Nonprofits face a challenging landscape. While the causes they support should ideally fund donations, the reality is that the average nonprofit has to invest resources into drumming up interest. This task is challenging, but thankfully, technology is here to help.
At first glance, using electronic platforms to execute sophisticated workflows might seem like overkill to a nonprofit. However, donors these days are sophisticated and conditioned to highly-tailored outreach efforts. To succeed, nonprofits must emulate their for-profit cousins to generate donations and spread awareness of the causes they back.
Here are 3 electronic software every nonprofit must possess.
Customer relationship management
Customer relationship management, or CRM, is an essential tool for nonprofit success. CRM systems organize all customer information into a central dashboard, giving nonprofit teams an in-depth view of an account's status. Using a CRM for nonprofits, that is, a CRM designed specifically for nonprofits, include several workflows that help nonprofit teams tailor outreach and other activities minutely.
Here's an example of how a nonprofit can successfully use a CRM. Once a potential donor visits its website and enters contact information, the nonprofit can automatically include them in its email outreach campaigns. It can check how often the donor opens these emails and their level of engagement.
If the potential donor is highly engaged, the nonprofit can direct them towards campaigns that need higher donation amounts, or tailor messaging to encourage higher donations. If the nonprofit runs any in-person events, inviting these highly engaged members and encouraging them to spread the word is a great way to build awareness.
On the flip side, if a member is not engaged, the nonprofit can either try re-engaging them by reaching out directly or remove them from the list of potential donors. The CRM will record how often the nonprofit reached out and what the potential donor's response was during each instance of outreach.
With datasets like these at their fingertips, nonprofits can quickly figure out who to target and how. The result is more effective outreach and steady donations throughout the year.
Sales
Sales might not seem like a nonprofit function, but it does exist in a modified form. Successful nonprofit organizations run like a for-profit c, looking to maximize efficiency at each stage. While a profit-driven enterprise will have a deep sales team with a complex tech stack, nonprofits must focus on centralizing their prospect data and building customization into their outreach.
While a CRM system does this to a large extent, larger nonprofits will find that using a dedicated prospect tracking system like sales software will help them generate more donations from their prospects. These systems come equipped with advanced lead tracking features that assist nonprofits massively.
For instance, nonprofits can track whether a potential donor visited their websites after initial outreach and tailor their follow-ups accordingly. They can refer to specific pages the prospect visited and send them more material if they're interested. Best of all, nonprofits can automate follow-up messaging and sequences, freeing up significant time.
Many sales platforms for nonprofits come equipped with advanced features like ticketing and event management functions. For example, you can automatically redirect prospects to ticket purchase pages and integrate these workflows with your CRM seamlessly. As a result, nonprofits can launch and promote their events quickly, without investing too much time in manual processes.
The result is greater efficiency and more money raised.
Finance
Nonprofits might not turn a profit at the end of the year, but financial software is critical for every successful organization. From accounting to tax preparation software, nonprofits must keep track of their finances to ensure they don't fall foul of the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) strict definition of what qualifies as a nonprofit.
Accounting software will help a nonprofit's finance team get on top of monthly financial reports. Also, these software automatically pull expense data and other relevant financial information, transforming them into journal entries, and other accounting information. As a result, nonprofits can focus on important tasks like attracting more donors and executing their aims to leave a long-lasting impact.
Expense management is another area that nonprofits tend to grapple with. Every nonprofit seeks to minimize expenses, but tracking them can be daunting. Expense management platforms for nonprofits help them issue virtual and physical cards with predefined limits. This way, a nonprofit can issue pre-approved spending limits to its team members and control expenses instantly.
For example, a nonprofit can issue a fixed number of cards to its employees before running an event. This way, the event spending is controlled without manual oversight. Employees know how much they can spend and where they ought to focus their efforts.
These platforms also give nonprofit managers the data they need to spot trends in spending, informing future purchases and marketing budgets.
Software is critical to nonprofit success
Nonprofits face significant hurdles in the due course of business, but software can eliminate several challenges. From simplifying financial management to boosting customer interactions, software is the key to nonprofit growth.
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