With the move to the new Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) Salesforce has made a very intentional decision that they want to divide the market for nonprofits using Salesforce into two distinct segements: large organizations and everyone else.
(Side note: when I say "nonprofits," I generally mean "nonprofits and educational institutions." But that's too long to write every time.)
Large Organizations
For large organizations, NPC and EdCloud might be a good solutions (or might be so someday). I think I've been clear in my prior blog posts like The Emperor's New Clouds, Extension Objects: There's Nothing to Like, and others, that I don't think the new clouds are All That. But let me assume that Salesforce will manage to fix (or paper over) the problems that I've pointed out. Clearly they're making investments in roadmap for the new clouds. So let me give the benefit of the doubt that eventually the new products will be desirable for organizations planning to adopt Salesforce and that orgs already on Salesforce will eventually see features of the new clouds that are compelling enough for them to want to migrate. (Reminder: If you're currently on Salesforce but want to adopt the new clouds, this is a complete re-implementation.)
But barring changes that I can't imagine (and nobody I've talked to can see), the new clouds will still only be appropriate for large nonprofits.
When I say "large nonprofits" or "large organizations" I mean universities, national or international nonprofits, foundations, large museums, and the like; organizations that can support a team of multiple Salesforce professionals, including developers, plus probably have cash for a lot of partner/consultant support as well. I really mean large organizations. The data model, back end setup, and feature set of Nonprofit Cloud and Education Cloud are just too complicated for even medium-sized organization to work with. So I say that these clouds might be useful for larger organizations because they can use their greater resources to take advantage of the technology in ways that others can't and to build a lot of customizations, workarounds, tools, training, and documentation that make the extra complexity of the products bearable.
And let me be transparent: I don't work with large organizations and I don't have a lot of experience with what kind of setups they have. So I am giving this analysis from an outsider perspective. Given that the large organizations have so many more resources than smaller ones, I think it's probably appropriate (to some extent) that they spend more money and effort on their Salesforce org. They have needs around scale and complexity that would always result in more expensive implementations. Plus, from my perspective, large organizations have (or should have) the resources and expertise (or can hire/contract it) to caveat emptor. (That means "Buyer beware.")
Everyone Else
Then there is everyone else that might want to use Salesforce in a nonprofit context. This means small and medium nonprofits. This probably means you, dear reader, or the majority of your clients.
I can't say this more strongly: The Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) is the right solution for you.
(I suppose that comes with a small asterisk. If you're too small, Salesforce itself might not be right yet. Perhaps you should just stay on spreadsheets for a little longer. And there are plenty of organizations that need neither NPSP nor NPC because they should use plain Sales Cloud or Service Cloud or a completely custom other configuration. )
"We're going to become the Red Cross of [insert niche here]!"
I know that medium sized nonprofits often think they're going to become large ones someday. Certainly that's the hope of many a founder and CEO/ED of these orgs. It feels like my duty to point out the improbability of this.
And anyway, until you are large—really large!—NPC is not a good fit for you. Not today and not, in my estimation, for at least five years (and probably longer). So, yes, plan your system with the future in mind, design for scale, and leave room for growth. But build a system that works for your org as it is today. Don't saddle yourself with overbuilt and extra expensive. If you have a system that doesn't work for your org today you're going to struggle with adoption in the first place. The Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) works great. It's easy for users to understand, has many features you and your users will appreciate, and can handle quite a lot of volume.
If you really truly do get large someday, such that either you're hitting the limits of what NPSP can handle at very large scale or else just that you have grown to the point that you think you meet the criteria I laid out, above, for using NPC, then and only then would it make sense to go with NPC. Choosing NPC while you are small or medium sized because you hear all the hype from Salesforce about the "innovation" and "exciting roadmap" is not going to serve you well.
As I did last week, I'm going to reach for a vehicular analogy: Buying NPC today is like buying a school bus when you have your first child because you're planning to have lots of kids. You'll spend years driving an enormous vehicle that's practically empty.
And by the time you've gotten to that giant brood, we'll probably all be wearing personal jetpacks anyway.
(One can hope!)