The quest for the perfect nonprofit CRM is kind of like the search for the holy grail. We know it’s out there, but no one seems to be able to nail down where it is. Part of that is due to the fact that each organization’s needs diverge widely — what works for one nonprofit may not work for another.
Since this is such a common topic in our industry, we thought it might be helpful to put together a how-to guide in researching, testing, and selecting your new nonprofit CRM. And at the end of the blog, we’ve listed a few of the platforms we’ve worked with personally! (Jump there if that’s all you’re really looking for.)
What is a CRM for nonprofits?
First, let’s refresh our definition of a CRM. In a more general sense of the word, it’s a customer relationship management system. In the nonprofit world, it also incorporates donor data, allowing you to collect donations and track donor relationships.
Being able to easily see how much has been raised in a given time period, identify donors across a specific giving segment, and other critical numbers toward your fundraising efforts allows you to focus your time and resources on maintaining and cultivating relationships with your donors, rather than dealing with their data. Time saved = more dollars raised!
How do I decide on the right CRM for my organization?
Start with a review of the current landscape:
- How many data sources do you have? And how are they being updated?
- What type of data do you store?
- How many contacts do you have? How many do you plan to migrate?
- How many users do you have? How many will you need in the future?
- How many emails are you sending per week? Per month?
- How are you collecting donations? What kind of donations are you collecting? (Credit card, checks, pledges, etc.)
- How are you pulling reports? Are they standard or custom?
- Do you want to automate donor journeys and customize segmentation?
- How many different platforms are you using?
Understanding how you’re going to use the CRM will help you understand what you need from your CRM. Along those lines, something to consider…
Who will be using the CRM?
So many people are critical to carrying out an organization’s mission — staff, volunteers, interns, etc. How many of those individuals will be working within the CRM? What about 3-5 years from now? So many people are critical to carrying out an organization’s mission — staff, volunteers, interns, etc. How many of those individuals will be working within the CRM? What about 3-5 years from now? What sort of training and support will you need to help onboard new staff or handle day-to-day issues? Answering these questions and understanding how your organization may grow will be critical to selecting the right CRM for your nonprofit.
What features are the most important to you?
Identifying your key needs and ensuring that they are aligned with your goals is a great first step toward knowing what you’re looking for in a new nonprofit CRM. Next, determine what are your must-haves and what are your nice-to-haves? Here are the features we tend to see the most across our clients’ CRMs:
- Donor management: the ability to track donors and their giving across segments — such as individual donors, corporate and foundation donors, grantors, pledges, etc.
- Fundraising: the ability to collect and process donations and have donor profiles automatically updated with giving information.
- Communication: the ability to send emails — newsletters, automated messages, personalized messages based on segmentation, etc. — and measure email engagement and conversion rates.
- Event management: the ability to support event registration, communications, attendee management, and post-event analysis.
- Reporting: the ability to display data as it pertains to your KPIs and easily analyze information to understand what’s working, where there are opportunities, and what to re-evaluate.
- Customer support: the ability to get technical and programmatic support through articles, emails, live chat, etc.
Beyond these key functionalities, we’ve seen more complex capabilities, such as the ability to track and measure social media engagement; volunteer tracking and management; peer-to-peer fundraising; membership management; text-to-donate; and so much more.
For large organizations where multiple development officers are engaging with a donor, a CRM that can be used on mobile is key. For smaller organizations with a small budget who want their CRM to really focus on the fundraising aspect, being able to integrate with other software, such as accounting software or email marketing platforms may be necessary.
Each organization has different needs. Understanding what tools are most necessary to yours will help you identify the best nonprofit CRM for you. And again, we encourage you to think beyond what you need next year. What will you need three years from now? Five years from now? The idea is to make a decision that can grow with your organization, meeting your needs in the short-term as well as the long-term. (Plus the benefits of not switching systems every few years cannot be emphasized enough!)
What about my budget?
To best gauge what system would work best for your organization, make sure you have a clear idea of what your current monthly and yearly outlay is for your current tech stack. Is there more money in the budget to expand your capabilities? Or do you need to scale down to minimize expenses? Knowing where you fall financially can help you determine from the get-go which solutions will be within your budget and which to immediately eliminate before getting too into the weeds.
On that note, many of today’s models rely on subscription fees versus a one-time cost. Depending on the pricing structure, training and onboarding may be included.
Finally, remember to consider costs from all angles! For example: if you’re integrating email marketing or events marketing into the desired CRM, what does your budget look like without those respective costs? If the CRM’s fee is a bit beyond what you’d like to spend ideally but meets your needs in the short- and long-term, is there a capacity-building grant you can apply for to cover those costs?
Thinking creatively and holistically about the big picture can help you find the best CRM for your budget — now and into the future.
How do I narrow down the options?
Well, here’s the good news. You’ve identified your needs. You’re clear on your budget. So now it’s time to see which platforms meet your criteria!
But it’s not enough to just identify the platform. You need to also test it and make sure that it works in a way that feels seamless to your organization and users. From the extensive list of options out there, choose three to five to test out.
When we say test out, we don’t mean letting a sales representative walk you through a demo. We mean asking for a sandbox environment where you can play around with adding and manipulating fake data, using the functionalities fully, and seeing what feels intuitive and what feels clunky. If there are different staff members or volunteers leading different priorities — ie. communications, major gifts, annual gifts, events, etc. — they each should be able to access the platform too.
As a team, decide:
- What features did you like?
- What features did you find difficult to use?
- How easy was it to pull reports? Understand them?
- Did automating certain aspects of the day-to-day streamline efficiencies or add to your workload?
- On the whole, how user-friendly did it feel?
- Is the new platform better, the same, or worse than what you’re currently using?
- If support services were used, how helpful were they?
From assessing your needs to clarifying your budget to testing the platform, you now have a pathway to finding the best solution for your needs!
Popular Nonprofit CRM options
This is the part you really came for, we know. Here is a list of the most common nonprofit CRMs we see in our work, in no particular order.
Good luck and let us know which platform works best for you! (Or if we missed one that you love and should be added to the list, tell us that too!)
This blog was co-authored with our friends and colleagues at Nonprofit People! Thank you, Jessica DiVito and Megan Frenz for sharing your expertise with us for the benefit of our readers!
