While the advantages of customer relationship management (CRM) systems for getting a full picture of your supporters have been discussed at length, CRMs are useful for a lot more than just centralising data on your patrons.
However, if you’re a nonprofit organisation just getting started with customer relationship management (CRM), it can be challenging to understand the ins and outs of the ways these systems work, what they can accomplish for you, and what choices you have. This is especially true if this is your first time utilising customer relationship management.
We shall address certain fundamental concerns.
Why should a company invest in a customer relationship management system?
A customer relationship management system enables a charity to centralise its data, which would otherwise be dispersed over numerous files, spreadsheets, and other platforms.
The information may have come from a number of different places, including online donation forms, payment gateways, and event management software. Donor and volunteer information, as well as details about fundraising and event planning and grant applications, may also be included.
With the correct customer relationship management system, nonprofits would have easy access to a centralised repository of data from which they could draw more informed conclusions. Because of this, we can enhance our interactions with our contributors, volunteers, and other departments. Event planning, fund-raising efforts, and other facets of the organisation can all benefit from this enhancement in management.
The fundraising industry considers this donor-centric lens the Holy Grail. You can better connect with a donor and manage your relationship with them if you have a thorough grasp of the various interactions the donor has with your organisation. That’s the good news about using a CRM, and it’s something to celebrate.
Why would a non-profit need a customer relationship management system, and what benefits would it provide?
With everything in one place, finding the facts you need to successfully engage people in conversation is not only expedited, but also simplified.
In order to comply with data privacy requirements and to be eligible to receive Gift Aid, it is vital to keep all donor information, documents, and declarations in one central location that is easy to access.
You must be aware of and comply with requests from individuals to view, copy, or delete any personal information you have stored about them. After Brexit, we will still be required to follow this stringent requirement of the GDPR in order to maintain compliance with our own data protection standards. When using a single supporter view, it is significantly easier to record and access consent decisions and to guarantee that all interactions and connections with a supporter can be traced. If you have a consolidated view of your users’ support requests, you can respond swiftly to their requests to see, copy, modify, erase any information or to modify access permissions.
Using a centralised database makes it much easier to ensure that there is not more than one entry for the same donor that contains minor discrepancies. This is essential for meeting the requirements of data privacy laws and for developing partnerships with donors.
Additionally, it promotes greater teamwork, which will help you become more proficient in your chosen task. As a result, you can make sure that all of your organization’s communications with donors share the same tone, regardless of which department is handling the information. Before, the message’s tone varied based on which group was actually sending it.
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems play an increasingly essential part in the integration of all of these data sources and the enhancement of the efficiency of operational operations as a company’s service offerings grow.
Integration should be a top priority. One tool that can help with this is a customer relationship management system, which can store all of this data in one place. As an organisation broadens its area of offers (from research to finance, services, and volunteers), integration with multiple data sources and technology, such as event management systems and payment processors, becomes an increasingly crucial component.
Most will also include reporting capabilities to keep you abreast of developments like new donations and cash flow. Some services, however, go above and above by offering more insightful reporting, which in turn allows you to get in touch with supporters on special dates like the anniversary of their initial contribution.
What criteria should we use to determine the best way forward?
For what issues does it need to provide a solution, and why do you need it in this form? Organizations vary greatly in their scope and usefulness; some focus exclusively on fundraising, while others could be useful in a variety of other areas.
Will it still be useful as your business evolves and what other programmes or hardware will it need to communicate with? Also, look into this, because it’s likely that you’ll want a system that can have new features added to it as your business does.
If you’re not sure if you need a charity CRM system built for fundraising especially, Salesforce provides a simple checklist to help you decide. This suggests the following features are important for a CRM tailored to the needs of philanthropic organisations:
- It is crucial to record connections between people and between different points in time.
- Maintaining a log of your donations is essential.
- Include a section in your notes where your coworkers can add their thoughts.
- Give your recommendations on the most important contributors to contact first.
- creating reports and linking financial resources to certain projects.
Compatibility with a wide range of payment processing systems
But regardless of the specific functions you seek in a CRM, there are three basics that must always be kept in mind.
After installation, whose responsibility is it to keep the system running and updated? In contrast to larger organisations, which often have teams and database administrators, the smaller organisation will still need someone to oversee it and ensure sure people are trained in how to utilise it.
Unless it’s something that can be solved with a simple, off-the-shelf product, you’ll need to find a partner to help you put it into action. It doesn’t matter if the answer is cutting edge; this holds true nonetheless.
You may be able to purchase a solution that does not call for any special training to implement if your business is small enough. But if your business is too large for off-the-shelf solutions, you’ll need to find a collaborator on this project if you want to see it through to fruition. In light of this, consider the people who will help you set up and implement the system as you make your final decision.
The overall cost of ownership of a charity CRM system should be calculated before a final decision is made. In order to succeed, budgeting is essential. A non-profit organisation may only think about the initial outlay of cash, ignoring the fact that ongoing costs such as those associated with support, hosting, data migration, and training will be incurred in years two through four. There is a chance that a system won’t seem so cheap after factoring in the full cost of implementation as well as the overall cost over the period of five years. A system that appears to cost more at first may, in the long run, save money.
Which primary choices pertain solely to nonprofit organisations?
If you’re just getting started in the nonprofit sector, you have a few different alternatives for customer relationship management (CRM) software that are tailored to your needs.
Initially developed as for-profit customer relationship management systems, these alternate solutions have since been modified to meet the needs of philanthropic organisations as well. These updates are now accessible to users. Nonprofits might also have access to specific commercial CRM platforms.