How to choose the best CRM for your nonprofit?

What is the key to raising money for your fundraiser? A good CRM software!

True, that is. A good CRM (constituent relationship manager) is a necessity when you start your crowdfunding now. It grows and strengthens relationships with your donors that are needed to achieve your long-term fundraising goals. It makes communication with donors more organized and relevant. The more you know about your donor, the more value you’ll be able to obtain to help you with your fundraiser.

Do nonprofits use CRM?

Yes, absolutely. A nonprofit that has a good fundraising strategy in place will use a good CRM tool. It helps them fulfill their priorities and requirements. It will also help the nonprofit remain organized and efficient.

What is CRM for NGOs?

You might have a basic idea of a donor CRM. Let’s try to make it more clear now. A donor management CRM is a software application that centralizes crucial information about donors. Unlike commercial enterprises where a CRM is a Customer Relationship Manager software, for nonprofits and NGOs, it is called a Constituent Relationship Manager. The donors, supporters, and volunteers together form the constituents of a nonprofit. So, a donor CRM is a database where you store all the information you have collected from the donors and use this data to improve the donor experience, contentment, and engagement. An efficient CRM brings all communication with donors across all channels into one central location. This brings us to another crucial question.

What are the types of data you need to collect from your donors for the donor CRM?

Collecting donor data is one of the most crucial aspects of a fundraiser. The best way to collect this is through online forms. GivingX, the best online custom fundraising software, allows you to create custom embeddable forms for your website. You can decide what information you want to request from your donors. Generally, nonprofits collect this information:

• Donor name
• Donor contact details, like the mobile number and email address
• Gift amount
• Option to convert the gift into a recurring donation
• How they heard about your organization
• Their experience on the website
• Feedback
• If they are interested in volunteering for the organization

The above information is the starting point for collecting donor contacts. You have to gradually start improving this after their initial donation. The other information comes from their browsing history on your fundraising page. Their demographics, store activities, and sessions- this information will help you segment the donors and send personalized messages to improve conversions and your fundraiser’s success. So now, let us look at the benefits of having a CRM for your nonprofit.

Why nonprofits should use CRM?

There are many benefits to using a CRM. The fundraising software, GivingX, has donor management CRM as a feature to help nonprofits organize and manage all their donor data in one place.

Donor segmentation

For your donor CRM data to be of high value, you have to sort the data and put it into groups. Random donor information will serve no purpose. A donor CRM will help you segment the data based on donor demographics, their previous donation history, their response to emails and other communications, or their activities on your fundraising website. You can then use these segments to send personalized or group-specific messages in emails, SMS, personal cards, targeted social media ads, promotional campaigns, or other means of communication.

Process automation

Good CRM software saves you time. It automates routine tasks so that you don’t miss out on anything. The key automation tasks you can customize are general emails, sending marketing follow-ups, calls, leads, and fundraising tracking.

With process automation, personalized emails are sent to donors at the right time, encouraging them to take the next step. Also, you get information about the actions taken on your automation tasks so that you know what your next action will be. 

Centralized data

When you create an online donation page, you expect donations to pour in. With that comes the donors’ details. All the data from your donors is stored in one location in the CRM tool, making it easily accessible. You can also analyze the details of your fundraising activities.

Better internal communication

The donor CRM also acts as a common point of communication between personnel and departments involved in using donor data. It helps everyone involved in the process to share information or look up to the information without being dependent on others. It increases the productivity and efficiency of the nonprofit.

Managing your expenses

As much as you use the donor CRM to track the donations received, another important aspect is tracking the expenses. As a promotional strategy, you’ll be spending on events, gifts, and other expenses. Membership dues can also be counted as expenses until realized. The donor CRM helps you keep track of the cash flows.

Future planning

With the donor CRM, you get in-depth information on the value and profitability of your fundraiser. For instance, you can see the recurring donations coming from the donors and plan the fund utilization. A proper analysis can help you raise the nonprofit’s profitability.

In short, a good CRM consolidates your spreadsheets into a single database. Now that we have told you about some of its main benefits, how do you ensure you select a donor CRM that offers good features and helps you reach your fundraising goals?

How do I choose a CRM for a non-profit?

While there are a lot of donor CRM tools available on the market, how do you select a good one? Each one is not perfect for you. It comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. Creating custom CRM software for a nonprofit is a good option, but you have to invest heavily in it. And being a nonprofit, budgeting is clearly a constraint. Instead, you can choose a good custom fundraising software that has a good donor management CRM feature.

Let’s see which are the crucial factors you have to think about as you approach the selection of a CRM for your nonprofit.

• Budget

Pricing is crucial when selecting a good CRM tool. GivingX recommends using fundraising software that is integrated with donor management software so that you don’t have to spend extra on buying separate software to manage donor information. It saves you a lot of money, effort, and time.

• Priorities

What are your nonprofit’s priorities? Some CRM tools offer hundreds of features, but they charge a premium for them. Is it worth paying so much when you’ll be hardly using 10-50 features for donor management? List the donor management priorities and go in for a tool that offers just that and nothing more substantial within your budget.

• Team requirements 

When you work as a team, collaboration is crucial in donor management. Use a CRM tool that has excellent features for team collaboration that your supporters can access anywhere, anytime. Also, make sure that it offers the role-based access feature.

• Compatibility

The tool should be compatible with your fundraising software or website and should also be easily integrated with all the other tools already installed. For example, your donor CRM should be compatible with any cash management or social media management tool you’ve set up on your fundraising software.

• Scalability

As your nonprofit grows, you’ll be adding more customers to your donor management CRM. As in the case of other software solutions, your CRM should be scalable to accommodate your organization’s growth. 

• Customization

If not all, select a CRM that offers good customization options. It helps to accommodate your requirements and put the software to good use. If the CRM is not at all flexible, there’s no point in investing in it.

GivingX- Fundraising software with the best donor management CRM for your nonprofit

GivingX is a custom fundraising software that enables nonprofits to create donation landing pages and embeddable forms. It offers free unlimited integrations through Zapier. Also, it has an automatic language translation feature to help you target your donors in their native language. Another feature is its donor management CRM, through which you can create donor segments, create automated email or call workflows for donations and follow-ups, manage events, and track the results of your fundraising campaigns.

Encouraging donors to donate for a cause now is no longer a challenging task thanks to the custom fundraising software GivingX. It has 125+ payment options to help donors make secure donations. Create an engaging fundraising landing page to tell people about the cause, or design a custom embeddable donation form to help donors donate securely and seamlessly.

GivingX’s features and pricing make it attractive for nonprofits looking for affordable fundraising software with all the important features. It charges 1.45% of each transaction, which is one of the lowest rates for any fundraising software.

Wrapping Up 

Don’t fall for the myth that you need to invest extra in a sophisticated donor management CRM tool or that you need to be good at coding. Simply choose GivingX to take your fundraising success to the next level!