What to look for in custom fundraising software?

There has been a big shift towards online fundraising as technology evolves. For those seeking to raise funds, custom fundraising software is the ideal medium for them to create, develop, implement and follow up on their campaign. Conventional fundraising campaigns, like face-to-face donation requests and organizing fundraisers, can work well, but an online campaign can be more effective in reaching your fundraising goals. So much so that many fundraisers are now exclusively run online. Fundraising software helps you take your entire campaign online on a single platform. Of course, not all fundraising software has the same features, but your efforts are greatly reduced with such software.

Why fundraising is almost impossible without dedicated fundraising software?

Using fundraising software is crucial to start crowdfunding. This is where you request small amounts of donations from a much larger pool of donors. After all, you need a platform to handle communication, follow-up, financial management, and content creation all at once. It would be a waste of resources if you’d need to jump from app to app for each task.

To ensure you meet your goals within the deadlines, you would need fundraising software. Before you choose one, make sure it has the following features-

Activity tracking- Here, you know just what your volunteers (and donors) are doing on your website. This helps you understand what content works and how you can optimize it to optimize donations. Based on how much the donor is contributing, you can encourage repeat donations by giving them badges, milestones, incentives, and other encouraging awards. 

Virtual fundraising tools- A basic requirement, your fundraising software should assist you in raising funds. There are many ways we could do this- have an easy-to-use interface for donors, integration with social media, and tools to create landing pages or content of any kind.

Efficient campaign creation- To meet your targets on time, you would need to create a complete fundraising campaign that you could control through the software. For instance, if you are into medical fundraising, you need to create content for various mediums and distribute it from the same software as required explaining why you need the funds and where it would be utilized.

Donation capabilities- Your donation software should provide donors with a user-friendly, seamless, and quick donation capability. The donor should receive a confirmation of his donation as soon as he clicks ‘Donate’. Besides this, the donation portal should be open for all, and around the clock.

Automatic communications- Continuous communication is the key to a successful fundraising campaign. Your fundraising software should allow you to communicate automatically with your existing and potential donors via email, chat, text, and social media. Within your donor pool, your software should allow you to segment users for better personalization for your fundraising campaign.

Analytics and Reporting- At any stage of your fundraising journey, you would need to know how well you’re faring and what you need to do to complete your campaign. The fundraising software you choose should have detailed analytics for all activities and help you create reports to understand your current funding requirements as well as the efforts you need to put in for the future.

Integrations- Let’s face it, there would be certain features that aren’t available with your fundraising software. Many such software allows you to seamlessly integrate third-party apps into the software. Before zeroing in on the software you need, check whether the software provider allows you to integrate all the apps into your software.

Security- No one would like to lose money to online scamsters at any time. Check if your software provider gives you adequate security against malware, hacking, and other online scams.

Support- There will come a time when you’d need some help to use the software. Check whether the software in question has a customer support helpline. They’d help you in case of any queries that may arise from time to time.

In the end,

Your fundraising software is an irreplaceable tool you would need to raise funds quickly and effortlessly. At GivingX we have created a fundraising platform where donors could come and donate through the GivingX Donate Button whenever they’re redirected to a particular crowdfunding campaign. For more information, please visit here.