NPPatch Community Guidelines
NPPatch is a community-maintained project, and this forum is one of the places where that community shows up. Whether you’re here to ask a question, report a bug, share what you’ve built, or help someone else figure something out, you’re part of what makes this work.
These guidelines exist to keep this a place people want to keep coming back to.
The short version
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Be kind. Assume good faith.
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Stay on topic. This forum is for NPPatch and the work around it.
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Help each other. Even small contributions count.
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If something’s wrong, flag it rather than fighting it.
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When in doubt, ask the moderators.
Be kind, even when you disagree
Disagreement is fine. Pushing back on ideas is welcome. But criticize the idea, not the person. Avoid name-calling, sarcasm aimed at other members, and the kind of pile-on that makes people stop participating.
If a thread gets heated, step away. You don’t have to have the last word. Long arguments rarely change anyone’s mind and almost always cost the community more than they’re worth.
Help each other out
A lot of the value here will come from people answering each other’s questions — admins helping admins, consultants helping the people who hired them years ago, developers explaining something to someone who’s never written Apex. None of that gets compensated. All of it matters.
If you’re answering a question, answer the question that was asked. Meet people where they are. Not everyone here is technical, and not everyone who is technical knows what you know. If you don’t want to answer, that’s fine — just leave room for someone who does.
If you’re asking a question, give people enough context to actually help you: what you’re trying to do, what you tried, what happened. Be patient. Volunteers respond when they can.
Stay on topic
This forum is for NPPatch — installing it, using it, contributing to it, talking about how it works and where it’s going. Related nonprofit Salesforce topics are welcome when they connect back to NPPatch in some real way. General Salesforce questions, vendor pitches, and unrelated discussions belong elsewhere.
Before starting a new topic, take a minute to see if your question or idea already has a thread. Categories exist to help people find each other — please post in the right one.
Contributing ideas and feedback
NPPatch is in beta and a lot is still being figured out. Feedback, bug reports, feature requests, and questions about direction are all genuinely welcome.
A few things that help:
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One idea per thread. It’s easier to discuss and easier to find later.
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If your idea has been raised before, add to that thread rather than starting a new one.
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If a proposal doesn’t get traction, that’s information. Repeatedly reposting variations of the same idea isn’t.
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Bugs and reproducible issues are best filed as GitHub issues. Discussion about whether something is a bug, or how to think about a feature, fits well here.
Be honest about AI-generated content
Using AI tools to help you draft, debug, or research is fine. Pasting AI output as if it’s your own answer — especially code or technical claims you haven’t verified — isn’t. People come here for real help from real people. If you used an AI tool to help you arrive at something, double-check it before sharing it, and say so when it’s relevant.
Keep it civil and safe
Don’t post anything obscene, harassing, discriminatory, or hateful. Don’t share other people’s private information. Don’t impersonate anyone. Don’t post spam, advertise unrelated products, or use the forum primarily to drive traffic to your own services.
Promoting your own work is fine when it’s genuinely useful to the conversation — for example, sharing a tool you built that solves a problem someone asked about, or mentioning that your firm offers consulting if someone asks for recommendations. The test is whether you’re contributing or extracting.
Moderation
We’re a small team. We’d rather spend our time building than moderating, so we lean on the community to set the tone.
If you see something that doesn’t belong, flag it — don’t reply to it. Replying gives bad behavior oxygen. Flagging gets it in front of someone who can act on it.
When moderators do step in, it might mean editing a topic title for clarity, moving a post to a more fitting category, splitting an off-topic discussion into its own thread, or in rarer cases, hiding a post or asking someone to revise it. We’ll explain ourselves when we can. If you disagree with a moderation decision, message the moderators directly rather than relitigating it in public.
Repeated disregard for these guidelines can lead to a temporary suspension. We’d much rather not get there.
A note on what this place is for
NPPatch exists because a lot of people decided that the work of maintaining good nonprofit software shouldn’t be left entirely to any one company. This forum is part of how we do that work together.
Show up the way you’d want others to show up for you. That’s most of it.