Nonprofit-Cloud-Consultant Salesforce Certified Nonprofit Cloud Consultant (NPC) NP-Con-102 Free Practice Exam Questions (2026 Updated)

When a nonprofit shifts its mission from direct service delivery (program management) to funding other entities, it moves into the role of a "Grantmaker." In the Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud ecosystem, this specific business process is supported by the Grantmaking module.

The Grantmaking license provides access to a specialized data model and set of features designed for the full grant lifecycle:

Funding Opportunities: Grantmakers use this object to define the available grants, including eligibility criteria, total funding amounts, and application deadlines.

Individual Applications: This is the core object for tracking incoming requests for funding. It allows the organization to manage the review process, due diligence, and scoring of applications from other nonprofits or community groups.

Funding Awards and Disbursements: Once an application is approved, the system tracks the Funding Award and schedules the actual payment of "financial capital" through Disbursements.

Grantee Portal: Grantmaking often utilizes an Experience Cloud site where applicants can submit their proposals, view their status, and submit required progress reports.

While Program Management (Option B) is used for direct services (like running a food bank), and Outcome Management (Option A) is used to measure the impact of those services, Grantmaking is the specific functional area required for "delivering financial capital" and managing funding applications. For a consultant, identifying this shift in business model is key to ensuring the organization has the correct objects—such as Budget, Funding Opportunity, and Application—available in their org.

In Nonprofit Cloud, access to core functionality is governed by specific industry-aligned permission sets. If Case Managers are unable to see Program and Benefit records, it is typically a matter of missing object-level and feature-level permissions.

The Advanced Program Management permission set is a critical requirement for users who need to interact with the full program lifecycle.

Permissions included in Advanced Program Management:

Object Access: It grants Read, Create, Edit, and Delete access (depending on the specific assignment) to the Program, Benefit, Benefit Type, and Benefit Schedule objects.

Functional Access: It allows users to manage Program Enrollments and track Benefit Disbursements.

Visibility: Without this permission set (or a Permission Set Group containing it), the objects remain hidden from the user's navigation bar and global search, even if the records are marked as "Active."

Step-by-Step Resolution:

The Admin should navigate to Setup > Users.

Select the Case Manager users.

Click Permission Set Assignments > Edit Assignments.

Add Advanced Program Management to the assigned list.

Note: If the organization wants to limit Case Managers to "Read-Only," they would use this permission set in conjunction with a Muting Permission Set within a Permission Set Group.

Why other options are incorrect:

Outcome Management (Option A): This grants access to impact tracking (Outcomes, Indicator Definitions) but does not provide the primary access to the Program and Benefit service delivery objects.

Status Marking (Option C): While a record should be active for operational use, "Active" status on a record does not override Salesforce security. If the user doesn't have object-level permissions via a permission set, they cannot see the record regardless of its status.

In NPSP, we must distinguish between "Hard Credit" (legal ownership) and "Soft Credit" (influence/relationship). When a family foundation (a Business Account) gives a donation, the Foundation gets the Hard Credit. However, the organization wants the Household Account (the family themselves) to receive credit for that gift in their "Total Giving" history.

The Solution: Account Soft Credits:

Hard Credit: The Opportunity is created with the Family Foundation Account in the Account Name field. This is the legal donor.

Soft Credit: To reflect this gift on the Family's Household, the consultant uses the Account Soft Credit feature.

Relationship Tracking: A record is created in the Account Soft Credit related list on the Opportunity. The "Account" is the Family's Household Account, and the "Role" is set to something like "Family Foundation."

Rollups: NPSP's rollup engine will then pick up this soft credit. The family's Household record will now show this gift in fields like "Total Account Soft Credits" or "Total Gifts" (if the organization includes soft credits in their summary).

Why other options are incorrect:

GAU Allocation (Option A): This tracks the fund or purpose of the money (e.g., "Building Fund"), not the donor or household credit.

Lookup Fields (Options B & D): Adding custom lookup fields does not trigger NPSP's complex rollup logic. Only the standard Account Soft Credit object is recognized by the NPSP engine for aggregating influence-based giving to an account.

When an organization uses a Private sharing model (Organ11ization-Wide Defaults), users can only see records they own or records owned by their subordinates in the role hierarchy. To open up visibility to a "subset" of records for a "selected" group of staff, the consultant must use a Sharing Rule.

Implementing the Solution:

Criteria-Based Logic: Since only a subset of Service Deliveries (e.g., those related to "Mental Health" or a specific "Program") needs to be shared, the consultant should use a Criteria-Based Sharing Rule.

Definition: The rule might state: "Share Service Delivery records where Program Name EQUALS 'Youth Outreach' with the 'Program Staff' Public Group."

Access Level: The consultant defines the level of access (Read Only or Read/Write).

Public Groups: The "selected staff" should be added to a Public Group. The sharing rule then targets this group.

Why other options are incorrect:

Public Read/Write (Option B): This would expose all records to all users, violating the nonprofit's strict security requirements.

Permission Sets / Profiles (Options C & D): These grant the functional ability to use the object (CRUD), but in a Private sharing model, they do not grant access to specific records owned by others. Sharing rules are the primary tool for record-level visibility in Salesforce.

In Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, Action Plan Templates are used to standardize repeatable processes, such as the steps required to onboard a new client or complete a grant application. To ensure data integrity and version control, Salesforce treats published Action Plan Templates as "locked" records.

When an organization needs to modify an "Active" or "Published" template—such as adding new tasks—the system does not allow direct editing of the existing record to prevent breaking current active Action Plans that were generated from that specific version. The standard procedure for a consultant is as follows:

Clone the Template: The user must select the existing Action Plan Template and use the Clone action. This creates a new "Draft" version of the template with all the existing tasks copied over.

Modify the Draft: In the new draft record, the consultant can add the additional tasks, define their priority, set the number of days for completion, and assign roles or specific users to those tasks.

Publish: Once the modifications are complete, the new template must be Published. Publishing makes the template available for users to generate new Action Plans.

Retire the Old Template: Although not strictly required to make the new tasks work, it is best practice for a consultant to deactivate or rename the old version to ensure staff only use the most up-to-date process moving forward.

Option B is incorrect because Salesforce does not typically allow you to "deactivate and edit" the task structure of a template that has already been published. Option A describes a specific setting that allows end-users to add extra tasks to an individual instance of a plan, but it does not address the requirement of updating the master template itself.

Deploying during a Salesforce Seasonal Release (Spring, Summer, or Winter) 1introduces technical risk. If a2 sandbox is on a different version than production, a consultant might build a feature that works in the sandbox but fails in production due to a change in the underlying platform logic.

Two Critical Steps for Alignment:

Review Sandbox Preview Instructions (A): Every release has a "Preview Window." Salesforce provides specific instructions on how to ensure at least one of your sandboxes is upgraded to the next release before production. This allows the consultant to perform Regression Testing—checking that the custom nonprofit features still work perfectly on the new version of Salesforce.

Verify Release Matching (D): Before a final deployment, it is a best practice to ensure the Sandbox and Production are on the same release version. If production is still on "Winter '25" but the sandbox has been upgraded to "Spring '26," you are testing in an environment that doesn't match the live system. Alignment ensures "What You See Is What You Get."

Why other options are incorrect:

Support Case (Option B): Salesforce generally does not allow you to "change the version" of a release for a specific org via a support case; you must follow the standard release schedule and sandbox refresh rules.

Change Set Timing (Option C): You should avoid deploying a Change Set during the upgrade window itself, as the production instance may be intermittently unavailable or undergoing its own internal schema updates, leading to deployment failures.

For Major Gift Officers (MGOs), efficiency is driven by the ability to prioritize and segment their donor portfolio. In the modern Nonprofit Cloud, the feature designed specifically for this high-volume, high-priority organization is Actionable Segmentation and the resulting Actionable Lists.

An Actionable List is more than just a standard list view or report; it is a dynamic work queue that allows fundraisers to group prospects based on specific data points, such as Prospect Status, Wealth Tier, or Last Gift Date.

How a Consultant Implements Actionable Lists:

Define the Dataset: The consultant first identifies the criteria using Actionable Segmentation. For major gift prospects, this might involve filtering Person Accounts who have a "Qualified" prospect status and a high net worth indicator on their Contact Profile.

Create the List: Once the segment is defined, it is published as an Actionable List.

Assign and Engage: MGOs can then access this list from their Donor Engagement or Philanthropy & Partnerships app. The list provides an optimized view where the officer can see key details and immediately trigger actions, such as making a phone call, sending an email, or assigning an Action Plan.

Real-Time Status Tracking: As the officer engages with a prospect, they can update the status directly within the list view. This allows the organization to track the "Movement" of a prospect through the solicitation pipeline in real time.

While Contact Profiles (Option C) provide the underlying data (wealth and personal attributes), and Action Plans (Option B) provide the tasks once the prospect is engaged, the Actionable List is the foundational "organizing" feature that allows the officer to manage their entire portfolio effectively. It ensures that the "most promising relationships" are always at the top of the officer's daily priority list.

In the Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) architecture, the Outcome Management feature is designed to provide a standardized way for organizations to define, measure, and track their impact. To successfully implement this, a consultant must understand the hierarchical relationship between several key objects.

The process begins with the Indicator Definition, which acts as a "template" or "master metric." This object stores the logic of what is being measured (e.g., "Number of students who improved their reading level") without being tied to a specific program. To apply this metric to a specific context, Salesforce uses the Indicator Assignment object. This object serves as the essential link (a junction) between the Indicator Definition and the Program, Outcome, or Goal. By using Indicator Assignment, a consultant allows the organization to reuse the same definition across multiple different programs while keeping the tracking and reporting for each program distinct.

Step-by-Step Configuration Flow:

Create Indicator Definition: Define the global metric, specifying the data type and how the progress will be calculated.

Create the Indicator Assignment: This is the core step. Here, the consultant links the specific Program record to the Indicator Definition. This creates the specific context for measurement.

Establish Indicator Performance Periods: Once the assignment is made, the consultant must define the timeframes (e.g., "Q1 2025" or "Annual 2025") during which the program will be evaluated.

Record Indicator Results: Finally, as the program progresses, actual data points are entered into the Indicator Result object, which rolls up to the Performance Period and is contextualized by the Assignment.

Without the Indicator Assignment, the system would have no way of knowing which programs are responsible for which metrics. This structure ensures that a nonprofit can scale its impact measurement across various departments while maintaining a single, clean library of Indicator Definitions.

For a nonprofit engaged in Grant Seeking, the Deliverables object in NPSP is the specific tool designed to manage the high-stakes requirements of institutional funding.34

Why Deliverables (D) are the best fit:56

Grant-Specific 7Metadata: Unlike standard Tasks, Deliverables include fields specific to the gr8ant process, such as "Grantee Requirements," "Due Date," and "Requirement Description."

Next Deadline Visibility: NPSP has built-in automation that identifies the "earliest" incomplete Deliverable and surfaces its date on the parent Opportunity record in the "Next Deliverable Date" field. This allows the fundraising team to see their upcoming deadlines at a glance without digging into related lists.

Audit and Compliance: Deliverables allow the organization to track not just that a "Task" was finished, but that a specific legal or financial report was submitted. You can track "Submitted" and "Confirmed" dates, which are vital for maintaining good standing with a funder.

While Engagement Plans (Option A) and Tasks (Option B) can be used for general "Moves Management," they lack the specialized fields and the automated "Next Deadline" rollup logic that makes Deliverables the gold standard for grant management in NPSP.

One of the most common configuration hurdles in Nonprofit Cloud is understanding the "Two-Key" access model. Unlike standard Sales or Service Cloud, where a Profile can grant access to almost any object, Industry Clouds (like NPC) require a Permission Set License (PSL) to be assigned before the objects even become "visible" or "available" in the system's schema for that user.

The "Two-Key" Access Model:

The First Key (Permission Set License): The PSL "unlocks" the feature set at the organization level for a specific user. For Fundraising, the user must be assigned the Nonprofit Cloud Fundraising PSL. Without this, the Fundraising objects (like Gift Transaction) literally do not exist from that user's perspective, even if they are a System Administrator.

The Second Key (Permission Set): Once the license is assigned, the user then needs a Permission Set (e.g., "Fundraising Access") to grant the actual CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) permissions.

Step-by-Step Resolution for a Consultant:

Navigate to Setup > Users.

Open the user record for the System Administrator.

Scroll to the Permission Set License Assignments related list and click Edit Assignments.

Locate and check the box for Nonprofit Cloud Fundraising (and any other relevant industry licenses like Nonprofit Cloud Grantmaking).

Once the PSL is saved, the Admin will then be able to assign themselves the necessary Permission Sets to see and manage the Fundraising objects.

Option A is incorrect because Sharing Rules control which records you see, not whether the object itself is visible. Option B is incorrect because tabs are easily accessible via the App Launcher; if the objects are missing from the "All Objects" list, it is a licensing and permissioning issue, not a tab configuration issue.