5 Ways Fundraising Software Can Grow Your Nonprofit

You’ve heard that fundraising software can help grow your organization. Fundraising software can turbocharge your nonprofit’s efforts in a variety of ways, ultimately boosting fundraising results and streamlining operations while reducing the amount of time your team members spend on manual tasks. But how does fundraising software do all of this? Here are five ways fundraising software can grow your nonprofit.

How Fundraising Software Can Grow Your Nonprofit

Once you have an existing database of donors (we recommend starting with a minimum of 100 contacts), you can put that data to work. The knowledge you glean from your fundraising software will inform the types of campaigns you run, the messages you use, what you ask for, and how you thank your donors.

1) Gain Key Insights

Using fundraising software will give you powerful insights into your donors’ characteristics, preferences, and giving behavior.  You’ll be able to see, at a glance, information like:

• Which donors are connected
• What projects and programs a donor is most interested in
• How much a donor has given to specific projects and programs
• What types of campaigns a donor has been most responsive to
• What time of year a donor is most likely to give

2) Personalize and Customize Communications

Knowing this information and being able to easily sort donors by various characteristics allows you to segment your donors by any given criteria. You can then craft your communications accordingly. Customizing and personalizing communications doesn’t just result in increased donations. It also creates a better donor experience, increasing donor retention. Donors feel known, understood, and valued, generating a stronger bond with your organization.

3) Work With Accurate Data

When you use multiple software systems and spreadsheets, your data is spread out and difficult to keep up-to-date. You may update information in one place but forget to update it in another. Additionally, the amount of time required to update data in multiple locations results in delays, meaning that campaigns are created with inaccurate data. With fundraising software, when a change is made in one area of the system, the software automatically updates that information across the system. And many types of data are automatically generated and updated based on donors’ interactions with your campaigns and communications.

4) Streamline Processes

Trying to manually keep data up-to-date and create fundraising campaigns takes a significant amount of time. Nonprofit staff are unable to keep up with overwhelming workloads when they have to do all these tasks without the aid of software. Fundraising software can streamline a myriad of processes, from creating online fundraising pages to sending gift receipts, relieving pressure on busy team members. 

5) Gain More Time for Strategic Work

With all the time they’re saving, your staff will be able to devote more attention to more strategic work. They can focus on optimizing the donor experience, generating new ideas for fundraising campaigns, and analyzing giving data to better target donors in the future. This strategic work will position your nonprofit to generate more revenue and better fulfill your mission.

Thanks to more actionable donor insights and the help of automation, fundraising software gives your organization the power to function more effectively and build stronger relationships with your donors. As a result, your organization will see increased revenue and decreased operating costs, the ultimate benefits of using fundraising software. 

Want to learn more about how fundraising software can help your organization and what to look for in fundraising software? Read our Buyer’s Guide to Nonprofit Fundraising Software.

Guest Author: Laura MacPherson