn't.
Salesforce NPSP is a nonprofit-focused layer built on Salesforce's core CRM platform. It extends Salesforce's contact management, donation tracking, and programme management capabilities for nonprofit contexts. Salesforce has also developed a dedicated Grants Management product that builds on NPSP specifically for grantmakers.
Salesforce is fundamentally a CRM — a relationship management system. Its grants management capability is built on top of that CRM foundation, which gives it strengths (contact management, relationship tracking) and weaknesses (forms, assessment workflows, applicant portals) relative to purpose-built grants management systems.
Tahua is purpose-built as a grants management platform — designed from scratch for the specific workflow of a grant cycle: application intake, eligibility screening, assessment, decision, agreement, payment, reporting. Every feature is designed for grantmaking, not adapted from CRM foundations.
Salesforce NPSP: Applicant-facing grant portals built on Salesforce typically require Experience Cloud (additional licence cost) and significant development work. Standard Salesforce forms are designed for data entry by internal users, not for the experience of external grant applicants. Building a polished applicant portal on Salesforce is expensive.
Tahua: Applicant portal and form builder are core product features — not add-ons requiring additional licences or development investment. Forms are designed for grant applicants: mobile-accessible, save-and-return, with in-form guidance and automatic receipt confirmation.
Best for: For funders whose applicants are external community organisations, Tahua's applicant experience is significantly better out-of-the-box.
Salesforce NPSP: Assessment workflows in Salesforce require custom configuration — building assessment scoring, assessor assignment, COI management, and panel workflows in Salesforce's flow and record management tools. This is achievable but time-consuming and expensive, and requires ongoing Salesforce administration.
Tahua: Assessment workflows — scoring templates, assessor assignment, COI declaration, panel management — are built-in features configurable through the Tahua interface without development work.
Best for: For organisations without Salesforce developers or consultants, Tahua's built-in assessment workflow is much faster to implement.
Salesforce NPSP: Salesforce pricing is complex. Nonprofit licences are discounted through the Power of Us programme (10 free licences), but additional licences, Experience Cloud for the applicant portal, Grants Management product licences, and implementation/configuration costs make total cost of ownership significantly higher than sticker price. Implementation by a Salesforce partner typically runs $50,000-$200,000+.
Tahua: Transparent subscription pricing covering the full grants management feature set, with implementation costs that are a fraction of Salesforce implementations. No per-licence complexity for programme staff users.
Best for: For most NZ and AU grantmakers, Tahua's total cost of ownership is significantly lower than Salesforce for equivalent grants management capability.
Salesforce NPSP: Salesforce has strong data management and can maintain detailed records. Government-grade audit trail requirements — tamper-proof action logs, timestamped attribution of every change, export formats for OIA responses — require custom development to implement properly.
Tahua: Government-grade audit trail is built in — every action is logged, timestamped, and attributed to a named user, with export capability designed for OIA responses and regulatory inspection.
Best for: Government agencies and regulated funders with audit trail requirements should not rely on Salesforce defaults — the configuration work to meet government-grade standards adds significant cost.
Salesforce NPSP: This is Salesforce's core strength. Managing complex relationships between people, organisations, donors, and programme participants — with rich contact history, relationship tracking, and communication management — is what Salesforce was built for.
Tahua: Applicant and grantee records support the information needed for grants management, without the full CRM relationship management depth of Salesforce.
Best for: Organisations that need both rich contact/relationship management AND grants management may find value in Salesforce's unified platform, despite its grants management complexity. Funders focused primarily on grants management will find Tahua more efficient.
The best way to evaluate any platform is to see it working.