What are the benefits of a CRM for charities?
The benefits of a CRM for charities cannot be ignored, especially if you want to operate more efficiently while seeing a return on investment (ROI). To provide an insight into this, a survey conducted by Charity Digital and Salesforce found that 82% of the charities they contacted stated that a CRM system saved them valuable time and increased their income [1] .
As a charity or Not For Profit, you may be looking into potentially implementing a charity CRM for your organisation. However, applying this to your sector may feel like a minefield with what seems like a million questions running through your mind. At Access, we’re here to answer any queries you may have, and in this article we will be covering why charities are adopting this software by detailing the benefits of a charity CRM.
Why more charities are choosing CRM systems
A lot has changed for the non-profit sector since the global pandemic hit in 2020. Charities had to dramatically overhaul the way they raised their vital funds, at a time when service users needed their help more than ever. Lockdowns and social distancing measures meant that in-person donations or fundraising through shops on local high streets were paused, leaving organisations with no choice but to quickly move online.
However, moving on from the negativity of COVID-19, there are a number of reasons that could potentially influence your decision to implement charity CRM software. For instance, you can experience benefits that improve the efficiency of your operations in crucial areas such as donor retention and fundraising to help successfully achieve your overall mission.
This is supported by a study composed by ‘blackbaud’, who found that organisations who use CRM systems were more likely to see an income increase. In the study, 43% of those who used a CRM shared that their income had increased over the period of a year compared to 33% who did not use a CRM [2].
In addition to these examples, the benefits of a charity CRM can enable you to enhance your organisation by achieving the following.
Increase your efficiency
Implementing a charity CRM can help streamline the processes across the key areas of your organisation. These can include:
- Donor management - Store and manage the information of your donors.
- Fundraising management - Track and measure the success of your fundraising campaigns.
- Marketing & communications - Manage automated communications such as newsletters, appeals, and ‘thank you’ notes.
- Charity event management - Manage events with insights into registration form fills and ticket sales.
- Volunteer management - Manage your volunteers by accessing their assignments and schedule.
- Grant management - Manage your grants and monitor their progress.
- Data compliance - Comply with data privacy and data protection such as GDPR.
By having a clear view of the core activities of your organisation, it allows you to put your time into the tasks that support its core mission.
Enhance your supporter engagement and retention
A charity CRM enables you to manage your donor journey from their first interaction with your organisation to the point where they are deemed a ‘loyal supporter’ by providing donations.
Firstly, based on your donor’s characteristics such as their demographics, engagement, or donation history, you can segment them into different groups which allows you to gain a better understanding of what type of content is relevant to who. For example, you can ascertain who is interested in volunteer opportunities, and those who may be actively seeking to support donation campaigns. Based on information such as this, you can then send personalised, multi-channel content such as emails, SMS, and social media posts with relevant content.
By taking this approach, not only can it help drive your supporter engagement, but it can in turn help to retain your donor’s and encourage them to donate in the future.
Find out more about successful donor relationships
Engage with deeper analytics
Not only can a charity CRM encourage personalised campaigns, but it can also provide key insights that allow for informed decisions to enable continued improvement to your processes.
A CRM will collect data and present this in the form of a dashboard that provides in-depth analytics surrounding the key areas of your organisation such as:
- Donation campaigns
- Events
- Volunteer opportunities
Having access to data based on specific areas of your organisation allows you to focus your time and energy efficiently to make swift decisions that can both improve certain aspects of your organisation while encouraging them to work more cohesively together.
Prioritise internal communication
Although communication with your supporters is paramount, the importance of internal communication cannot be ignored. If you can’t get your own house in order, chances are it won’t bode well when you reach out externally.
Every member of staff who has access to a charity CRM will be able to see key information across your organisation. By understanding what is happening in other departments, the context of your campaigns will become much clearer which will in turn allow for more practical cross-team collaboration to help reach your organisation’s goals.
Embrace automation
Time is a factor and by automating your processes where necessary can allow your team to focus on priority areas of your organisation.
A CRM can therefore allow you to automate day-to-day tasks such as:
- Data entry
- Email campaigns
- Donation processing
Although automating these processes can potentially take human error out of the equation, it also allows you to successfully strategise more pressing campaigns around donations, events and voluntary opportunities.
What is a charity CRM and why is it important for charities?
A charity CRM is a portal for managing relationships with your supporters; whether they are your donors, event attendees, or volunteers. It is a piece of software that has the capability of storing key information about these individuals such as their personal details and the ways in which they interact with your organisation. With these insights, you can experience a deeper understanding of your target audience and make informed decisions to create more personalised and successful campaigns.
At its core, a charity CRM can streamline your processes and enable you to prioritise the areas that impact your organisation the most. Without one, every phone call, donor interaction, planned activity, or log of volunteer hours is likely to be stored on a mixture of paper notepads, spreadsheets, or separate software systems. This scattergun approach can cause confusion and lead to valuable information being lost. With a charity CRM, you can avoid this from happening, leaving you with free time and peace of mind
A CRM stores everything in one place, so it’s easy to make decisions based on insights and notice trends by cross-referencing data. For example – your system will be able to quickly identify regular donors, allowing you to thank them appropriately and boost loyalty. If your CRM is integrated with e-marketing software, intelligent automation can trigger responses based on a donor’s behaviour too, keeping your audience engaged without needing to invest more time or money.
Actions like processing direct debit payments are often integrated into CRMs, making it easy to view the progress of each fundraiser and keep control of your finances. Reporting is made simple, thanks to the data and analytics a CRM can collate, leaving your staff and volunteers with more time to spend on making a difference.
Gain an in-depth look into the benefits and value-added features of our charity CRM
What are the benefits of a CRM for charities?
At The Access Group, we’ve worked with over 2,000 not-for-profit organisations and our systems have helped them to raise over £250m+.
In addition to the benefits outlined earlier, a CRM can allow you to:
Support remote working
Remote working used to be essential for mitigating the risk of the pandemic, but now it’s a preference for many people. As a charity working with lots of volunteers for jobs like fundraising or marketing, remote working is a great way to enable more people to help, wherever they are based.
A CRM system stores data from every business function all in one place, making remote collaboration simple. Whether a colleague needs to know last month’s fundraising statistics or to learn what email campaign went out that day, one login to the system gives them access to this information.
Manage GDPR compliance
Whenever you’re collecting data, you’ll need to comply with GDPR guidelines. If not, you risk being faced with hefty fines and can quickly lose public trust. A good CRM will have been built with this in mind, with plenty of virtual ‘paper trails’ and transparency to make sure that each donor’s preferences are logged, and all data is stored securely.
Centralise your data
Whether your goal is to facilitate home working, manage GDPR or to simply streamline day-to-day tasks, it’s a good idea to have all of your data in one place – with one login that gives you access to everything you need. This also makes reporting to stakeholders much easier, as you’ll be able to find the charts, numbers and statistics you need within one system. Chichester Cathedral previously used three separate systems, before migrating to one cloud-based CRM
Easily manage fundraisers and events
A good CRM system can manage every aspect of your fundraising campaigns and events, from volunteer schedules and sign-ups to grant applications and supporter communications. Spend more time creating meaningful campaigns and reduce the burden of administrative tasks. Built-in integrations can process direct debit payments too, helping to support regular giving.
Nurture donor relationships
Build strong relationships with your supporters by targeting your communications based on data. Use your CRM system to learn a person’s donation history, past event attendance and if they’re taking part in any current fundraising activity. With this, you can turn each interaction into an informed conversation, leading to better conversion rates and long-term support.
Save time
This is perhaps the biggest benefit a good quality CRM can offer for charities – look for one with the specific features and software integrations you need to get the most from your investment. When Spinal Research switched to our simple-to-use CRM, it freed up 10 hours of working time a week per person.
Learn more about how our Access Charity CRM could benefit your organisation
What Next?
With donations being a fundamental part of a charity or Not For Profit’s success, maintaining a relationship with your supporters is crucial. The benefits of a charity CRM outlined not only allow you to gain valuable insights into the key areas of your organisation, but provide a means of strategising how to bring these closer together to work more cohesively and further enhance the donor journey.
At Access, we encourage you to continue your research into the various factors surrounding a charity CRM, while comparing respective provider, in order for you to choose a suitable solution for your organisation. In the meantime, why not contact us for more information? Our friendly team of experts are more than happy to provide you with more details surrounding the benefits of a CRM for charities and guide you in the right direction. Also, if you’re interested in enquiring about the cost of a charity CRM, we’ll be happy to share our pricing plan with you.
Contact us to find out how our charity CRM can benefit your organisation
More charity CRM resources
Resources
[1] Charity Digital (2019) CRM systems for charities: forecasting 2020 trends
[2] blackbaud (2021) The Status of UK Fundraising
