Best CRM for fundraising? Start with the marathon runner

In short, a fundraising CRM worth it's salt joins everything you need together, so you don't have to remember it all.

The basics? That Priya ran for her friend's dad. Which of her sponsors ticked the Gift Aid box. Who said yes to hearing from you, and what happened next.

Generic business CRMs can do some of this, but they're typically built around sales processes, not your supporters. Priya isn't a lead, and her friends aren't just a pipeline.

For UK charities, these six things tend to separate a CRM for fundraising from a contacts list with ambition:

• Gift Aid: Recording declarations against each supporter and helping you claim through HMRC.
• Consent: Clear records of who agreed to what, and when, to keep you on the right side of UK GDPR and PECR.
• Integrations: All the ways you fundraise should feed in automatically or easily, like giving platforms and your website.
• Readable reports: Income by campaign, retention, Gift Aid claimed. With any luck, the answers you need in minutes.
• Sensible pricing: Most UK charity CRMs price by the number of supporter records you have (though, watch out, some also charge per user in your team)
• A team that understands charities: Onboarding, training and support from people who understand your Gift Aid claim and a Christmas appeal.

Notice what’s missing though? Lots of specific features. While I love an on-screen flying unicorn as much as the next ex-fundraiser, it doesn’t tell you who sponsored Priya.

The best CRM for fundraising is usually the one your team opens happily on a wet Tuesday, not necessarily the one with every bell and whistle.

Full disclosure first. You're reading this on a supplier's website, and Access makes two of the CRMs below: Donorfy and Access Charity CRM. This as a starting point, and genuine guidance, not the final word on the best CRM for fundraising – and for your charity.

With that said, these are the names that come up most often in UK charity shortlists, and prices are readily-available starting points as of October 2026.

Built in means a ready-made integration from the CRM provider. Via add-ons means a separate tool, which may cost extra. Either way, ask to see it working in a demo.

Whatever the sticker price, ask about implementation, training and support, too. For some of these, it can cost more than the licence in year one.

Want a view that isn't from a supplier? Charity Excellence has a helpful free guide to CRMs. Surveys reflect existing customers, so pair them with a demo using your own data.

No, but they're two halves of the same relationship.

Peer to peer fundraising software is the bit Priya sees. It gives her a fundraising page, lets her sponsors donate and claim Gift Aid, and powers sign-ups for events like marathons and challenge treks. Enthuse, JustGiving, and Access Raise are familiar names for UK charities.

Your CRM is the bit Priya never sees. It's where her story is meant to live once the race is run: what she raised, why she ran, who sponsored her, and what each of them agreed to hear about next.

The gap between the two is where supporters can quietly go missing. If donations land in a platform but only reach your CRM via a monthly export, it's not as easy to thank the sponsors while the race is still fresh in their minds. And if the fundraiser's motivation (that friend's dad) never makes it across, your next message to them will feel like it's from, well, probably AI.

Willen Hospice in Milton Keynes (an Access Charity CRM customer) knows this gap well.

They use around 32 different fundraising platforms, and when Transformation Manager Tim joined, data from many of them wasn't consistently reaching its CRM.

After a focused clean-up, around 90% of its key data is now up to date, and new dashboards are giving fundraising managers "the tools and information they just didn't have before".

Read their story

Imagine two charities. Both have a Priya. Both see 40 sponsors give £1,800.

Charity A gets the donations in a monthly export from its fundraising platform. Someone uploads them in March. A few records don't match, a few duplicate, and nobody's quite sure which sponsors said yes to email. There's no note of why Priya ran. By summer, her 40 friends are just rows. When next year's race opens, Priya gets the same generic email as everyone else, and runs for someone else.

Charity B's data lands the same weekend, matched to existing records, with consent and Gift Aid intact. Each sponsor gets a thank you with Priya's finish photo. Three months later, they hear what £1,800 made possible. A handful give again by Christmas, and Priya's already signed up for next year. She's bringing a friend.

Same race. Same money raised on the day. A wildly different year after.

Charity B doesn't necessarily need a vastly bigger team or a fancier CRM. It needs the right data in the right place, and a few well-timed automations. 

Thames Hospice (a Donorfy customer) is a real-life Charity B.

When adding a half marathon route to its Sunflower Walk, participant sign-ups flowed straight from Eventbrite into their CRM, initiating personalised emails to walkers. Vanessa Biggs, Head of Data, Insight and Supporter Care, says those emails were "the pinnacle in connecting our supporters to our charity's cause".

Participant numbers more than tripled to 750, and the walk raised £101,545, more than 300% up on the year before. One group of 50 walked in memory of a loved one cared for at the hospice, raising over £16,000 between them. A whole team of Priyas.

Read their story

A good demo shows you how a CRM would work for your charity, not just what it can do.

These three questions help you get the most from yours:

• "Show me Priya." Ask them to walk through a sponsor's journey, from a donation on your peer to peer platform to a thank you email. Watch how many clicks, exports and manual steps it takes.
• "What will this cost in three years?" Include implementation, training, support and what happens when your database grows. Transparent pricing makes trustee sign-off much easier. As Léo Somer, Community and Fundraising Manager at Care for Wild, put it: "Donorfy had the most transparent pricing model of the CRMs we considered and the trustees were happy with the cost."
• "Can we try it with our own data?" A free trial or sandbox, used by the people who'll use it daily, is a great way to get out of the box.

You came here with that question, so you deserve an answer. The best CRM for fundraising is the one that keeps Priya’s 40 friends close.

What that looks like depends on you. For a small charity, it might be an easy-to-use UK system with Gift Aid built in. For a university or large membership body, something deeply customisable. Either way, it needs to be a system your team will actually use, connected to the places your supporters give.

A fundraiser like Priya brings you 40 new people who already care, because someone they love asked them to. The right CRM makes sure that’s a beginning, not a finish line.

See how Donorfy looks after your Priyas

You can start a free trial and see how it feels. No commitment, no jargon – just a clearer picture of what's possible.

Disclaimer: This blog is intended for informational purposes only and reflects information accurate as of October 2026. We recommend using this guide as a starting point and exploring the official websites of any platforms that catch your eye for the most up-to-date details on features, pricing and support.