Not I But We started with CauseVox because they needed a simple, affordable way to fundraise. As the organization grew, CauseVox grew with them, bringing fundraising, donor management, reporting, and communications together.
Not I But We + CauseVox
- 16-person team
- Global community of supporters
- Fundraising + CRM + email in one place
When Madison Barefield started Not I But We, she was trying to solve a practical problem.
While working at a safe house for survivors of human trafficking in South Africa, she saw women receiving incredible care but struggling to find stable employment after they left.
Without a way to support themselves, they remained vulnerable to the same cycles of exploitation they were trying to escape.
Madison wanted to help build a bridge.
During COVID, that started with making and selling scrunchies. Today, Not I But We is a nonprofit social enterprise with a 16-person team creating bags and accessories sold around the world while providing meaningful employment, training, and psychosocial support for survivors of trafficking and domestic violence.
As founder and director, Madison is also what she calls a “wearer of many hats.”
Fundraising is one of them.
And for a while, fundraising technology was creating almost as much work as it solved.
“It was chaos.”
Not I But We has supporters in South Africa, the United States, Europe, and beyond.
But its fundraising systems weren’t connected.
The donation form was on one platform. The CRM was somewhere else. International fundraising required another platform.
Madison was the one trying to make it all work.
“I was exporting, uploading, losing a million things in the process.”
Then came trying to reconcile everything for reporting and donation receipts.
“It was chaos.”
For the founder of a growing nonprofit, managing the technology was taking time away from actually growing the organization.
Starting with something simple
When Madison found CauseVox, her requirements weren’t complicated.
“The main thing was budget in the beginning. I needed a free tool that was gonna get what we needed.”
She needed a donation form that was easy to put on the website, easy to update, and easy to manage.
CauseVox gave Not I But We a simple place to start.
But Madison also saw something else in it.
“It was a tool that we could grow into.”
That turned out to be important.
As Not I But We grew, the organization didn’t have to keep adding more disconnected fundraising systems.
Instead, it could start doing more within CauseVox.
Growing from donations into connected fundraising
One of the biggest areas of growth has been peer-to-peer fundraising.
For Madison, peer-to-peer fits naturally with the organization’s name and mission.
“It speaks to our name, Not I But We, but it’s really a community and seeing everyone being able to get involved and expand the network and bring a lot of different people into this little community that we have is really special.”
It’s also helped solve one of the organization’s unusual fundraising challenges.
Not I But We operates in South Africa, has a U.S. fundraising arm, and has supporters around the world. Previously, different communities often required different fundraising platforms.
Now those supporters can participate together.
South Africans can create their own fundraising pages and receive support from their communities. Americans, Europeans, and other supporters can participate in the same campaigns.
“It’s been really great to have a platform that everyone trusts and feels confident [using].”
Fundraisers can customize their pages, tell their own story, and easily share them with their communities while staying connected to Not I But We.
As the organization grew, CauseVox grew with it
Not I But We initially needed a donation form.
Then it needed peer-to-peer.
As the organization matured, it needed better donor management and reporting too.
With the CauseVox CRM, donor information could live alongside the fundraising activity generating it. Madison could pull custom reports without trying to piece together data from multiple platforms.
That brought something she didn’t have before: confidence in the data.
“Being able to pull custom reports for the different things that we need really easily and trusting that all of the data is actually there has given me a lot of peace of mind.”
CauseVox email marketing has started removing another handoff.
Instead of exporting donor information to another tool, Madison can send an individual follow-up, communicate with groups of supporters, or set up automated communications like welcome series.
“I can just send one email to one donor and follow up that way… instead of switching between tools and platforms.”
For a small organization, every tool you can eliminate is one less thing someone has to manage.
“It feels like a weight off my shoulders.”
The biggest change isn’t any single feature.
It’s what fundraising feels like now.
“It feels much less like a headache and more like something that I get excited to do because I know that I don’t have to try and stitch a bunch of different things together.”
Campaigns that worked well in the past can be duplicated instead of rebuilt.
Fundraising activity and donor information are together.
Reports are easier to pull.
And the whole team has a system they can actually use.
“It just feels like a weight off my shoulders in a way that we have a reliable tool that helps us do the important work and doesn’t take all of our time trying to figure it out.”
That time matters because Not I But We isn’t finished growing.
The organization wants to employ more survivors, expand its impact, and raise more money to support that work.
The fundraising technology needs to keep up without becoming another job for Madison and her team.
Reclaiming time for what matters
Not I But We came to CauseVox because it needed something affordable and easy to use.
It stayed because the platform could grow with the organization.
And for Madison, the people behind the platform matter too.
“I know that they really do care about nonprofits and fundraisers and that we’re not just a figure, but we’re actually real people that they want to support.”
When asked what she would tell another nonprofit considering CauseVox, Madison didn’t hesitate.
“It’s worth it. Do it.”
Then she summed up the value of the platform even more simply:
“If you want to reclaim your time, choose CauseVox.”
For Not I But We, that’s what having connected fundraising technology ultimately provides.
Less time exporting. Less time reconciling. Less time figuring out how different systems fit together.
And more time building relationships, raising money, and growing the mission.
Find a fundraising platform you can grow into
CauseVox brings fundraising, peer-to-peer, donor management, email, and reporting together so your team can start simple and add what you need as you grow.
Schedule a demo with CauseVox to see it in action.
