Why Your Nonprofit Needs a CRM Now

Nonprofits talk all the time about the importance of having CRM software, but is it really necessary? The short answer is yes. However, since costs are always a concern for nonprofits, you should know why a CRM is essential. For starters, it’s going to save you a lot of time and stress and help expand your mission. So let’s take a look at what a CRM is and how it’ll benefit your organization in the long run.

What is a CRM?

A CRM, or Customer Relationship Manager, is software that manages all your nonprofit’s relationships and interactions with previous and potential donors. A CRM stores your donor’s contact information, conversations, and donation amounts. In turn, that stored data helps you run email campaigns, plan fundraising strategies, garner more volunteers, notify people of upcoming events, and more.

Why use a CRM?

Without a CRM, nonprofits often turn to Excel spreadsheets to manage their donor’s contact information. The downside is that spreadsheets make it impossible to keep every donor’s information updated with previous interactions, donation amounts, and so on. Without that data, your organization will struggle to maintain a close relationship with your donors; which results in less funding, volunteers, and people attending your events. With a CRM, however, all your data is stored in one place and it’s easy to track and locate donor information that’s current. Spreadsheets don’t come close in comparison.

Better Understand Donors

Your nonprofit would be nowhere without your donors. So in order to retain them, you need to know why they support your cause and how they came to support it in the first place. The best way to find that out is by communicating with them. That’s where a CRM helps. With a CRM, you can track all your previous communication with donors and learn why they donate and what led them to your mission. Using spreadsheets, you lose track of that communication and will struggle to stay in touch with your base.

Strengthen Fundraising Campaigns

Email campaigns play a key role in fundraising. They inform donors of upcoming events, how their donations are impacting the community, and any important news you want to share. Without a CRM, managing email campaigns is extremely difficult. You have to manually add each person to a list and create separate lists for each type of donor. You also have to update those email addresses one by one if they change. CRMs make it easy to narrow down who you want to include in your email lists and set up times when you want to send emails out. You can view the open and click-thru rates, set up automatic reply emails for whenever someone donates, customize messaging, view retention rates, and more.

Less Burdensome and Time Consuming

Using spreadsheets might seem like a good idea until you add up the hours. Yes, spreadsheets are free, but they do nothing for you other than store a limited amount of information. Hours can be spent maintaining your spreadsheets; whereas you’ll spend minutes in a CRM. On top of that, a CRM can store more historical donor data. All that time you save can be used to grow your mission. The choice is clear.