The day the Compass disappears, NPSP becomes the solution.
It usually starts quietly. Not with flashing alerts or a dramatic announcement; just a line in a release note, a forwarded email, or a Slack message that says, “Did you see this?”
Compass 1.0 is getting phased out.
For nonprofit teams using Salesforce, the Compass 1.0 sunset feels bigger than a routine product update. Compass wasn’t something you logged into every day, but it played an outsized role in how Salesforce nonprofits understood their orgs. It helped teams pause, zoom out, and ask a deceptively simple question: Are we building this the right way?
Now that Compass is going away, many Salesforce nonprofits are left wondering what will replace that sense of direction and how to move forward without losing confidence in their platform.
Quick spoiler: NPSP should be on your horizon.
Why Compass 1.0 Became a Strategic Tool for Salesforce Nonprofits
Compass 1.0 was never meant to be a strategy engine. Salesforce positioned it as a self-guided assessment—directional, educational, and intentionally high-level by design. No prescriptions. No roadmaps. No “do this next.”
And yet, for a lot of nonprofits, Compass quietly became strategic anyway.
Not because it told teams what to do, but because it validated instincts admins had been carrying around without a great way to articulate them. The sense that reporting shouldn’t be this hard. Those small changes felt riskier than they used to. That nothing was technically broken, but something wasn’t quite right either.
For leadership, Compass offered something just as valuable: a way to talk about Salesforce health without having to become technical. It created a shared language—a neutral reference point—where everyone could look at the same thing and say, “Okay, let’s talk about this.”
Compass didn’t give answers. It gave orientation.
And in a world where nonprofits rarely get structured, nonprofit-specific guidance around Salesforce, that orientation mattered. It’s why Compass ended up playing a much bigger role than it was ever designed to play.
That worked—until Salesforce itself evolved faster than Compass could keep up.
Why Sunsetting Compass 1.0 (And Switching to Non-Profit Success Pack) Was Inevitable
The Compass that was built for Salesforce wasn't built for the Salesforce nonprofits are using today.
Automation is stronger. Data models are more interconnected. AI features assume clean architecture and intentional configuration. And Salesforce doesn’t politely wait for you to catch up; it releases new functionality three times a year, every year.
In that kind of ecosystem, a static maturity score has a short shelf life.
Compass captured a moment in time, while Salesforce keeps moving. Configuration decisions stack, releases introduce new considerations, and yesterday’s “good enough” becomes tomorrow’s technical debt. What looked “healthy” a year ago might now be fragile or even obsolete. What once felt intentional might now be accidental. And a single score can’t tell you why.
The Compass 1.0 phase-out isn’t a failure; it’s a reality check. It’s Salesforce acknowledging that one-size-fits-all, snapshot-based assessments can’t keep up with how nonprofits actually use the platform today. Direction doesn’t come from a score anymore. It comes from context—an ongoing, lived-in understanding of how the org is evolving and whether it’s still aligned with the mission.
And once you accept that, the question shifts from “What replaces Compass?” to something far more interesting.
If direction no longer comes from a score, the next logical question becomes: “What do Salesforce nonprofits use as their reference point?”—and for most, the answer has been there all along.
The Big Question for Salesforce Nonprofits after Compass
After the initial surprise wears off, most nonprofits ask what sounds like a technical question:
What replaces Compass 1.0?
But underneath that question is a more human concern: How do we know what’s working, what’s risky, and what to prioritize next, all without relying on a single score?
The answer isn’t another Compass. It starts a shift in how Salesforce health is understood and what it’s measured against.
Nonprofits navigating this transition successfully tend to move away from maturity scores and toward clarity grounded in a nonprofit framework. Instead of asking whether an org is “mature,” teams begin asking more practical questions: How closely does our current org align with NPSP? Where did complexity creep over time? Which weird deviations still support our mission, and which ones quietly create friction?
A proper Salesforce health check doesn’t rank your org. It tells you a story; one that connects architecture, data model, automation, security, and user experience into a single narrative, with NPSP as the reference point.
What a Salesforce Health Check Reveals Post-Compass
Health checks often explain why reporting feels harder every year, why small changes feel risky, and why users rely on workarounds they don’t talk about.
Across nonprofits, the same patterns emerge: over-customization on top of NPSP, automation without guardrails, and data models that no longer reflect how the organization actually operates.
This insight doesn’t come from a dashboard alone. It comes from experience—seeing how Salesforce orgs evolve and understanding how NPSP functions as a stable foundation beneath that evolution.
What replaces Compass isn’t a new scoring tool. It’s a clearer, more intentional use of what nonprofits already have: NPSP as the baseline, health checks as the lens, and prioritization driven by mission, not metrics alone.
How Salesforce Roadmaps Replace Maturity Scores
Compass categorized maturity, and nonprofits often operate on tradeoffs.
What most effectively replaces Compass is a realistic Salesforce roadmap, one grounded in staffing, funding cycles, and organizational priorities, and anchored to a clear nonprofit framework like the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack.
When used intentionally, NPSP gives roadmaps something Compass never could: context. It helps teams understand which decisions align with proven nonprofit patterns and which introduce unnecessary complexity.
Roadmaps create momentum without pretending everything can be fixed at once. And unlike static assessments, they evolve as Salesforce evolves.
NPSP: A Quiet Upgrade for Salesforce Nonprofits
The Compass 1.0 phase-out feels uncomfortable because it removes a level of certainty. But it also removes the illusion that we can capture Salesforce health in a single moment or fix it by starting over with a brand-new org.
What replaces it—health checks, intentional frameworks, native tools interpreted with context, and living roadmaps—is more nuanced and far more durable. In many cases, it also reveals something nonprofits don’t always expect: the path forward doesn’t require rebuilding Salesforce from scratch. Instead, it requires understanding what’s actually in the org today, and how closely it aligns to the platform’s nonprofit foundation.
Post-Compass, NPSP becomes more than just a data model. Instead, it becomes the reference point; a way to evaluate whether years of configuration and customization are still serving the mission, or quietly working against it. Used intentionally, NPSP provides continuity where Compass once provided orientation. That means it helps teams identify what can be simplified, preserved, and what no longer belongs.
Realigning Your Salesforce Org Around NPSP (Without Starting Over)
After Compass 1.0, many nonprofits assume the next step is a complete org reset. In reality, the smarter, more brilliant move is realigning the Salesforce org you already have around NPSP.
Dynamic Specialties Group works with nonprofits navigating this exact transition. That includes deep experience uninstalling and remediating third-party apps, cleaning up downstream impact, and restoring clarity without forcing you to migrate years of data, re-integrate other systems, or retrain users in an entirely new Salesforce org.
On a platform that evolves as quickly as Salesforce, preserving what already works—and grounding future decisions in a proven nonprofit framework like NPSP—can significantly reduce costs, risks, and disruption. And that’s why having a thoughtful Salesforce partner for nonprofits, one focused on interpretation and intention, not replacement, matters far more than any single score ever could.
SHARE