Choosing a donor software for nonprofits is a tedious task. Finding the right solution becomes more difficult because there are so many requirements to consider and so many more options from which to choose.
You might also be on the hunt for a particular type of software that solves just one key problem for your nonprofit. But how do you know which software is available and also popular with others?
And before all of those questions are answered, how do you decide if you need a donor software?
Do you need donor software?
You need donor software if:
- You are a small, medium, or large nonprofit and want to cut through the competition to nurture lasting relationships with donors (without a lot of manual work or intervention), ensuring repeat donations.
- You are an organization that engages in fundraising and needs to streamline the process. Charities, museums, NGOs, PTA groups, schools, churches, advocacy groups, and political campaigns are all examples of the types of organizations that would benefit from investing in the right donor software.
Once you are clear on your need for a good donor management software, you need to know what all a software can do for you. Don’t worry; we’ve made a list for that too!
What can a donor software for nonprofits do for you?
1. Manage donor outreach:
Donor outreach is a process with several different steps. These include:
- Finding potential contacts who could donate
- Reaching out to these contacts through emails, calls, or text messaging.
- Categorizing contacts according to different criteria like age, occupation, locations, and more.
- Targeted marketing to potential donors with information collected.
- Clean lists and keep them updated.
Read also: Marie Kondo-ing Your Contact List: How to Clean an Existing Contact List.
The ability of a donor software for nonprofits to accommodate all these processes will streamline your outreach efforts to a massive extent. Look for a software that can help you with these features.
2. Effectively manage relationships with donors
It is not only important to build contact lists and reach out to donors; it is also important to maintain a steady relationship with them.
On average, it takes almost two years to break even on donor acquisition costs! Considering the high cost of acquiring new donors, a cheaper and more long-term strategy would be to nurture your relationship with your existing donors.
The aim of managing relationships with donors is to ensure that your existing pool of donors is actively encouraged to donate to your organization time and again. They feel good about being associated with you, and they are reminded about the good that your organization is doing.
Quick tips for engaging donors:
- Send welcome emails to new donors and engage them in a conversation with your organization.
- Send ‘Thank you letters’ to your donors to thank them for a donation.
- Put the spotlight on the most significant contributors in your monthly, quarterly, or annual email newsletter.
A good donor software for nonprofits will surely have features targeted towards donor engagement or would at least let you integrate with another software that makes it possible.
Read Also: How To Craft The Perfect Donor Appreciation Letter
3. Manage communications
To create outreach campaigns and maintain relationships with your donors, your donor software tool needs to provide you with a wide range of communication solutions.
For example, CallHub provides a range of calling and texting solutions that allow you to manage your communications in a manner that fits you and your organization best.
- You could set up calling campaigns to reach out to an extensive list of donors.
- Send thousands of text messages at the push of a button.
- You could even have personalized text conversations with thousands of people simultaneously.
Read more about it in the software section below.
You need to figure out your communication strategy and requirements and find software that matches them.
4. Fundraising
Fundraising is the backbone that sustains nonprofit organizations. Here are fundraising features that a nonprofit donor software can include:
- Builds custom fundraising pages.
- Social sharing features so you can spread the word on your different social media handles.
- Personalized communications to reach out to donors.
- Gamification tools such as leaderboards and fundraising thermometers to accelerate your fundraising initiatives.
5. Data Management
Data management brings structure to your organization and your work process. It becomes easier to not only coordinate within your organization but also to train new staff.
Data management helps you:
- Streamline your workflow.
- Get insights on your performance and other metrics.
- Easy access to data.
- Organize data according to different tags and categories.
Read Next: The Donor Management Process: The Secret To Building Unreserved Donor Loyalty.
Top 5 nonprofit donor software solutions you MUST look at:
We’ve collated a list of our top donor software for nonprofits. Between fundraising, communications, and complete CRM solutions, they cover all bases!
Fundraising Software
ShopRaise
ShopRaise helps organizations raise funds for their cause through socially conscious shopping. When users purchase through ShopRaise, the proceeds go directly to organizations that have signed up with them.
ShopRaise provides an app that seamlessly integrates with a nonprofit brand to diversify its fundraising and engage supporters.
Notable Features:
- Shopping for a cause: Collaborates with schools, teams, clubs, faith-based and charitable organizations to turn everyday shopping into support for your cause.
- Cost-free marketing: ShopRaise will conduct outreach initiatives to different segments at no cost to you.
- Supporter engagement: Through everyday shopping, regularly engages your supporters by placing your organization wherever relevant. It adds more members to your donor funnel.
- Reach your goals: Earn up to 10% on each purchase to reach your fundraising goals.
- Brand customization: The entire user experience of the app is customized to display your brand. When users sign up through you, they view the app according to your brand style.
- Reporting suite: With their reporting suite, nonprofit organizations can thank donors, invite them to events, bring them into their donation funnel or even export them into a CRM.
| Pricing: ShopRaise is available to organizations for no cost. Retailers pay a nominal amount to get traffic to their site. |
Kindful
Kindful is built to integrate with tools that are already in use at an organization. It is built to bring together tools such as Quickbooks and MailChimp that different teams in your organization use and centralize data on one platform.
With Kindful, you can raise funds and engage with donors with ease. You can streamline everything, manage every donor touchpoint, and create reports for your staff and board.
Notable Features:
- Unlimited donation pages: You can create an unlimited number of donation pages. They are easy to build, simple to fill out, and automatically syncs with your database.
- Donor engagement: Their quick button and pop-up options keep donors engaged for longer, resulting in more donations.
- Event Registration: The events and ticket registrations feature enables you to create event landing pages, sell tickets, check-in attendees, and generate reports.
- Recurring gifts: Enables recurring giving while providing donors with the option of choosing which giving frequency works for them.
- Text-to-give: Provides donors with a shortcode to which they can message and donate directly.
- Payment options: You can use their payment processor to process debit card, credit card, and ACH payments online or integrate your existing payment processor.
| Pricing: Pricing at Kindful is determined by the number of contacts that an organization possesses. It starts at $100 /mo billed annually for 1000 contacts. For 70,000 contacts, users pay $700 /mo, which is billed annually. Organizations also have the option to request a quote for a higher range of contacts. |
EveryAction
EveryAction is a fundraising software for nonprofits built to make you work smarter. It simplifies fundraising communication across all channels to ensure you raise more money.
They serve small and grassroots organizations, mid-sized organizations, and enterprises.
Notable Features:
- Fully customizable forms: Nonprofits can build fully customized donation pages that can be embedded into their website. In this manner, you have complete control over the donor experience.
- Pre-filled forms: Pre-filled forms help increase conversions. EveryAction uses FastAction Network of saved contact and payment information to accelerate this process.
- Payment options: Donors have a choice between Apple Pay, PayPal, and Venmo payment options to make their donations.
- Personalization: EveryAction enables personalization, so donors feel more connected and are more inclined to support your organization.
- Cover costs: Donors can be given the option to cover additional costs associated with processing donated funds. This way, nonprofits get to keep 100% of the donated amount.
- Email marketing: With their email marketing feature, you can segment your audience and personalize your communication with each segment. Their tools include the drag and drop or HTML editor, one-click donations, marketing automation, etc.
- Broadcast messaging: Engage your audience by sending out Bulk SMS. EveryAction integrates with CallHub to help you send them out
| Pricing: EveryAction pricing starts at $109.00 per feature, per month. |
Communications Software
CallHub
Since donor engagement is the key to increasing donations, collecting funds, and managing relationships, CallHub provides the right communication tools to address those needs.
With a range of texting and calling software, CallHub is the go-to tool if you want to streamline your communications. And the best part? It easily integrates with leading nonprofits’ CRMs.
Notable Features:
- SMS opt-in: The SMS opt-in is a unique feature that allows you to collect phone numbers for your contact list and take the conversation further by encouraging responders to share basic information with you. You can find out age, location, gender, and other demographic indicators through this feature.
- Peer-to-peer texting: With the peer-to-peer texting feature, you can personalize your conversation with thousands of potential donors simultaneously. You can nurture interest around your events, encourage donations and rally people behind your cause through personalized conversations.
- Mass texting: Mass texting allows you to reach thousands of people within seconds. It is a great option to send event reminders, donation links, fundraising, etc. It saves you the time it would otherwise take to go through each contact and message them individually.
- Voice Broadcast: Much like mass texting, voice broadcast helps you make a large number of calls simultaneously. Prerecorded messages are played to receivers for promotions, updates, etc. What’s more, the Press-1 campaign tool under this feature allows you to collect survey responses, donor information, and much more.
- Autodialer: CallHub provides three types of autodialers – fast click dialer, predictive dialer, and power dialer. All three dialers aim to increase call productivity and ensure volunteers spend more time speaking on calls than making them.
| Pricing: CallHub has different subscription models ranging from a $0 ‘pay as you go’ subscription to a $499 /month ‘scale’ pack. You can even start a 14-day free trial to know more. |
CRM solutions for small nonprofits
DonorPerfect
DonorPerfect boasts of increasing fundraising by 20% for all its nonprofit clients. A perfect solution for small nonprofits, DonorPerfect’s features are worth exploring.
Notable Features:
- Synchronized data entry and payment processing: Feeds donor data directly to your system.
- Automated data entry: Mobile-friendly forms that encourage donating and collect donor data.
- Report templates: You can build your own reports, or DonorPerfect lets you choose between 70 standard reports for nonprofits.
- Tasks and emails: Effective task management and email marketing tools to engage donors.
- Fundraising tools: Easy to organize and manage fundraising events. You can manage attendance, seating arrangements, and more.
| Pricing: Pricing starts at $99 per month for 1000 constituent records and goes up to $799 per month for 75,000 constituent records. |
You May Also Like: How To Select The Best Donor Management CRM For Your Nonprofit (With Recommendations)
Before you get started
While we’ve listed some excellent donor software solutions for nonprofits, it is also important to know that you must be clear on your requirements before selecting any software. What are your goals? Are you looking for a communications tool or an end-to-end management solution?
Knowing which software addresses your needs perfectly and aligns with your budget will be the key to choosing a great donor software.
If you’d like, CallHub’s 14-day free trial is open for you!
