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Nonprofit CRM Software Buyer's Guide
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» What is Nonprofit CRM Software?
Nonprofit CRM software is computer software that helps nonprofits manage their customers and donors. Basically, it’s also called Fundraising CRM. Fundraising CRM software helps organizations organize their work, track statistics, measure business performance, and define goals to increase efficiency. Nonprofit CRM software can be used for any industry with a customer base, not just for nonprofits.
Nonprofit CRM systems are often provided by third-party companies such as Adobe Systems or Microsoft Corporation. Both online and offline organizations can use CRM software for nonprofits. For online organizations, it is essential to mention that data entry should be done carefully to ensure the information is being entered accurately. This is because overly detailed information risks slowing down a nonprofit's activities. It is also important to note that nonprofits should separate their work into daily activities to manage their nonprofits perfectly.
As for offline organizations, nonprofit CRM systems are a great tool as they can streamline processes and ensure that tasks are done in a standard way, ensuring both efficiency and compliance. For example, the donation process can be characterized by the following questions: who, what, when, how, and where. These questions help the nonprofit organization track each donation they get securely.
Today, many nonprofit CRM software applications aim to help nonprofits develop marketing and fundraising strategies. These applications allow data to be organized into one place so that it is presented in a way that's easily accessible and digestible for management decision-making. Through CRM, donor management helps manage donor assets (donor profiles). Properly working this information is critical for all organizations soliciting donations from donors or grant proposals from funders.
» Why do Nonprofit organizations need a CRM system?
Nonprofit agencies and charities require a CRM system to manage data and prepare for the future, such as better understanding their customer/donor base. Here is the type of information that can be managed with a CRM:
- Keep track of donor's interests and tastes by maintaining donors' profiles
- Record contact particulars such as phone number, email address, postal address, etc.
- Record details obtained while meeting or corresponding with donors or prospective donors, e.g., general profile, interest and concerns or appreciation for the organizations, donation history (and thought about donation), etc.
- Record details about other peoples' contact with your organizations, such as where and who you met with.
- Track and manage quotes requests with quotes given by donors etc.
- Track media attention through print advertisements, email campaigns, TV/radio announcements, etc., at appropriate times, e.g., on target days in the year or when the need is greatest, like Thanksgiving Day(s), etc.
- Record staff attendance and performance, e.g., attendance levels, productivity, etc.
- Record employee expenses for reimbursement or for submitting to audit (and for expenses management)
- Tracking of products that have gone out of stock etc.
» Features of a Nonprofit CRM system
A nonprofit CRM system is a repository of information that can be accessed by members, donors, volunteers, and staff to update and manage contact data. When they are shared with other databases, it helps to accelerate your workflow by giving you the ability to coordinate between different teams of people. The following talks about some essential features that the best nonprofit CRM software should have:
› Event planning:
Nonprofit CRM system helps in event planning. Though scheduling an event is one of the significant features of a nonprofit CRM system, bringing in additional features like event registration, donations, and ticketing helps plan events well.
› Communication with volunteers:
Top CRM software for nonprofits can be used to communicate with volunteers by sending out notifications about their upcoming shifts and events they are expected to attend. The primary objective of this feature is to ensure that all your volunteers reach the venue at the correct time and perform the required job effectively.
› Volunteer management:
CRM features can be used to manage volunteers, like creating databases of qualified volunteers and assigning them to appropriate teams. It lets you control the organization and get complete reports about all your activities.
› Gift tracking:
Predictive analytics is widely used in nonprofit systems to track the data related to gifts, donations, and membership records that regular fundraisers and donors provide. This is vital because it helps you know where your sources of income come from, which makes it easy to plan and budget your operations.
› Data tracking:
Data tracking can be used to manage the information about your donors from the different departments of your organization. The data can be shared among other teams for efficient use and management.
› Mobile messaging:
Mobile messaging is not only used for giving out forms but is also essential for keeping track of volunteer updates and requests in a timely way. If updates are sent via mobile SMS, they might often be ignored by people in other parts of the world. A CRM system is not only helpful in sending out updates. Still, it will benefit more from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, which can reach a global audience quickly with their news feed options.
› Payment processing:
Payment processing is a feature that enables online donations to your organization. This will be helpful for your organization if you have an online donation address that can accept payments in a digital format with the help of a payment processor through the website.
› Social media capabilities:
A CRM for charities can help you keep track of your website traffic and can be used for integration with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. The data collected from these social networking sites gives you valuable information about your audience and helps provide better customer service. It gives your staff more time to focus on clients' real problems instead of leaving them wondering why they are being contacted via social media.
› Membership management:
A nonprofit CRM system can assist you in tracking membership records and events systematically. This feature is used to keep track of new members and past members who are in good contact with the organization through emails and other important information.
› Grants management:
Grants management feature is used to keep track of grants provided to an organization by different sources. When you access these data from time to time, you will have an idea about the funds received by your organization and how the money is being utilized or has been utilized to date.
› Digital advocacy:
Digital advocacy is a feature that helps motivate your audience to participate more and spread the word about your organization. Most people visit a nonprofit website because, at some point, they want to know about charity organizations. Provide information about your organization on social networking sites and a welcome page. People will be more inclined to register in your system and visit it regularly for various updates about your organization's work.
› Digital events:
Digital events feature allows you to create a calendar of your organization's upcoming events and register them. This feature helps your organization plan and organize various events like conferences, seminars, workshops, and other events that you might want your audience to participate in.
› Data analysis:
Data analysis helps foster communication and productivity among different departments, which helps improve your charity's performance and the work efficiency of other employees.
› Mobile app:
Mobile apps help in different ways, such as receiving updates and alerts while logging into the website on your phone, and also allows you to view your organizational records anywhere.
» What are the benefits of a Nonprofit CRM system?
› Better Communication:
A nonprofit CRM system can help keep your donors and volunteers informed about upcoming events, new projects, and opportunities. This will help with better communication and lead to more engagement.
› Improvement in Efficiency:
A nonprofit CRM system can decrease the stress of a busy office and allow staff members to focus on work that is more important to their mission rather than mundane tasks such as data entry. This will improve communication efficiency and give staff members time to address other critical organizational goals.
› Increased Revenues:
Such a CRM system allows more efficient event logistics management, tracking potential fundraising streams, generating new revenue streams, streamlining donation processing at peak times (i.e., holidays), and more.
› Better Tracking:
CRM systems allow you to optimize the use of your resources, such as staff time, money, and other resources in your organization. This translates into better efficiency, effectiveness, and profitability performance.
› Improved Measurement:
A Fundraising CRM system allows donors to track their contributions, helps volunteers know of upcoming events, tracks how much money is still needed for an endeavor, and more. This can help provide better measurement for your nonprofit organization.
› Lower Operating Costs:
CRM systems are less expensive than hiring and managing several staff members to maintain data, track donor information, and other aspects of running your organization.
› Increased Capacity:
A fundraising CRM and donor management for nonprofits allow you to grow your nonprofit without adding more overhead costs by having the system manage much of the workflow and communication required for day-to-day operations.
› Reduced Waste:
Such a system allows you to leverage technology for a better means of reaching out to donors, volunteers, prospective and current clients, and more. This will reduce waste in terms of materials, energy, time spent on maintaining donor lists, tracking finances, etc.
» How to Choose one of the best Nonprofit CRM Software?
The key to success in any organization is your staff's ability to collaborate in one efficient system. The nature of a nonprofit organization is that people are doing their jobs for the love of what they do, which makes it all about relationships rather than transactions. This means that a CRM system tailored for nonprofits and social enterprises can help lasting benefits for an organization's volunteer base and impact community growth simply by streamlining internal communication among staff members.
Administering an efficient nonprofit CRM system is a fundamental challenge that every nonprofit organization faces. Though it may seem mundane and tedious, good CRM administration can make the difference between your organization functioning optimally and having too many bottlenecks to move the work forward. If you are looking for a nonprofit CRM system that will enable you to accomplish all of the short-term goals you have for your organization and still have time for employee volunteer projects, here are five things to consider:
› Know how your organization works
Take some time to get familiar with how your organization functions to maximize your staff members' strengths. Knowing their strengths and the tasks best suited for each can help you assign tasks that people are good at, increasing productivity.
› Learn to manage your organization's time
When many employees have thirty active projects at once, people can easily fall behind and feel overwhelmed. The key here is to be diligent about the importance of managing your time. Make sure each person has manageable goals and a timeline for what they need to do.
› Be honest with your organization
Be honest about what you need to accomplish over a given period, and give yourself a deadline. Set weekly goals for each person so that they are always working towards something and then help them keep on schedule by being available to answer any questions they might have.
› Spend time on employee training
Good organization management means you will be training your employees regularly. Most employees need a refresher on the basics of their job from time to time, and the ongoing training will help them continue to grow.
› Return customer value
You are accountable for everything in your organization and must ensure that customer service remains high. This means being customer-focused and always thinking about ways to improve quality for current customers and develop new ones.
Of course, a CRM system will not be able to solve every organization's problem by itself, but it can be an excellent tool for helping people get organized. You may still have to go into your local software office store every once in a while to get help with some of the technical issues your technicians will run into, but a top CRM software for nonprofits is an investment that is well worth the effort.
» How much does a Nonprofit CRM Software Cost?
Every nonprofit organization dreams of the day they can go paperless. But in this day and age, implementing a new CRM software is not cheap. So how much does it cost?
It all depends on what you want out of your CRM system. If you're willing to compromise on functionality to save money, there are plenty of affordable options, such as Salesforce.com or ExactTarget. If you want to outsource the function of your CRM, then you can look at one of the many vendors that provide hosted services for such software.
If your nonprofit organization wants to keep everything in-house, then full-fledged CRM software for nonprofits is not a good fit. When deciding which software package is best, it's essential to consider all the features that are important to you. Is it just customer relationship management (CRM), or would your organization benefit from more features like donor management or mobile integration?
» Conclusion
Now that you know what a Nonprofit CRM System is, why don't you purchase it? Many charitable organizations, in a quest for more donations, adopt the use of nonprofit CRMs for donor management to manage donors. This ensures that the organization can maintain contact with its donors and improve that process by tracking the success of individual outreach initiatives. A nonprofit CRM system is necessary because it enables the organization to gather information about its donors much more efficiently than possible if it had no CRM system.