It’s hard to fundraise without clean, easy-to-access donor data.
Instead of reaching out to donors, offering relevant giving opportunities, and telling your nonprofit’s story, you spend your time trying to find information, entering data in multiple places, and creating endless spreadsheets.
None of those activities raise any money.
Luckily, there’s a simple answer to streamline your fundraising and track your data quickly and simply: a nonprofit CRM.
What is a Nonprofit CRM?
Customer/Client Relationship Management software was developed in the for-profit world. Companies use a CRM to track their customers’ behavior, manage communication, and make offers that the customer is likely to be interested in. A CRM is how your favorite store knows to send you an email asking how you liked your last purchase, for example.
The nonprofit sector has adopted the use of CRMs, too. Donors aren’t exactly the same as customers, but nonprofits track their details and behavior in a very similar way. While some nonprofits adapt sales CRMs for their purposes, it’s best to use a nonprofit-specific CRM so it’s tailored to your unique needs as a nonprofit organization.
A CRM designed for nonprofit fundraising allows you to track and record donor information, including donor contact information, preferences, and behavior. It helps you to manage donor relationships, personalize their experiences, and target your fundraising and communications to the people who will be most interested in them. This helps you raise more.
Easily track your donor pipeline CauseVox’s CRM
Is it Any Better Than This Spreadsheet I Made?
If you’re tracking all your donor data in a spreadsheet, you’re making things a lot harder than they need to be.
A spreadsheet might seem like the cheapest option until you start counting things like the time you spend manually entering data, the time you spend trying to access that data, and the time you spend moving it around. That’s time you aren’t spending building relationships with donors or fundraising, so the real cost is much higher.
If the only thing you needed to track was donor addresses, a spreadsheet might be adequate. But once you start wanting to note interactions, preferences, and giving history, it’s just not up to the task. It’s messy and complicated, and you can’t automate anything. You’re trapped in an ongoing cycle of importing and exporting and merging.
Contrast that with a nonprofit CRM that is designed to track the things you want to track. With a CRM you can automate your processes so that data ends up where it’s supposed to be without manually entering it. You can search and filter data with ease, quickly see trends in donor behavior, and easily track the details of their relationship with your organization. Excel just can’t do that.
Where things get even more efficient is when your CRM is combined with your fundraising platform. Your online fundraising campaigns and donation pages connect to your nonprofit CRM, and you can automate donation processing, receipts, and the recording of donations.
What Are The Benefits of a Nonprofit CRM?
At CauseVox, we think a CRM is so useful for fundraisers that we’ve built one into our fundraising platform. The CauseVox Fundraising CRM is a centralized CRM that provides everything you need to easily organize, track, and grow relationships with your community of supporters and fundraisers.
It’s easy to see the productivity benefits of a nonprofit CRM. You’ll immediately free up time from unnecessary admin with an easier interface and more automation. But a nonprofit CRM doesn’t just keep you organized.
Your nonprofit CRM can:
1. Give You More Insight
It’s hard to get the big picture if you’re tracking data on a spreadsheet, or in six separate applications. With a nonprofit CRM, you get crucial insights in one comprehensive tool, letting you get a bird’s-eye view of your fundraising.
You can quickly find specific transactions and contacts and discover your best donors and peer-to-peer fundraisers, spot donor trends, and find new opportunities to engage your donors.
Robust reporting tools also make it easy to generate custom reports that show how your fundraising efforts are performing. Whether you’re pulling segmented donor lists for a campaign, tracking donor retention, or analyzing the success of a specific fundraising event, your CRM helps you identify the insights that matter. You can combine data points like donation history and event participation to run deeper queries, adjust your strategy, and make data-driven decisions with confidence.
2. Help Strengthen Donor Relationships
The reason you’re collecting all this data is to use it, right? When you’re tracking donor actions and information, it allows you to build better, more authentic relationships with them.
Target Communications with Donor Segmentation
Your CRM will allow you to target communications much more effectively. Instead of sending the same appeal to every one of your contacts, you can segment donors by their interests, activity, or giving history, crafting messages that uniquely speak to them.
Your donors are individuals, and your nonprofit CRM helps you treat them as such. Let’s imagine I’m a supporter of a youth services organization. I’ve annually given $50 to the organization for three years, and this year I raised money for them as a peer-to-peer fundraiser.
Suppose the organization sent me this appeal:
Hi Madison,
Thanks for being a supporter of XYZ Organization!
Your generosity makes such a difference for the kids of Chicago. Every year, 600 children in the neighborhood participate in our after school and weekend programs. They study together, play sports, and develop healthy relationships with each other and their mentors. We couldn’t do it without you!
As we head into the winter, it’s time to restock our supply closets. We provide students with everything they need to participate in our programs, at no cost to them. Will you help?
A gift of $100 supplies 10 children with the school supplies they need to complete their homework. A gift of $200 supplies two weeks of snacks to fuel the growing bodies and minds of all our kids.
Won’t you give today?
This message isn’t terrible, but it clearly isn’t aimed at me. It’s asking me to radically increase my giving, doesn’t acknowledge my involvement as a fundraiser, and feels somewhat anonymous. It doesn’t build our relationship.
When you don’t have an easy way to access and use your donor data, it limits your fundraising.
Consider this message instead:
Hi Madison,
I know you care about XYZ Organization.
In the three years you’ve been a donor, you’ve shown how much you care over and over again. Your annual contributions and your work on this fall’s Lift Them Up campaign are so appreciated. Congratulations on raising $700 for our programs, and thank you again.
Your generosity makes such a difference for the kids of Chicago. Every year, 600 children in the neighborhood participate in our after school and weekend programs. They study together, play sports, and develop healthy relationships with each other and their mentors. We couldn’t do it without you!
As we head into the winter, it’s time to restock our supply closets. We provide students with everything they need to participate in our programs, at no cost to them. Will you help?
A gift of $75 supplies seven children with the school supplies they need to complete their homework. A gift of $100 supplies a week of snacks to fuel the growing bodies and minds of all our kids.
Won’t you give today?
This appeal uses my donor data to speak to me. It seems personal and I feel seen. This inspires more connection and loyalty to the organization. With a CRM you can make this personalization automatic, and even send it through the CRM system itself. The personal details that make me feel so great are really just a matter of automating a few data fields.
Record Details and Preferences
Have you ever asked to be removed from a mailing list, and then continued to get mail? It’s frustrating, right?
How about continually getting emails saluting, “Mrs. Smith,” five years after your divorce? Or volunteering at an event every month, and having to introduce yourself every single time?
None of these things is a tragedy, but all of them are annoying. More than that, they communicate that the organization doesn’t know you and that you are a number on their list, not a person they’re actually interested in.
It doesn’t inspire trust or connection.
With a CRM, you can avoid a lot of this alienating behavior. When donors change their preferences and contact information, it will automatically update throughout the system. Before an event, you can take a look at the profiles of the people who will be there, reminding yourself of their names and details. After events, you can note the interactions you had with donors so you can jog your memory for your next interaction.
3. Help You Raise More
Nonprofit CRMs can have a real impact on how much money your organization raises. This is because when you use CRM software:
You’re Not Guessing
When you start using data to drive your fundraising, you’ll do less guessing about what your donors care about, and which fundraising techniques will work. Consequently, you’ll start hitting the target more.
You’re Not Wasting Time
Time you used to spend entering, tracking, and reporting data can now be spent focusing on your donors and telling your story. The CRM takes on the tedious admin work, so you’re free to do the all-important human connecting.
You’re Not Losing Data
User error is a real danger if you’re manually entering and moving data around. Even the best of us make typos, forget to input something, or otherwise lose track of data. When your software automatically populates data fields, it removes a lot of the opportunity for mistakes that can impact your fundraising.
4. Save Time
You’re juggling a lot, from campaigns, to donor outreach, event planning, and everything in between. A good nonprofit CRM should actually make your day easier, not more complicated.
With built-in automations, you can set up thank-you emails, follow-ups, and reminders that run on their own, so nothing slips through the cracks. Task management tools help you (and your team) stay organized, assigning to-dos and contacts while tracking progress in one place. And with a calendar view, you can see what’s coming up at a glance, from campaign launches to donor meetings.
It’s all about freeing up your time, so you can focus less on admin and more on impact.
Manage time and tasks with CauseVox’s CRM
5. Reach Your Fundraising Goals
A nonprofit CRM helps you build a donor pipeline that’s aligned with your fundraising goals, whether you’re planning for a single campaign or mapping out your year ahead.
You can easily segment donors based on giving history, engagement, persona, or campaign interest, so you’re always reaching out with the right message at the right time. And with clear visibility into where each donor is in their journey, you can prioritize outreach, personalize communication, and cultivate the relationships that matter most.
How To Get Started With a Nonprofit CRM
Getting started with a nonprofit CRM can feel like a big leap, but it doesn’t have to be. Whether you’re new to using a CRM or just haven’t been using yours to its full potential, a few simple steps can help you make the most of it.
1. Start by Choosing the Right Platform
Look for a CRM that fits your team’s size, budget, and goals. The best tools are built with nonprofits in mind, offering features like donor tracking, reporting, and task management without overwhelming you with extras you don’t need.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one option that’s easy to use, we recommend using CauseVox’s CRM because it integrates your donation forms, fundraising pages, and peer-to-peer campaigns with your CRM—all in one easy to use, streamlined platform.
2. Import Your Data
Most CRMs offer tools, or even hands-on support, to help you bring in your existing donor lists, transactions, and notes. This is the foundation for everything else, so take the time to get it right.
CauseVox makes this simple by handling data imports for you, so you can hit the ground running without spending hours on spreadsheets and complicated integrations.
3. Customize Your Setup
Customize your dashboard, contact records, and reporting views to fit the way your organization works. Whether you like to keep things high-level or get into the details, you can set things up in a way that works for you.
4. Bring Your Team With You!
Assign tasks and contacts, add notes to donor records so nothing gets lost, and set reminders to follow up at the right time. This shared visibility ensures you’re not duplicating efforts, or missing key opportunities.
Bonus: CauseVox is built to be easy and intuitive. And if you ever need help, our top-notch support team is here to walk you through it.You don’t have to figure it all out on your own, just take it one step at a time, and let your CRM do the heavy lifting.
See It In Action
Your nonprofit CRM will save you time, give you greater insight, and help you connect authentically with your donors so you can raise more, without time-wasting and tedious tasks. Streamline your fundraising and cut out unnecessary admin with CauseVox’s Fundraising CRM.
Ready to learn more about how you can use a CRM to both streamline and personalize your fundraising at the same time?
