During these times of unprecedented turbulence in the financial markets, nonprofits are faced with tough choices: Should you lay low and try to weather it out? Risk spending money and resources to hold events in the hope of garnering more donations? Hit the streets with your message? Send more appeal letters?
The answer is simple: by directing efforts toward better communication and stronger relationships with individual donors, nonprofits can drastically reduce the impact of a weak economy. Now is the time to be putting good donor management practices to work, and, to do so, you need good donor management software.
FundRaiser Software has a history of providing stable, intuitive relationship management software to nonprofit organizations since 1983, and we can help you, too!
Our software will help you:
Strengthen critical donor relationships with a complete donor profile at your fingertips.
Ask with confidence by identifying giving trends and major donors.
Appeal to the individual with customized, personal letters.
Leverage the relationships between your donors for bigger gifts with relationship tracking, solicitor codes and soft credits.
Spend less time on data-entry and more time fundraising with Integrated Web Forms that do the work for you.
Our two premier donor management programs can help you get through these tough economic times by building lasting relationships with your donor base.
A unique donor management package that puts you in control with optional modules to enhance and increase its functionality. Ready to take control of your donor relationship building?
Our all-inclusive, flagship donor management program with unlimited custom fields and donor storage. Ready to experience the power of a professional?
Other organizations may be trying to maintain their donor relations with QuickBooks®. See this article to understand the limitations of accounting software when used to replace donor management software: What Are the Limits of QuickBooks® For Your Donor Management.
Fundraising software (more properly called "donor management software") helps you keep track of your donors and prospective donors and all the information associated with them, including contribution data. It helps you manage your donors by dealing with routine correspondence chores, and helps you manage your fundraising activities with a variety of reports.
Developing relationships with your donors is central to all fundraising efforts. Regular contacts that convey the importance of your mission through stories that touch your donors hearts or incite their passion keep the donations coming in. It takes a human to truly connect with another, but good software simplifies the mechanics of the process so that you can focus on what you do best.
Most organizations find that using a donor management program increases donations and reduces costs, while reducing stress and frustration. Here's how:
Organized data maintenance: all donor information (name, address, phone, etc) and giving history, plus notes about a person is in one place, which is easily accessed. In addition, you keep track of which mailings the donor has received, what events she attended, why he gives to your organization, and lots more. Pretty much any data you can think of gathering, you can and should keep in this program.
Increase your level of fundraising with less time and aggravation: Whether it's simply automating the printing of thank you letters, tracking the effectiveness of 4 different variations of a mailing, or implementing a new membership program, donor management software will make it possible.
Increase your productivity: Reports that track each fundraising activity (appeals letter, newsletter, event, etc) and show you just what works and what doesn't will impress your Board of Directors, and give you the information you need to make improvements. Tracking volunteer efforts, board member visitations to major donors, printing lists of donors and phone numbers for a phonathon . . . the ways a donor management program can help are limited only by your imagination!
Any donor management program should be able to help with each of the following:
The task of finding new fundraising software can be a daunting one; even for seasoned fundraising professionals. The purpose of this page is to help clarify some of the differences between our three programs: FundRaiser Basic, Select, and Professional, and to help you determine which one might be the best fit for your organization.
Keep in mind that there are many resources available to you on this website that will help you with your evaluation process. Our Sales Team can also be very helpful in determining which program will suit your needs best, and FundRaiser Support is always available to help you with your technical questions.
A common misconception about donor management software is that the bigger your donor list is, the bigger the program you will need to manage it. This is not necessarily the case - we have organizations with fewer than 500 donors using FundRaiser Professional, and others with lists of over 20,000 donors who are quite happy with FundRaiser Basic... and everything in between.
There are three main factors that you should consider as you begin evaluating fundraising software:
The ways in which you communicate with your donors. For example: direct mail, email, or personal telephone calls.
The different methods of donations you accept. For example: Pledges, Tributes, Split Gifts, Soft Credits, Memberships, etc.
The information you would like to track about your donors. For example: correspondence, giving patterns, events they have attended, interests, etc.
If you aren't sure that you even need donor management software at this point, you may want to start with a discussion of the primary functions of donor management software, and what each of the FundRaiser programs can do in those areas.
Keep in mind, we are the FundRaiser Family. FundRaiser Software makes it easy to upgrade from one level to another. You never lose any time or money when you do, so there's no harm in starting small now.
Here are some links to pages that will help you with the process of determining where to start your evaluation:
Finally, talk to us. We encourage you to speak with Sales and Support about your requirements and goals for your organization before making any purchase decisions.
Is donor management software right for you? Will it solve the particular problems facing your organization? The following case studies cover a wide variety of organizations and fundraising activities, and show how many of the features of FundRaiser work in real life situations.
If you are already a FundRaiser user, we hope you'll find inspiration and tips in these stories of other users.
