This article discusses 4 actionable strategies your organization can use to optimize its tech systems for fundraising efficiency:
- Consider all-in-one vs. integrated solutions
- Choose new tools thoughtfully
- Automate recurring processes
- Gather insights to inform future campaigns
These tips will help you not only improve the effectiveness of your current solutions but also use those tools to make your fundraising and project management more efficient.
1. Consider all-in-one vs. integrated solutions
When it comes to fundraising tools, nonprofits typically have two main options for how to organize their solutions:
- A centralized hub system, where all fundraising tools are available in one place.
- An integrated system, where organizations leverage a variety of separate fundraising tools and use integrations to connect and share data between each platform.
Both options have merits. With an all-in-one platform, you don’t have to worry about disconnected solutions or data being lost in transfers between tools. On the other hand, an integrated approach allows nonprofits to use specialized tools as desired, such as a dedicated email platform or social media scheduling hub. However, with an integrated approach, there is the potential for lower efficiency, especially if some software solutions don’t seamlessly integrate with your nonprofit's CRM.
That’s why many organizations seek out all-in-one solutions where they can access all needed fundraising tools in one central location. Centralized hubs typically offer most or all of the following tools:
- Donor database
- Fundraising tools
- Volunteer management
- Membership management
- Mobile app
- Marketing
- Payments
- Reporting and data management
- Peer-to-peer fundraising
- Text to give
- Event management
With all of these solutions in one place, you can immediately access insights from any tool. For example, let’s say you want to encourage more members to engage in your nonprofit’s events. With a centralized database, you can easily run reports to assess member event attendance and analyze the characteristics of members who like to participate in events.
Or, you may want to identify highly engaged volunteers who are likely to become donors. You can create a segment for these potential donors and track donors and volunteers from the same database.
As you can see, comprehensive fundraising software with multiple built-in tools opens the door for seamless data transfers and cross-team collaboration, allowing your team to analyze data on any member of your nonprofit’s community.
2. Choose new tools thoughtfully
Adding new software solutions to your technology stack adds functionality to your fundraising efforts, but it can also lead to added complexity. And, as mentioned above, your fundraising solutions must integrate seamlessly to avoid delays in data collection and maximize efficiency.
Therefore, think carefully before investing in additional fundraising solutions beyond your primary fundraising tool or CRM. We recommend taking the following steps:
- Always consider the resources you have on hand before investing in new ones. When launching a new fundraising campaign or event, it may be tempting to investigate new technologies or get up and running with the latest trendy new tool. However, you can often easily accomplish your goals with the tools you already have on hand. Explore the features of your current fundraising solution to determine whether you can achieve your aims with your existing toolkit.
- Assess the campaigns you’ll be hosting and the resources you’ll need for those campaigns. Listing these out ahead of time will allow you to find overlap between solutions and determine the functionality you need from each. That way, you can accomplish more with each solution and leverage them for multiple campaign types.
- Determine your budget. This will guide your financial decisions. When you start researching solutions, ask about implementation and training fees so you’re not surprised by the final cost.
In addition, Bloomerang’s nonprofit CRM guide recommends creating an implementation plan for any new software tools you invest in. This will help you get up and running with the new solution as quickly as possible so you don’t sacrifice fundraising efficiency. Set a goal deadline for when you want to finalize the implementation process and ask for support from the software provider when needed.
3. Automate recurring processes
One of the greatest benefits of fundraising software is its ability to automate recurring tasks and activities. What once might have taken your fundraising team several hours to complete can be done in seconds with automation and reporting features.
Increase efficiency by setting up the following automated functions using your fundraising software:
- Task reminders
- Security updates
- Sending donor thank you emails and receipts
- Personalization of donor communications (such as automatically adding donors’ names and donation amounts to thank you emails)
- Recurring reports
- Wealth screening
- Dues reminders for memberships
With these automated messages and reminders in place, staff members will have more time to focus on big-picture fundraising strategies. In addition, donors, volunteers, and other members of your nonprofit’s community will appreciate having timely updates and "thank you" messages recognizing them for their contributions.
4. Gather insights to inform future campaigns
After you wrap up a fundraising campaign, maximize your technology use and set yourself up for success by gathering data insights to inform future campaigns. Compile data gathered using tools like your nonprofit’s online donation page and social media and email marketing platforms. Use these tools to pull reports that summarize key metrics such as:
- Donor retention rate
- Average donation size
- Donor lifetime value
- Social media and email engagement rates
- Results from marketing A/B tests
- Conversion rates for different fundraising channels
- New donor acquisition rate and cost
- Return on investment
Of course, this is just a sample of the analytics available to choose from. Consider your campaign’s goals before selecting metrics to focus on.
Assessing your results at the end of each campaign will help you tackle future campaigns more efficiently. You’ll be able to quickly understand your most effective strategies to incorporate those approaches into upcoming campaigns.