10 Nonprofit CRM Features To Help Your Organization

First up is the most significant feature that you won’t find in some sales-focused CRMs: donor management.

Your nonprofit wants to manage your donors well, maintaining detailed donor records so you can better personalize communication and build stronger relationships.

Effective donor management can lead to increased donor retention, better donor engagement, and more successful fundraising campaigns because your donors feel more connected to your organization and plugged into your mission.

But here’s the problem: The larger your donor pool, the more difficult (if not impossible) it is to manage donor relationships manually.

Donor management capabilities in a nonprofit-focused CRM help you maintain and even automate aspects of donor communications and relationship management. Automation of constituent communications is key to scaling your fundraising efforts.

Effectively managing those relationships is especially important when you consider the nature of your donors. One report from Bloomerang found that 88% of total dollars raised come from just 12% of all donors — meaning that your major gifts (and major givers) are vital to your mission.

What’s more, recurring monthly giving is up 6% for the year, accounting for almost a third of all online nonprofit revenue (according to a wide-ranging benchmarking report). One-time gifts are great, but the more strategic goal is to turn one-time donors into recurring givers.

On the for-profit side, there’s some debate over how large an organization needs to be before CRM software makes sense. (We think the answer is “not large at all”; here’s the real truth about headcount and CRM software effectiveness.) This is even more salient in the nonprofit sector, where it often makes sense for even small organizations to use a CRM.

That’s because you may not have that many employees, but you do have plenty of people to manage. These include donors as we saw above but also your legion of volunteers.

Choosing a CRM with volunteer management capabilities helps you to keep volunteer information organized and accessible. With these tools in place, you’ll be able to more efficiently coordinate efforts and maintain volunteer engagement. It’s a smarter approach than putting out calls for volunteers on social media or trying to track volunteers for fundraising events in a spreadsheet!

Look for additional volunteer-centric tools like scheduling, tracking volunteer hours, and communication features that streamline volunteer management.

At Archarina, we accomplish both donor management and volunteer management by integrating our CRM platform, ArcCRM, with our HR management platform, ArcHRM. With these tools linked together, you can “hire” or onboard your volunteers in the same combined platform where you manage your donors.

As a nonprofit organization, you’re always conscious of your budget. There’s more to do than there are dollars (or volunteer hours) to do it. You’re constantly looking for hacks to improve efficiency because any resources you save on one task or workflow, you can reassign somewhere else.

Time-tracking software (available with ArcTime) helps nonprofits monitor how resources are being used, making it easier to report on staff and volunteer contributions. While we tend to think of time tracking as a corporate tool, not a nonprofit one, reporting on time may be important for compliance with some grant requirements, and it always helps with internal reporting.

Integrated communication tools allow for seamless messaging, email campaigns, and updates, ensuring that all stakeholders (both internal and external) are informed and engaged.

Automating communication is another key tactic that’s available in some nonprofit CRM software. By automating comms, your organization can more easily maintain consistent outreach with a minimal effect on employee workload.

To keep refining your outreach and/or fundraising strategies, you need a way to evaluate your existing efforts and determine what worked and what didn’t. That’s reporting and data analytics in a nutshell. These tools help you visualize data about your campaigns and initiatives, generating insights and custom reports that can help you make data-driven decisions for future campaigns.

For-profit organizations invest heavily here, seeking to optimize their sales efforts to bring in maximum value. Nonprofit organizations can and should do the same, engaging in data-driven decision-making to optimize both fundraising and operations.

Not every donor has the same goals, passions, or motivations — not to mention financial resources. So it makes sense to analyze and then segment your audience based on factors like these.

Look for a CRM suite that allows you to create different list segments based on criteria like donation history, donor behavior, engagement level, or volunteer activity. This way, you can deliver more relevant and impactful communication. By targeting the right audience with the right message, you’ll improve the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Your nonprofit already operates with a tech stack of some kind; a set of software tools that you rely on to get work done.

Look for a CRM that integrates well with the tools you’re already using, including:

Using integrations is a great way to minimize manual data entry and reduce the risk of introducing errors. It also frees up time for your staff to engage in mission-focused activities.

Donor profiles compile all relevant donor data in one place, including contact information, donation history, communication preferences, and engagement activities. Related to your list segmentation and donor management, a donor profile brings all the information into one place.

This ability is great for catching up on a donor’s information before direct contact. Let’s say you’re meeting up with a high-profile donor at an event. Pulling up the donor’s profile before you go gives you an effortless way to brush up on who this donor is and what connection points the donor has with your organization and mission.

Integrated payroll and billing features ensure that staff and contractors are paid accurately and on time — and that your own invoices and payments are managed effectively.

Financial transparency is key for nonprofit organizations, both for credibility and often for compliance. Centralizing your payroll and billing capabilities will help you achieve that level of transparency.

Archarina solves the payroll and billing question through an integration with ArcPay that allows nonprofits to effectively manage payments, as well as receivables through credit cards. ArcPay also handles month-end reconciliation, and takes care of disputes and kickbacks during transactions. ArcPay also provides lower transactional charges than many others in the industry.

Nonprofit organizations are often on the go, running donor events in rented spaces or coordinating volunteer efforts in the community. A mobile-friendly CRM centers all the information your team members need, no matter the size of their screen. This approach allows team members to access donor information, update records, and communicate with stakeholders from any location.