Can Software Tools for Nonprofits Revitalize Your Fundraising? The Answer is Yes, if You Know How to Use Them.
A quick Google search will tell you, there are dozens of options for fundraising software and tools for nonprofits. The best of them can not only power your fundraising administration, but give your organization whole new streams of revenue.
If you’re thinking about upping your organization’s online fundraising game, you’re in good company. Charitable organizations of every size are taking advantage of the market intelligence these tools for nonprofits can offer. As a managed services IT provider specializing in working with 501c3s and foundations, our clients often ask us what mix of tools for non-profits they should choose. The answer, of course, depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. Let’s drill down into the types of software out there, and what it can do.
Donor Prospecting Software
If donor development is your job, it can be a daunting task to generate a constantly evolving list of donor leads. Donor software, like DonorSearch, for instance, can come to your rescue. These tools can provide you with a surprising amount of intelligence about not just the donors you have, but the donors who should be next on your outreach list. How? By scanning publicly available databases of real estate and stock holdings, business ownership, and more.
A good donor tools for nonprofits should be able to help you track the donors you have—what they’ve donated, when you’ve communicated to them, and when the next touch point is scheduled. They can even automate that process for you, allowing you to tie in donor newsletters, automated emails, and event invitations.
The more powerful donor prospecting tools will not only flag families in your service area with “wealth indicators,” but they’ll let you break down those families through the generations, and track who’s donated, who hasn’t, and how you can communicate to them as a group to help spread influence.
Online Shopping Platforms with Charitable Bouncebacks
Mobile and desktop apps like ShopRaise can link your charity hundreds of major retailers like Macy’s, Walmart and Lowe’s. Customers download the ShopRaise app. Then, when they make purchases on these retailer’s sites, a small portion of the purchase price gets downloaded directly to your organization.
But it doesn’t stop there. In order to have the greatest number of charitable options for donations available to it’s app users, companies in this space are rolling marketing perks for nonprofits. They’re offering a database of landing pages, website widgets, website banner artwork, social media ads and more that will make it a snap to promote the service to your organization’s supporters. It’s an easy to use online fundraising tool for nonprofits, provided you do your part to publicize your involvement.
Matching Gift Software
Companies who offer to make matching gifts when their employees support nonprofits are one of the great treasures of the fundraising world. Are you making the most of every matching gift program that’s out there? There’s plenty of fundraising software and tools for nonprofits that can answer that question, like Double the Donation, for instance. Its database can help you find matching gift companies, and target their employees with messaging and advertising. When it comes time to direct donations, your organization will be top of mind.
Event Management Tools
Anyone who’s ever managed a nonprofit event knows—the are a feat of marketing, database management, sponsor relations, and volunteer wrangling. Fortunately, there’s a whole new raft of tools for nonprofits that can automate many of those headaches away. Tools like QGIV, for instance, can offer seamless event registration, manage silent auctions, keep your volunteer database updated, and even handle fun projects like peer-to-peer gamification for your volunteers. When you see how powerful and affordable some of these fundraising software and tools for nonprofits are, you’ll never struggle over a spreadsheet again.
Online Canvassing Software
Is grass roots canvassing a part of your organization’s toolkit? If so, there’s no reason to rely on clipboards and outdated prospecting lists. Tools like Grassroots Unwired can identify your prospects, divide them up into territories, store scripts and script branching and make contact reporting a breeze with mobile app interfaces.
Text to Give Tools
As any good fundraiser knows, half the battle is making donations easy. That’s where fundraising software and tools for nonprofits like Snowball come in. They can provide a whole host of tools that make it easy for people to donate to your organization by text, including linkable, customizable donation pages, an online silent auctions platform, event ticketing by text, and a customer relationship management platform to filter and track the data.
Comprehensive Campaign Management Tools
While there’s plenty of online fundraising tools for non profits that can help you manage a certain aspect of your fundraising operation, sometimes what you really need is a master tool that will allow you to keep all your online outreach efforts organized. Tools for nonprofits Salsa, Charity Engine, and others offer many of these services, like event management, donor tracking and communication all in one place.
We’d also encourage you to look into Salesforce. If you already use Salesforce to manage your marketing communications, you can take advantage of the platform’s free Fundraising CRM which allows you to do more donor tracking and customized workflows than you might have realized was possible.
Looking for More Online Tools for Nonprofits? Integris Can Help.
Integris can help you put together the software, hardware and networking underpinnings that can help your small and medium sized nonprofit run with the efficiency of an enterprise level company. With the extensive suite of scalable, affordable services we offer for nonprofits, your organization will be ready to take the next step, and choose its own suite of online development tools to further your mission.
If you want to learn more about how nonprofits are using technology to cut costs and streamline their operations. And if you’d really like to do your homework on modern nonprofit technology management, download our Nonprofit Essentials Kit. It’s filled with assessments, webinars, special reports and case studies designed to fast track your technology strategy, and take your operations to the next level. Give it a look!
