Up Your Nonprofit Fundraising Game With Technology

Fundraising is an integral and necessary part of successfully managing any nonprofit. You need to have the right people skills—to engage with donors, communicate and spread your passion for the mission, and convince them to give their time and/or money. Technology can also play a key role in helping you fund your operations. But according to a survey conducted by NetChange, only 11% of nonprofits report that their organization’s management of digital is effective. Here are six ways technology can help nonprofits up their fundraising game.

Use a CRM to capture and use donor information

A customer relationship management (CRM) system is a great way to capture information about your donors and their history with your organization. With all your donor details in one system, you have valuable data to improve your fundraising efforts. You can identify your top donors, determine the success of different fundraising tactics, personalize communications with donors based on their profile and history, and more.

Communicate with donors via every available channel

Persuading people to donate to your mission requires you to spread your message to where they are. Today, that’s not just email and phone. In fact, the most socially conscious—and willing to donate to good causes—generations are also the least likely to respond to those “old school” channels. In addition to social media, texting is becoming a must-do. And having your own app not only gives you a direct line to engage with donors, it also helps potential new donors find you via an app store, much in the same way they can find your website via a Google search.

Automate donor communications

Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes. Keeping donors engaged means staying top of mind. But that can take a lot of time to coordinate and execute. Newsletters and emails can keep your audience up-to-date on happenings, but transactional communications—like donation thanks or renewal reminders—can be automated to ensure they consistently go out at the right time with the right message. You can even set triggers to identify and recapture lapsed donors.

Bring your mission to life to engage donors

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but nothing is as impactful and indelible as an experience. While it may not be practical to give potential donors a first-hand look at your work, virtual and augmented reality lets you provide an immersive experience to help them better understand and connect to your mission—and encourage more or larger donations. Live-streaming is another tactic you can use to bring a remote event or experience to your entire donor base.

Drive recurring donations

Once you’ve persuaded a donor to contribute, you want to make ongoing support as easy as possible. Having an online donation system that enables donors to select a pre-determined amount of money on a regular basis lets you do just that. You’ll want to offer a variety of timeframes (e.g., monthly, quarterly, yearly), donation amounts, and payment options.

Demonstrate impact transparency

Donors are increasingly looking to understand nonprofits’ impact, and then make contribution decisions accordingly. Whether you issue a formal report, have a static “Impact” page on your website, or provide a real-time interactive impact “map,” you’ll need to measure key results. The details will differ from organization to organization, but you’ll need to capture the data, and if that information lives in multiple systems, you’ll either need to integrate those systems or consolidate the data. Then you’ll need to perform the analysis. And finally, you’ll need to present the results for your audience in the desired format.

Build and maintain a fundraising-ready IT infrastructure with BCM One

All this technology can increase your fundraising capabilities without having to bring on board an army of new volunteers. But your IT infrastructure must be able to support it—to ensure everything works as needed and delivers the best possible experience to your donor base. When you work with BCM One, you have a one-stop-shop partner who will collaborate with you to ensure your entire IT infrastructure is built to support your fundraising and other key initiatives. We can help you build a plan for sufficient capacity, bandwidth, and connectivity to fit your budget, we can monitor and manage it on an ongoing basis, and we can help you secure your sensitive donor information. With BCM One as your single point of contact, your team can focus on your mission. Contact us to learn more.