What should be recommended to a nonprofit wanting real-time insights into membership data stored externally?

For a nonprofit seeking real-time insights into membership data that is stored externally, utilizing Salesforce Connect to store this information in External Objects is the most suitable recommendation.

Salesforce Connect is specifically designed to enable Salesforce to interact with external data sources seamlessly. By using External Objects, organizations can access and manipulate data that resides outside of Salesforce as if it were part of their Salesforce environment. This facilitates real-time access, enabling users to retrieve and view up-to-date membership data without duplicating it in Salesforce.

Additionally, External Objects are a better fit in this scenario because they allow for dynamic querying of the external data source in real-time, ensuring that the nonprofit can always work with current data. This approach promotes efficiency and accuracy, which are critical for making informed decisions based on member interactions and insights.

In contrast, the other options leverage either Custom Objects or Big Objects, which are not suited for real-time insights into externally stored data, as they imply that data would be imported or stored within Salesforce itself rather than viewed in its external location. This would not provide the desired immediacy and synchrony crucial for a nonprofit needing to act quickly on membership data.