Of course, nobody wants to work inefficiently. But sometimes it just happens if you’re using outdated tools (like paper donation forms) or slow processes (like manually preparing thank you letters).

Luckily, these days there’s an app for everything —so your best bet is to find a solution that simplifies as many of your day-to-day tasks as possible.

Enter Method:Donor — a customizable CRM designed for nonprofit organizations. Method is an online system that helps nonprofits manage their donor relationships and streamline their fundraising. Plus, it has a powerful two-way integration with QuickBooks. This means you can access donor and donation data in Method without logging into your accounting software.

Want more details? You’ve come to the right place! We’ve created a free ebook that explains how CRM software helps nonprofits simplify tasks and work more efficiently.

In this ebook, we discuss how Method:Donor:

• Eliminates the need for double (or triple) data entry
• Provides you with tools for building and maintaining strong relationships with your donors
• Allows you to generate reports in just a few clicks
• Gives you the ability to connect your donor and donation data to other apps
• Lets you create customized software that suits your unique needs

Ready to learn more?

Click to download your FREE copy of our ebook, “How Nonprofits Can Reduce Inefficiencies with a Customizable CRM.”

The post How Nonprofits Can Reduce Inefficiencies with a Customizable CRM [Free Ebook] appeared first on Method.

Were you aware, though, that your CRM software can also help you market more effectively? When you think of a CRM as a data collection tool and not just a means of simplifying routine tasks, it makes sense. A good nonprofit CRM provides a reliable means of tracking donor contribution patterns over time. It also helps organizations establish meaningful insights into how much and how often individual donors contribute.

Having this data on hand gives you some valuable feedback about what and when your existing donors like hearing from your organization. This, in turn, allows you to engage strategically with potential donors across various channels.

For all of these reasons, it’s time to stop thinking of your CRM as just a donor database — it’s also a great tool to help you develop your marketing strategy.

The first step: choosing CRM software that works for your nonprofit

Of course, you need to implement a CRM before you can take advantage of its wealth of data. When selecting the right CRM for your nonprofit, consider what pain points you want to address:

• Are your team members being tasked with too much manual data entry?
• Are you trying to manage too many disconnected systems at once?
• Have donation follow-ups fallen through the cracks?

Nonprofit managers should aim to implement a CRM that resolves as many of these pain points as possible.

Of course, no single software tool is going to solve every problem or allow you to track every type of data. But by selecting a CRM that works with some of your existing tools, you’ll come that much closer to creating an integrated technology ecosystem.

For instance, a CRM that syncs with QuickBooks streamlines the process of logging donations and generating thank you letters and tax receipts. It also lets you see at a glance exactly how much money your individual donors are giving — without needing to access your accounting software.

Another valuable feature to look for in a nonprofit CRM is the ability to segment donor data. Many systems make it easy to filter or group donors into categories based on their giving patterns, geographic locations, or other criteria. This allows you to create specific lists of donors, like those who responded to individual campaigns or donated less year-over-year. You can then create and send mass emails to each segment, thus reducing the time spent sending individualized follow-ups to each donor on your list.

Use your CRM to establish a data-driven donor retention strategy

Once you have a nonprofit CRM in place, every member of your team should learn how to interpret the donation data in the software. Although there can be many reasons why individual donors stop giving — an economic downturn, a personal crisis, and so on — looking at the overall donation patterns in your CRM allows you to see which marketing campaigns are most effective with your existing donors.

This point can’t be overstated: it’s important to be strategic about your marketing campaigns. There can be a tendency among charitable organizations to downplay the need for organized marketing; instead, they assume that their loyal donors will keep coming back because they believe in the organization’s mission.

The reality is that nonprofits require a focused marketing strategy to continually engage and delight donors — and that strategy should be data-driven.

Your CRM can offer valuable insights into how you should market to your existing donors. For instance, maybe the data shows that people tend to give less year-over-year. Could you create an email campaign to show your supporters the positive impact of their donations?

On the other hand, maybe the data shows that donors have failed to respond to your last few email campaigns, but their end-of-year giving patterns are stable. In this case, perhaps you should turn your attention from email marketing to putting on a big end-of-year fundraising event.

Looking beyond existing donors: your CRM can also help with inbound marketing

Nonprofits are sometimes also reluctant to develop strong inbound marketing campaigns. With so many competing priorities, you may see maintaining your website and running your social media accounts as a waste of time and resources.

However, the truth is that nonprofits always need to be recruiting new supporters who believe in their mission. This means it’s important to spend time creating and sharing online content that spreads your message and attracts new donors. There are some proven techniques for boosting donor acquisition, like developing strong branding and using images that resonate with donors. But how can you tell when you’re getting these things right?

This is another area where a nonprofit CRM can assist. Of course, you can’t expect your CRM to replace your web analytics software. But if your CRM is linked to an online donation page on your site, you can certainly gain some insights based on giving patterns. Say you updated the front page of your site last week, and since then you’ve received an influx of new donations. Chances are you’ve hit the nail on the head with your new messaging.

Cross-referencing your CRM data with your web analytics data can also be useful. For instance, you might look at your CRM data to see how many new donors you attracted with a recent campaign. Then, you might use a web analytics tool to see which of your social media channels drove the most traffic to your website during that campaign.

Taken together, you can assume that some of your new donors came from those social media channels. This tells you where to concentrate your future inbound marketing efforts.

Conclusion

A CRM for nonprofits is more than just a database for tracking donor names and donation history. It can also provide crucial data to help you develop effective marketing campaigns and fine-tune your inbound marketing approach. And when used with your other software tools, your CRM becomes even more valuable, allowing you to develop powerful strategies for retaining existing donors and expanding your constituent base.

The post How Nonprofits Can Use CRM Software to Develop an Effective Marketing Strategy appeared first on Method.

In many cases, customer relationship management (CRM) software can help nonprofits take their fundraising efforts and donor retention to the next level. A CRM for nonprofits helps to strengthen the bonds between an organization and its donors by making it easier to stay connected. It can also help the organization run more efficiently and significantly increase donations.

With all of these potential benefits, what’s the problem? Well, there are costs associated with implementing a robust nonprofit CRM — and this often means getting the approval of board members who may have limited knowledge of this software. So, what should a board of directors know about nonprofit CRM software to persuade them of its value?

It will improve efficiency

Board members may not fully understand nonprofit technology, but they likely understand the value of efficiency. A nonprofit CRM can make employees and volunteers more efficient by keeping donor information all in one place. By selecting a CRM that is mobile-friendly, this data can be accessed anywhere at any time, making it available on-site during fundraising events. Furthermore, by selecting a CRM that integrates with your accounting software, it eliminates the time-consuming double-entry of donor information into multiple programs.

A board may not respond positively to “We need to upgrade our donor management software,” but they will likely be interested in suggestions that help your team and organization run more efficiently.

It can increase the number and size of donations

A nonprofit CRM allows you to know so much more about a donor than just what their last contribution was. Instead, having a centralized source of data gives you greater insight into your supporters’ histories and preferences. For instance, you might track each donor’s preferred method of contact, be it traditional mail, email, text, or phone call. You could also monitor patterns in how your supporters respond to email campaigns, fundraising events, and other initiatives.

Having this information at your fingertips allows you to target your fundraising efforts. By reaching out to your donors strategically, you’ll be more likely to bring in larger repeat donations; this is one benefit of CRM software that is sure to capture the attention of your board.

It will positively impact donor retention

With an average donor retention rate of less than 50%, it’s no wonder that there is a lot of pressure on nonprofits to acquire new supporters. However, recruiting new donors is far less cost-effective than retaining existing ones. How can nonprofits level up their strategy to retain and re-engage previous donors?

Consider the experience of for-profit businesses: there’s a lot of emphasis on making the sale, but new customers can easily be lost to a competitor if they aren’t nurtured. The same is true for a new donor. If you lose contact with them or don’t show your appreciation for them after the initial donation, they’re likely to disappear.

This is the power of using the right CRM software. Implementing a nonprofit CRM helps to streamline every aspect of building donor relationships, from sending thank you letters to tracking conversations to scheduling reminders to reach out. By maintaining ongoing communication with your donors, you’ll help them feel more connected to your organization, thereby improving retention rates.

It will improve the quality of reports available to the board

Your board can certainly appreciate that by choosing the right donor and donation management software, you can generate more detailed and informative reports with less manual effort. These reports will provide additional accountability and clarity into your organization’s work. In addition, these reports may shed light on additional fundraising opportunities or show distinct areas for improvement that may otherwise have been missed.

It can improve the reputation of the organization

Presumably, your board members want to be associated with a well-run and efficient organization that is professionally operated. When it comes to managing data and streamlining workflows, upgrading from spreadsheets to a nonprofit CRM can put even small to mid-sized nonprofits on par with much larger organizations. Improving internal processes can also have a positive impact on staff and volunteer morale, which ultimately impacts how the organization appears to supporters.

Choosing the right CRM for your nonprofit

Understandably, your board of directors may have some concerns about approving CRM software for your nonprofit. They may worry about the CRM being user-friendly enough to be of maximum value, particularly if there is high turnover on your team. They may also have concerns about how the system will work with your existing tools and whether it is adaptable enough to meet your nonprofit’s specific needs.

Keep these concerns in mind as you research potential CRMs for your organization. What kind of user training does the vendor offer? Do you need a CRM that integrates with your accounting software? Is the CRM customizable enough to accommodate key processes and help your team work effectively? By answering these questions during your research process, you’ll be well-prepared to communicate to your board why you’ve selected a particular CRM.

Method:Donor: A CRM designed for nonprofits

For nonprofits that want to streamline their workflows and improve donor retention, it’s hard to beat a customizable CRM that integrates with QuickBooks. Method:Donor helps nonprofits build stronger relationships with their supporters, work more efficiently, and eliminate time-consuming double data entry. Even the most skeptical board members will see the benefits — so sign up for your free trial and start reaping them!

The post What Your Nonprofit Board Should Know About CRM Software appeared first on Method.

Social media use by nonprofits continues to increase. A benchmark report found that nonprofit audiences on the three most popular social media platforms grew steadily in 2017, with Facebook audiences growing by 13%, Twitter by 15%, and Instagram by 44%. These numbers aren’t surprising, and they’re not expected to slow anytime soon.

But if your organization is like most small and medium-sized nonprofits, you face a number of challenges. Optimizing your social media use can feel overwhelming, especially given that most organizations must operate within tight budget constraints.

Fortunately, you don’t need unlimited funds to make a splash online. The following tips can help your nonprofit make a big impact on a small budget.

Create a Plan

You wouldn’t operate your nonprofit without a strategic plan. Similarly, don’t approach your social media without a written plan in place. Start by gathering or developing the following information:

• Which platforms you currently have a presence and audience on
• Which platforms are currently producing the best results (likes, follows, engagement, donations, sending viewers to your website, etc.)
• A social media mission statement that aligns with your organizational mission
• Your organization’s target audience
• Key goals (Sharing news? Increasing donations? Attracting volunteers?)
• Key success metrics

Once you’ve identified these factors, you can come up with a content strategy. It may help to think of your social media content as an extension of your other communications efforts. Align your social media posts with your website, blog and email outreach to create consistent brand messaging. Remember: your content should offer value to your audience, as well as ask for their support.

Next, create a publishing calendar that meets your audience’s needs. Balance your social media communications with other types of content like blog posts, emails, and newsletters. Not only will having a calendar make it easier to keep up, but you’ll also ensure that your organization stays top of mind for your audience.

Enlist Supporters to Boost Your Messaging

If you’re just getting started on social media (or your efforts need a bit of a boost), enlist some trusted supporters. There’s no shame in asking staff, volunteers or long-time donors to engage with your posts. An active group of supporters can go a long way toward amplifying messages, especially when you’re building up a new audience.

Include Interactive Content

When it comes to social media success, engagement is key. Posting interactive content boosts engagement, as it asks your audience to do something. Bonus: creating interactive content can be easier for you, as it may not require hours of writing to come up with a unique post.

Examples of interactive content include:

• Polls
• Quizzes
• Surveys
• Calculators
• Q&A sessions
• Webinars
• Asking your readers to share their stories
• Asking your readers to like, share, or respond with an emoji

Respond Quickly and Consistently

You want your social media to spark engagement…but that means you have to be engaged, too. When a reader reaches out through social media, respond quickly. The timing of your response is important, as it may help cement their image of your organization as responsive and reliable. Check your notifications regularly and respond as soon as you can.

Some sites, such as Facebook, will publicize your response rate on your profile. If your organization “typically responds within a few weeks,” people will be discouraged from reaching out to you at all.

Utilize Hashtags

Large social media platforms — like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram — are pay-to-play. That means they have their own search engines and organizations can pay to increase the reach of their posts. But if your nonprofit doesn’t have the budget for this, using hashtags may offer a solution.

Adding the right hashtags to your social media posts will increase your organization’s visibility in search results. How do you choose an effective hashtag? There are two ways:

• Using an already-popular hashtag
• Creating your own branded hashtag

At first, jumping onto an already-trending hashtag may be most effective. As you grow your audience, start using branded hashtags of your own. Encourage your followers to use your hashtag when they share or re-post your messages. You may have to test a few options before one takes off, but the payoff can be huge.

Use Visuals in Your Posts

Studies indicate that social media users are much more likely to engage with posts that include pictures or videos. Large, high-quality images tend to attract the most attention. Experiment with embedding videos, infographics, GIFs and photos that resonate with your audience. Pictures of donors and events may be especially effective, as they showcase your organization’s personality.

Build Relationships with Donor Management Software

Once you’ve acquired a crowd of social media followers, how do you turn them into a strong support base?  Using the right donor management software makes it easy.

As you engage with new supporters online, be sure to add them to your donor management software. From there, you can easily organize your contacts, track offline interactions, and improve your outreach through customized and automated workflows.

To further streamline your social media and fundraising efforts, include a link to your online donation page in your social media profiles. When an individual enters a donation, they’ll automatically be logged as a new donor in your database — it’s that simple.

Conclusion

When you’re working with a small budget and limited staff, as most nonprofits do, optimizing your social media usage can feel overwhelming. However, tracking the connections you make, automating your follow-up communications, and providing convenient opportunities to donate allows you to make the most of this popular marketing strategy. That’s why Method:Donor is here to assist, with donor management software that helps you turn social media followers into loyal supporters.

The post Big Impact on a Small Budget: Social Media Tips for Nonprofits appeared first on Method.

For starters, nonprofits need to market to and build strong relationships with their supporters, just as companies need to keep their customers engaged. Successful organizations have to demonstrate value, service, and a personal connection in everything they do — maybe even more so than for-profit businesses.

And much like small companies, most nonprofits are working with small teams and tight operating budgets. They must use their limited resources as efficiently as possible to maximize the impact they can have in their communities.

For all of these reasons, a good customer relationship management (CRM) system can be a game-changer for nonprofits. As the name implies, CRM software can help any type of organization better manage its relationships with its patrons. Many systems also offer features to help streamline workflows and improve efficiency.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that not all CRMs are suitable for the unique needs of the nonprofit industry. If you’re seeking a CRM for your nonprofit, here are some key features to look for.

1. Ability to Cultivate Donor Relationships

Obviously, the best nonprofit CRMs will actively help organizations cultivate donor relationships. Not only should the CRM track offline and online donations, but it should keep track of attendance at events, phone conversations, and other points of contact. The ability to schedule tasks also ensures that follow-ups occur in a timely manner.

These features will help you reinforce connections with your donors, as well as improve internal communication and organization amongst your team members.

2. Donor Management Features

To turn donors into loyal supporters, it’s important to let them know how much your organization appreciates their contributions. For instance, most donors expect tax receipts. They also certainly expect and deserve thanks for their generosity.

A good CRM for nonprofits can generate both of these documents automatically and email them instantly to donors. Contributors will appreciate this kind of prompt service. Best of all, it won’t take any additional manual effort on the part of your team to delight your supporters.

3. Email Integrations

Just as for-profit businesses are adopting technology to help them work more efficiently, so too are nonprofits. For instance, many nonprofits increasingly rely upon email for communication.

Besides offering the ability to schedule thank-you and follow-up emails, a good CRM for nonprofits should integrate with popular email providers and email marketing software. CRM email add-ons display a convenient overview of a donor’s history while users compose messages. Meanwhile, email marketing integrations make it easy to send out mass emails for fundraising campaigns.

4. Automation Features

Too many nonprofits waste time with manual effort for donor and donation management. The right CRM software can easily automate tasks and streamline workflows.

For instance, the process for accepting online donations typically starts with an online donation page. A good CRM will make it simple for even non-technical people to create an effective fundraising page. In turn, information entered on this page should automatically be saved to the CRM and trigger appropriate follow-up activities. After all, most nonprofits don’t have the time or money to spend on complex website development or repetitive data entry.

5. Integration With Your Accounting Software

Accounting software only ever works as well as the data it can capture. Often, nonprofit employees or volunteers have to manually copy information from the system that captures contacts and donations to their accounting software. This takes time and can lead to data entry errors.

A good CRM will solve this problem by integrating with popular accounting software like QuickBooks. By automatically syncing your donor and donation data to your accounting database, you’ll save time and improve your data accuracy.

6. Accessible Mobile Interface

These days, people like to be able to work anywhere from any device — and nonprofit employees are no exception. During the course of the day, you may be visiting different sites and going online using your laptop, desktop computer, tablet, or phone.

For maximum productivity, the best nonprofit CRMs will have mobile app functionality. This ensures that the features you need to use look good and work well no matter which device you’re working on.

7. Customization Options

Every nonprofit has its own unique needs and workflows. Furthermore, no organization wants to change their processes just to fit the constraints of their software. That’s why a customizable CRM is an ideal solution for nonprofits that don’t have the budget for a custom-built system.

Customizable CRM software will make it easy to personalize donation pages, add new data fields, and set up custom processes. And as time passes and certain aspects of your organization evolve, the CRM can evolve along with them. In the end, this level of flexibility will save you money and increase productivity, allowing you to focus more energy on fundraising.

Choosing a Great CRM for Your Nonprofit

A great CRM can help nonprofits reduce manual data entry, streamline workflows, and improve donor relationships. While adopting new software may seem like a daunting task, don’t let the initial investment deter you. In the long run, the time you’ll save will allow you to focus your efforts on the work that really matters.

The post Essential Features of a Nonprofit CRM appeared first on Method.

In spite of these obstacles, it’s essential for each nonprofit to do the best they can with the resources they have. In this article, we’ll take a look at some key areas to focus on when trying to improve your donor retention rate.

Determine Your Donor Retention Rate

Your first step in improving your donor retention rate is to determine what that rate is. Whether you’re using a CRM for nonprofits or basic spreadsheets, you’ll need to review your past donation data. Start by adding up your total number of donors in a particular 12-month period. Then tally up how many of those donors gave again during the following 12 months. This will give you a count of your recurring donors over the last two years. For example, let’s say your nonprofit had 2,400 donors in 2016 and 1,200 of those donors donated again in 2017.

Now, divide the number of repeat donors from the second year (in this case, 2017) by the number of donors in the first year and multiply by 100. For our example, the donor retention rate from 2016 to 2017 is 50 percent. This means you have retained half of your donors, but the other half is not returning year after year. Is this a problem?

According to CauseVox, the average donor retention rate is 43 percent, while the donor attrition rate is approximately 57 percent. This means that a retention rate greater than 43 percent is considered good compared to other nonprofits. But if your rate falls below 43 percent, it may indicate a misaligned mission and your organization could be in jeopardy. You are not necessarily shutting your doors quite yet, but it is time to make a plan for improving this rate.

Connect With Your Community

One way to gain and retain support for your nonprofit is to improve communication with your donors. To do this, you must find a consistent way to connect with the community that supports you. However, with smartphones and email replacing most landlines and direct mail, your communication strategies must evolve. Social media is the new party line, and it is also where your nonprofit needs a voice. Here are some questions to answer for your organization:

• Do you have an active social media presence for your nonprofit?
• Are you engaged with users on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or some other social media platform?
• Does your nonprofit have a website and/or a blog?
• Do you have any volunteers or staff that handle social media for your organization?

If you answered no to any or all of these questions, then it’s time to revamp your approach to communication. Focus on becoming more accessible online. You should also look at social demographic data for your community. Based on factors such as age, income, social status, education level, etc., you can better ascertain where to find your supporters on the internet. This helps you direct your communication efforts in a more focused manner. You also avoid diluting your message by sending out communications to unintended recipients.

Managing Data for Nonprofits

Right along with communication, the ability to deal with big data as a nonprofit is instrumental. Your organization is focused on building support within a community. But how can you truly engage with the members without having a system for managing information about them?

First, you need a way to congregate your data, followed by a systematic process for reviewing this data regularly. Using a CRM designed for nonprofits is a great solution for tracking your donors and donations throughout all stages of the donation cycle. When your donor database integrates with your accounting software, it minimizes errors associated with double data entry. A CRM program can also enhance your communication with donors by letting you easily send thank-you notes and schedule follow-ups for future donations. It all comes full circle.

Working to improve donor retention rates for your nonprofit is an ongoing process. As you make changes, remember to evaluate your results. CRM software comes in handy during these evaluations by providing you with the reporting tools needed to break down and summarize the numbers. Thanks to this technology, your team will be better equipped to provide feedback to your community and less likely to make costly errors that hamper retention.

Provide Total Transparency

One of the reasons that nonprofits struggle to retain donors is a lack of transparency. If your community has doubts about where their donations are going, they are far less likely to give. To overcome this doubt, work on improving the transparency of your organization. Do you host public or private meetings with donors? Are you posting donation information that is accessible to the general public, such as on your organization’s website?

According to Charity Navigator, which rates all nonprofits nationwide based on transparency, this quality is closely tied to accountability. Accountability refers to your obligation to your community, and being transparent with your financial information (i.e. making it available to the public) enables you to be more accountable. Check out Charity Navigator’s rankings to see how well your organization measures up compared to other nonprofits in your niche. Think of this like a credit report for your nonprofit, and use it to correct any issues with your public image.

Nonprofit organizations are dedicated to serving the needs of others, but they rely on the continued support of donors in order to do so. Luckily, advances in technology are opening new doors for nonprofits to manage their donors more effectively. In order to achieve your fundraising goals, it may be time to take a new approach towards improving donor retention.

The post How to Improve Donor Retention for Nonprofits appeared first on Method.