Salesforce vs Plinth for Grant Management: An Honest Comparison

Salesforce is the most recognised CRM platform in the world. Plinth is a purpose-built grant management system designed for grantmakers, with genuine AI capabilities and rapid deployment. They are frequently compared by foundations and grantmakers evaluating their options, but they solve the problem of grant management in fundamentally different ways. This guide provides a thorough, evidence-based comparison to help you make the right decision for your organisation.

TL;DR: Salesforce is a powerful, general-purpose CRM that can be configured for grantmaking, but it was not designed for it. Salesforce's new "Nonprofit Cloud for Grantmaking" is expensive, complex to implement, and its AI capabilities are limited to generic summarisation. Plinth is purpose-built for grantmaking with genuine AI for due diligence, risk assessment, and application scoring — and it deploys in weeks at a fraction of the total cost.

What you'll learn: How Plinth and Salesforce compare across pricing, grant-specific features, AI capabilities, implementation timelines, and suitability for different types of funder.

Who this is for: UK foundations, community foundations, corporate funders, and grant programme managers comparing grant management platforms.

The Core Difference

The most important distinction is not a feature list. It is a question of architecture.

Salesforce is a CRM platform. It was built to manage sales pipelines and customer relationships. Its nonprofit products extend this core architecture to serve charitable organisations, but the underlying data model, interface, and logic remain those of a sales tool. For grantmaking specifically, Salesforce launched "Nonprofit Cloud for Grantmaking" in Summer 2024, which requires the OmniStudio add-on for advanced features and sits on top of an already complex platform.

Plinth is a grant management system built from the ground up for grantmakers. Every feature — from application forms to due diligence checks to payment scheduling to impact reporting — was designed around the grantmaking workflow. There is no underlying CRM to configure around.

This distinction matters because building grant management on top of a CRM leads to expensive workarounds. As one Salesforce user noted in a G2 review: "The way Salesforce was built doesn't work well for many nonprofit needs" — its sales mindset persists regardless of how much customisation you apply.

The FoundationConnect Situation

If you are currently using Salesforce for grant management, there is an urgent context to be aware of. FoundationConnect — the legacy grants product that many foundations adopted — was retired on 31 January 2026. All FoundationConnect users have been forced to migrate to the new Nonprofit Cloud for Grantmaking.

This forced migration is not a simple upgrade. The new Nonprofit Cloud has a fundamentally different data model, described by Salesforce's own partners as "more complicated" and "more technical" than the old NPSP. For foundations already invested in FoundationConnect, this represents a second major implementation project — with all the cost and disruption that entails.

If you are facing this migration, it is worth evaluating whether rebuilding on Salesforce is the best use of your budget, or whether a purpose-built alternative would deliver more value for less effort.

Feature-by-Feature Comparison

Pricing: The Full Picture

Cost is frequently the deciding factor, and the gap between headline pricing and actual expenditure with Salesforce is significant.

Plinth

• Subscription: Clear, predictable pricing scaled to your grantmaking volume
• Implementation: Included in onboarding; weeks, not months
• Ongoing administration: Designed for non-technical grant officers; no dedicated admin required
• Training: Intuitive interface; most teams are productive within days
• AI features: Included in subscription; no separate AI add-on
• Total first-year cost (typical 5-user foundation): A fraction of the Salesforce equivalent

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud for Grantmaking

• Grantmaking licences: $175/user/month (Enterprise Edition) or $225/user/month (Unlimited Edition), billed annually
• Important note on "free" licences: The Power of Us programme provides 10 free licences for standard Nonprofit Cloud (valued at $60/user/month). These are NOT the Grantmaking tier. Grantmaking licences must be purchased separately at full price.
• OmniStudio: Required for advanced grantmaking features; additional cost
• Implementation partner: $10,000-$40,000+ for a grantmaking-specific deployment
• Ongoing administration: Most foundations need a dedicated Salesforce administrator ($75,000-$120,000/year salary) or outsourced admin ($6,000-$60,000/year)
• Einstein AI: Included in some tiers, but grantmaking-specific AI capabilities are limited to summarisation
• Total first-year cost (typical 5-user foundation): $20,000-$60,000+ when accounting for licences, implementation, and administration

A common misconception is that Salesforce's Power of Us programme makes the platform free for nonprofits. In reality, the free licences cover standard CRM functionality. The grantmaking-specific tier costs $175-$225/user/month, and implementation and administration costs typically represent 60-75% of total first-year expenditure.

Cost Comparison Table

AI Capabilities: A Critical Difference

Both Salesforce and Plinth market AI features for grantmaking. The substance behind those claims differs enormously.

Salesforce Einstein for Grantmaking

Salesforce Einstein is a powerful AI platform across the wider Salesforce ecosystem. However, its application to grantmaking specifically is limited. Einstein for Nonprofit Cloud for Grantmaking currently offers:

• Board review summaries — AI-generated summaries of application data for board meetings
• Notes summarisation — condensing long text fields into shorter summaries
• Generic data summarisation — pulling together CRM data into readable overviews

What Einstein does NOT do for grantmaking:

• It does not score grant applications against your funding criteria
• It does not detect fraud or flag suspicious applications
• It does not predict grant outcomes based on historical data
• It does not automate due diligence against charity registers
• It does not assess organisational risk
• It does not generate impact analysis from monitoring reports

In practice, Salesforce's grantmaking AI is generic summarisation layered on top of CRM data. It is the same summarisation engine used across all Salesforce products, with no grantmaking-specific intelligence.

Plinth AI for Grantmaking

Plinth's AI was built specifically for grantmaking workflows. It offers:

• Automated due diligence — pulls and analyses data from the Charity Commission register and Companies House, flagging regulatory issues, overdue accounts, trustee concerns, and governance risks automatically
• Application scoring — evaluates applications against your stated funding criteria, providing scored assessments that reviewers can use as a starting point
• Risk assessment — analyses organisational and project risk factors, generating risk ratings with explanations that grant officers can review and override
• Impact analysis — processes monitoring reports and progress updates to identify outcome patterns, highlight underperformance, and generate impact summaries
• Board paper generation — creates structured recommendation packs with AI-generated analysis alongside the raw application data

The difference is not incremental. Salesforce offers summarisation — making existing text shorter. Plinth offers analysis — generating new insights from multiple data sources. For a grant officer processing dozens of applications, this is the difference between a formatting tool and a genuine analytical assistant.

Implementation and Time to Value

Plinth

• Typical implementation: 2-6 weeks from sign-up to live system
• Data migration: CSV import for existing grant data; support provided
• Configuration: Pre-built for grantmaking; configurable application forms, assessment criteria, and workflows without code
• Training: Most teams need 1-2 short sessions
• First grant round managed: Often within the first month

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud for Grantmaking

• Typical implementation: 6 months to 1 year for a full grantmaking deployment
• Data migration: Requires careful mapping to Salesforce's data model, typically with consultant support
• Configuration: Extensive customisation needed; OmniStudio configuration for advanced features; Salesforce's own documentation describes the new Nonprofit Cloud as having "more complicated data model and more technical features" than the old NPSP
• Training: Multiple training sessions required; ongoing support typically needed
• First grant round managed: Often 4-8 months after project start

Every month spent configuring a platform is a month of managing grants via spreadsheets and email. For foundations running active grant programmes, six months of implementation represents hundreds of applications processed manually.

When Salesforce Is the Better Choice

Being honest about Salesforce's genuine strengths helps funders make better decisions. Salesforce is the stronger option when:

You already run your organisation on Salesforce. If your donor management, fundraising, volunteer coordination, and programme tracking all live in Salesforce, adding grantmaking to the same platform avoids data silos and duplicate entry. The marginal cost of adding grantmaking is lower than the total cost of a new deployment.

You manage large, complex donor databases alongside grants. Community foundations that manage both donor-advised funds and grantmaking may benefit from having donor and grant data in the same system. Salesforce's data model handles complex donor relationships well.

You need enterprise-grade integration. If your grantmaking data must flow into SAP, Oracle, or other enterprise systems, Salesforce's integration ecosystem is unmatched. Thousands of pre-built connectors exist for virtually every enterprise platform.

You have dedicated Salesforce expertise. If you already employ a Salesforce administrator and your team is fluent in the platform, the learning curve and administration burden are already absorbed. Salesforce's flexibility becomes an asset when you have the capacity to manage it.

You operate at very large scale internationally. Foundations managing thousands of grants across multiple countries, currencies, and regulatory frameworks may benefit from Salesforce's enterprise infrastructure and global presence.

When Plinth Is the Better Choice

Plinth is designed specifically for the grantmaking workflow. It is the stronger option when:

You want genuine AI for grantmaking. If automated due diligence, risk assessment, application scoring, and impact analysis matter to your workflow, Plinth delivers these capabilities today. Salesforce's grantmaking AI is limited to summarisation. This is the single biggest differentiator.

Grant management is your primary need. If you need a system to manage applications, assess them, make decisions, issue payments, and track outcomes, Plinth does all of this out of the box without requiring you to build it on top of a CRM.

You need to be operational quickly. Foundations that cannot afford six months to a year of implementation benefit from Plinth's rapid deployment. If you have a grant round opening soon, Plinth can be ready.

You do not have a dedicated Salesforce administrator. Plinth is designed for grant officers, programme managers, and trustees — not for technical administrators. If your team does not include (and cannot afford) a Salesforce admin, Plinth eliminates that dependency entirely.

You want predictable costs. Plinth's pricing is transparent and all-inclusive. There are no implementation consultants, no OmniStudio add-ons, no administrator salaries, and no surprise costs in year two.

You need regulatory integration. Plinth integrates natively with regulatory bodies including the Charity Commission and Companies House. Salesforce requires configuration and third-party tools to achieve similar integration.

You are migrating from FoundationConnect. If you are facing the forced migration from FoundationConnect and evaluating your options, migrating to a purpose-built system may deliver better outcomes than rebuilding on the new Nonprofit Cloud — especially given the increased complexity of the new platform.

What Users Say

Common feedback patterns from organisations that have evaluated or used both platforms for grant management:

On Salesforce for grantmaking: "Very few preset features for nonprofits. An outside consultant is needed which is very expensive." — G2 review, nonprofit user

On Salesforce complexity: "The new Nonprofit Cloud is more complicated than NPSP. The data model is more technical, and you need more specialist knowledge to configure it." — Salesforce implementation partner

On AI capabilities: Salesforce Einstein offers summarisation features — condensing application text and generating board-ready summaries. However, it does not score applications, automate due diligence checks, assess organisational risk, or predict grant outcomes. Plinth's AI covers the full analytical workflow: due diligence automation, risk scoring, application assessment, and impact analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Salesforce do everything Plinth does for grant management?

In theory, Salesforce can be configured to do almost anything. In practice, building automated due diligence against Charity Commission and Companies House, AI-powered application scoring, risk assessment, impact analysis, and purpose-built reviewer workflows in Salesforce would require substantial custom development — likely costing more than several years of Plinth subscription. You would also need to maintain that custom code indefinitely, and it would not benefit from ongoing product development the way a purpose-built platform does.

Are the Power of Us free licences sufficient for grantmaking?

No. The 10 free licences provided through the Power of Us programme cover standard Nonprofit Cloud at the $60/user/month tier. The Grantmaking tier is a separate product priced at $175/user/month (Enterprise) or $225/user/month (Unlimited). Grantmaking licences must be purchased at full price.

What about Salesforce's AI roadmap?

Salesforce is investing heavily in AI across its platform, and Einstein capabilities will continue to expand. However, grantmaking-specific AI requires domain expertise — understanding charity registers, regulatory frameworks, funding criteria, and impact measurement. General-purpose AI improvements (better summarisation, faster processing) will benefit Salesforce users, but the gap between generic summarisation and purpose-built grantmaking intelligence is architectural, not incremental.

Can we integrate Plinth with Salesforce?

Yes. Many foundations use Plinth for grant management and Salesforce for donor and fundraising management. Data can be shared via CSV exports or API integration. The recommended approach is to keep the system of record for grants in Plinth and sync key summary data to Salesforce for reporting purposes.

Is vendor lock-in a risk with either platform?

Both platforms allow data export. Plinth provides full data exports to ensure portability. Salesforce data can be exported, though complex custom configurations and automations cannot be transferred to other platforms. In practice, the greater lock-in risk is with Salesforce, where significant investment in custom configuration creates switching costs that increase over time.

What if we are a very small foundation?

Small foundations — those with one or two grant officers processing fewer than 100 applications per year — are particularly poorly served by Salesforce's grantmaking offering. The minimum viable deployment cost is disproportionate to the scale of operations. Plinth offers accessible pricing that scales to smaller organisations without requiring the same baseline investment.

How does reporting compare?

Salesforce offers highly customisable reporting across all data in the platform, which is powerful if you have the expertise to build reports. Plinth offers pre-built grantmaking dashboards and reports — pipeline status, budget tracking, payment forecasts, outcome summaries, and portfolio analysis — that work immediately without configuration. For most foundations, Plinth's out-of-the-box reporting covers their needs; those requiring cross-system enterprise reporting may benefit from Salesforce's flexibility.

What about long-term product development?

Plinth is a focused grantmaking platform. Product development is entirely directed at improving grant management, due diligence, impact measurement, and funder workflows. Salesforce is a vast platform serving millions of users across every industry. Grantmaking-specific improvements compete for roadmap priority with sales, marketing, service, and hundreds of other use cases. Purpose-built platforms tend to evolve faster for their specific domain.

Recommended Next Pages

• AI Grant Management Features — Explore Plinth's AI-powered due diligence, risk assessment, and application scoring in detail.

• Best CRM Software for Charities and Nonprofits in 2026 — Compare Plinth with Beacon, Donorfy, ThankQ, and other charity platforms.

• Partner CRM vs Salesforce for Charities — How the platforms compare for managing partner organisations and referral networks.

• The Complete Guide to Grant Management Software — Understand the grant management software category and what to look for.

Last updated: February 2026

For more information about Plinth's grant management platform or to see it compared with your current system, contact our team or schedule a demo.