This is not an article cleverly designed to position one software platform as better than the rest. It is, rather, an article designed to give nonprofits straight talk about a framework for choosing software that will help grow their organization.
CharityEngine, is, of course, the provider of a nonprofit CRM that has powered successful nonprofits for decades. But rather than talking about the features unique to our platform, we’d like to zoom out and use those years of experience (and, perhaps, the times nonprofits have decided we aren’t the right fit) to offer some agnostic thoughts that might help growing nonprofits find the right software.
You know you can find hundreds of articles comparing different CRMs and they’re helpful for evaluating systems and checking boxes. But where can you start, before you want to compare features to features?
We recommend you look at your mission, your resources, your goals, and your priorities. It doesn’t matter if your nonprofit is a few people with a good idea or a multinational organization looking for transformational growth. Every nonprofit needs to consider the same things, whether it’s fleeting thoughts or a written list.
Here are five key considerations when it’s time to look for new technology.
Your goals and ambitions come into play early. How big and how fast do you want to grow? We’ve talked to nonprofits that want to increase their fundraising a hundredfold, and we’ve talked to nonprofits happy with a slow and steady, gentle slope up. The answer to this question is unique to your team.
Achieving fast, stratospheric growth isn’t for the faint of heart. If that’s your goal, it’s critical that your software can scale up with you. This means it can handle the contacts. The fundraising modules can handle the number of emails, texts, or volunteers you might need.
This leads us to the second question. How fast do you want to grow? If you’re talking multichannel campaigns, or several multichannel campaigns running at once, you need tech that can handle that. Are you considering direct-response television? Not every provider has experience there. You’ll want a platform that is flexible enough to let you stretch your creative fundraising minds and try new things.
Consider your payment processing option. How much growth can that handle, and are you able to retain all the money your campaigns raise? Before you assume the answer is yes, please read about how credit card declines cost nonprofits up to 30% of their revenue every year.
And, finally, how have you had the most success reaching your donors? Any messaging, channels, calls-to-action, or fundraising techniques that have worked in the past are worth scaling up. Ensure new technology offers you the ability to grow and the flexibility to keep your campaigns exciting.
A technology ecosystem for a sophisticated, enterprise nonprofit is going to require the integration of a nonprofit CRM or core fundraising platform with other systems. In certain verticals, like healthcare or education, software is required. In this case, you’ll want to take note of the systems that require integration and look into the APIs to make sure the connection will be seamless.
Growing nonprofits who don’t have as many mandated integrations are better served keeping as much data in one place as possible. The reason for this is simple: when you have comprehensive, updated information, you can use it. It’s accurate in your reporting and gives you the ability to have targeted, personalized communications and campaigns.
Most nonprofit CRMs will have data from a few sources in one place. For example, perhaps your system offers a database with all its contacts, and you can also use that same platform for email automation. That is helpful because actions like conversions/donations or unsubscribes are reported right in the contact record. If a donor calls, your team immediately knows whether to thank them or try to win them back over.
The more data you can get under one roof, the more powerful your outreach will be. There’s no substitute for unified data. When your data is siloed—contacts in one place, emails from another system, events from another, volunteers in another—you must rely on syncs and uploads to have current data. It’s not ideal.
If your nonprofit is unique and your mission is critical to your donors, you can’t use cookie-cutter forms or generic email templates. Your brand must be infused in all donor communications, and understanding the level of customization possible is a critical consideration.
The donor experience is tied to the question about customization. The goal is to make it easy to give, so how significantly can you tailor donor-facing materials to help engage them and provide a positive donor experience?
For example, we have food bank clients that need to have an “in-kind” gift option on their donation forms. We have veteran-services organizations that need tribute gift options and advocacy clients that need zip-to-district matching.
The ways in which your donors interact with your nonprofit must be effortless. Perhaps you care that they don’t have to enter their name and address multiple times (smart forms), or maybe you want to make sure donors are thanked the instant they make a gift (email automation). Maybe your donors really want to be able to update addresses and payment information and download tax receipts without calling your office (donor portal). Any insight you have into your donors should translate into customization to make their experience smoother, and you will want to make sure your systems offer the level you need.
Artificial intelligence (AI), business intelligence (BI), and automation are all buzzwords, but they’re all buzzwords that can optimize your outreach, save staff time, and make donor engagement more effective.
Most of the biggest nonprofit CRMs can tell you how they’re including AI tools in their platform. If you run across a vendor that looks at you blankly when you ask the AI question, move on. It’s absolutely the future (or, more accurately, the present and the future), and embracing it will help you in every way.
When you consider AI and BI, the application that’s most helpful is giving insights and wealth indicators. If an algorithm can tell you that a donor is most likely to make a major gift next Tuesday around 10 am, that is invaluable information for your team. Don’t settle for any system that can’t help you optimize the ask.
Automation can take hours of effort and turn it into a few keystrokes. Email automation can be offered as a series, such as a welcome series for new donors or a re-engagement series for lapsed donors. When you can set triggers after events, i.e., a new donor makes a gift and is automatically enrolled in a series of welcome emails, you can take the task of new-donor welcome emails off your plate. Almost any routine task or communication can be automated, so explore how much time you can save with the right solution.
This is always the elephant in the room: how much does technology cost? And the answer is usually, “It depends.” We would go so far as to say technology costs whatever you can afford, as there’s a range that starts at free and ends at expensive.
We will always argue that the cost of technology, while it has to be affordable, is less important than the money it will make you. If, for example, new software will cost you $1,000 a month but you’ll have new features that enable you to make an additional $20,000 a month, that software offers a return on investment that makes the cost worthwhile.
It’s common for CRM vendors to play with price. You might be offered free implementation (it’s never free, you’re just paying for it somewhere else) or you might get unlimited contacts. Take all the extras you can get and then calculate what you can accomplish with the new system. Once you see that a system gives you the tools to raise so much more money that it pays for itself, you understand that the cost of the system isn’t the most important question. What’s critical is what your team can accomplish with it.
After you’ve considered these big pillars, you will have begun narrowing down what you’re looking for. Now, it’s helpful to list the must-have features and put lines around your expectations for training and support and other, more specific requirements of a new technology partner.
Regardless of which you choose, we hope that in reading this far you’ve agreed that the right technology can, in fact, power your rapid growth. When all five of the considerations listed are taken into account and your features and other requirements match up, you’ve likely found the right match for your nonprofit. This means better engagement and fundraising for you, an improved experience for your donors, and, most importantly, an enhanced impact on your mission.