Benefits of a Donor Management Platform

Strong relationships with donors and volunteers form the foundation of a successful nonprofit organization. Utilizing an effective donor management platform makes building those strong relationships possible.

Whether you represent a large, global nonprofit or a smaller, local one, the scope and success of your work rely on the people who contribute their resources and talents. Your donors want to know that their gifts matters, make a difference, and are appreciated—donor loyalty begins when these conditions are met.

In a world where there are countless causes to care about, nonprofits rely on donor loyalty to survive. Building relationships with your donors are the most impactful way to increase this loyalty.

A powerful donor management platform is a crucial tool to help nonprofits build relationships with their donors. Wondering how? Here are some important benefits of a donor management platform for nonprofits.

Donor Management Platform Benefit #1: Save Time

An effective donor management platform can save you dozens of hours of work each week. Managing your data without a donor management platform is a nightmare. Which spreadsheet did you put those ticket sales in? Who is this money from which just appeared in our account? Did all of these donations come in from that email we sent or was it something else entirely?

Messy data is full of missed opportunities—missed thank you notes, missed asks full of potential, missed time your staff and volunteers could be used to do the important work of your organization.

CASA, Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children, provides volunteers to advocate for individual children as they face court hearings on their way to new foster homes and schools. Their work is personal and indispensable and takes a huge amount of human power. Their advocates’ time should be spent helping children, not messing with data.

Investing in a good donor management platform means investing in easy, faster, better data management.

Donor Management Platform Benefit #2: Know Your Donors

Many nonprofits put their contributors in unnecessary silos—volunteers in one, donors in another when in fact, either one is the best source for the alternative kind of contribution.

Volunteers are the best fundraising prospects because they form tight relationships with your team members and care deeply about your cause. A donor management platform helps break down the barriers that cause you to only ask certain people for certain things. When you see with your data reports the giving patterns of your loyal volunteers, you can see the opportunities you’re missing.

Homeless Children’s Playtime Project, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., who provides healing play to children in the city’s homeless shelters, thinks first about volunteer recruitment and management since their biggest change agent is people power. Yet these individuals who show up week after week to play with young children are the first place to look for crucial financial support.

With a powerful donor management platform, nonprofits like Homeless Children’s Playtime Project can double the impact of their most committed contributors.

You May Also Like: The Donor Management Process: The Secret To Building Unreserved Donor Loyalty.

Donor Management Platform Benefit #3: Communicate More Effectively

We’ve all been on the receiving end of a donation ask that feels offensive with its lack of awareness. You only ever ask me for money, but what is it even going towards? You act like it’s time for me to “step up” when I just gave every cent I could one week ago? You’re asking me for $500 when the largest donation I’ve ever given at once was $25? Some asks can make you want to scream, “Do you know me at all?”

Preventing these faux pas is another huge benefit of a donor management platform.

United Way, a global nonprofit comprised of many chapters, works to improve lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities to advance the common good. With so many chapters doing such varied work, nuanced outreach will inevitably get left behind occasionally.

A donor management platform can help organizations like United Way segment their data and target their outreach, ensuring they’re making the right asks at the right time.

Donor Management Platform Benefit #4: Make Informed Decisions

If you knew changing your fundraising email subject line could increase donations by five percent, you would do it, right? Of course, you would because each dollar given makes a difference.

A donor management platform helps you make smart decisions to improve your outreach and ultimately your outcomes. The internet is incredibly crowded, and it’s hard to cut through the noise and stand out.

You may have seen a post from Susie’s Senior Dogs, a nonprofit that raises awareness to the plight of homeless senior dogs, on your Facebook feed. Their team is great at getting their content in front of people, but which language, what time of day, what ask leads to the biggest engagement?

A donor management platform gives you the feedback to know what worked when and why helping you improve with each analysis.

An effective donor management platform is a pivotal tool for all nonprofits hoping to increase their donor and volunteer engagement, and thus expand their impact and reach. If you’re interested in taking advantage of these benefits check out Kindful’s Donor Management Platform.

Author: Bradley Martin

Kindful is a Nashville-based software company that provides powerful software to help nonprofits organize data and manage donors better. Featuring online donation pages, donor database, reporting tools, and integrated partnerships with industry-leading services, Kindful’s platform is designed to help nonprofit employees manage their donors easier, saving time and creating better insights. Kindful proudly powers thousands of world-changing organizations both in the US and internationally. For more information, please visit www.kindful.com