Charities conducting fundraising activities need the appropriate infrastructure in place building solid foundations to implement and scale up their efforts acquiring, retaining and maximising the value of hard-won supporters, along with their investment in fundraising. Systems implementation are underpinned by a labyrinth of sophisticated processes and are supported by robust supporter journeys.
Integrating systems through an organisation’s fundraising and operations software, such as its website, constituent relationship management (CRM) and accounting software is the best way to create efficiencies, minimises human error and assists with reconciling revenue, enabling pin point accuracy.
Having processes mapped out end-to-end from the outset can avoid piece-meal activities, giving your organisation insights into how its supporters will be treated based on each acquisition channel during their lifetime.
Website User Experience (UX), Tracking and Analytics Audit
The best place to start is to review your organisation’s website and see how it stacks up against best practice fundraising websites. Research into how your organisation’s website benchmarks against other charity websites can help set the objectives of any website review.
Parachute Digital conducted research into the best charity websites included in their Digital Summary Research Report in 2016, updated in 2019 as a summary Researching Website Donation Pages 2.0, and includes a charity scorecard on best charity website UX experiences from a fundraising point of view.
Website reviews can be conducted through a charity website UX consultant such as Digital Ninjas, for a relatively small investment. For the most part minor adjustments can be made with customisations that will ensure your organisation’s website and digital footprint are working hard for your organisation.
A website audit will ensure that all of the right elements are in place to support a variety of fundraising initiatives, whilst an extension of that encompasses ensuring that Google landing pages, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Google eCommerce, Google Ad Grants, Google AdWords, SEO and SEM are in place and optimised to drive traffic to your website with reporting clarity.
Remember income from supporters makes up a vast proportion of charitable income so including them as your charity’s primary target audience means their experience when visiting your charity’s website is paramount to keeping them engaged and supporting your organisation.
Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) Supporter-Database
To ensure your charity is managing supporter information and donations efficiently it is recommended that it has a robust CRM platform in place. Even for small to medium sized charities there are some cost-effective software providers. There are many CRM vendors in the marketplace so its crucial to research all of the systems thoroughly as part of a tender process to ensure they meet not only your organisation’s current requirements, but also allow your organisation to scale up into the future. Here are a few suggested vendors to research;
SupporterHub, is a well-priced entry-to-mid level CRM, which has a monthly licence fee of $25, or $35 if your charity chooses to utilise their email and supporter journey mapping offering.
Salesforce offers a sophisticated CRM solution for any size charity, providing free licences for not-for-profits. The Salesforce AppExchange, enables the purchase of bolt on apps to further enhance and customise its CRM offering. Customisations can be made to the CRM directly through Salesforce or any third-party Salesforce partner who can tailor the CRM to suit your organisation’s bespoke needs.
Blackbaud’s suite of products are an offering of robust solutions for all sized charities such as; e-tapestry for entry level charities, and Raiser’s Edge Classic and NXT, their offering for charities wanting the full suite of products (as well as Financial Edge their cloud-based accounting software). NXT is Blackbaud’s API based CRM, though the platform is not fully built out yet to be a stand-alone CRM solution, so must be used along-side Raiser’s Edge Classic.
Payment Gateways
The devil is in the detail with any CRM platform chosen for your charity. Often charities become unstuck with issues with payment gateways and handling of credit card tokens which can wreak havoc with an organisation’s one-off cash and regular giving programs. That is why it is imperative that research is conducted in detail to fully understand how each payment gateway works to avoid any nasty surprises (such as vendors testing credit cards or tokens expiring) and to ensure payments are received like clockwork.
Fundraising Platforms
In many instances charity websites are not configured or nimble enough to support bespoke fundraising activities such as community fundraising or fundraising appeal landing pages. There are many solutions out there to suit all budgets such as; Donorbox and Funraisin. Do your research to find the right platform to suit your budget and needs, as they all have different fee structures and/or take a small transaction fee based on a percentage on each donation your charity receives.
Email Marketing Automation or Supporter Journey Mapping
It is important that an organisation’s supporters are fed through a funnel to keep them engaged through trigger-based communications. Creating supporter journeys ensures your organisation communicates with each supporter compatible with their acquisition channel and interests.
Depending on which channel your supporters were acquired, each type of constituent should be managed through a communication stream dedicated to gaining the maximum engagement. The key is to test supporter journeys to ensure attrition spikes are kept to a minimum.
Not all communications can be handled digitally, for example many regular giving program communication touch points can feed through to manual actions such as mailing out welcome packs and retention phone calls. Files for those activities can be produced through trigger-based reporting through your CRM to send files for actioning internally, or sent to third party direct mail or telemarketing companies for acquisition or retention activities.
Social Channels
Growing and maintaining social media audiences is a no-brainer for any charity. To be relevant in today’s marketplace your organisation needs a social media presence. Creating and maintaining a presence of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn is free and a great way to build brand awareness and engagement with your organisation’s audiences.
Often when researching not-for-profit organisation’s social media pages, we find they are not present on various channels, content is not relevant for local audiences, or the regular content misses the mark for a wide range of audiences. Keep content relevant to all of the people you think will visit your social media channels based on their location and all areas of your organisation’s work.
The number one thing your organisation can do now is to activate a ‘Donate’ button on the top of your organisation’s Facebook page. It’s very easy to set up and is free. You can also fundraise directly through Facebook fundraisers or posts via PayPal Giving Fund.
Accounting Software Integration
Most charities experience issues with reconciling their fundraising revenue with their accounting software. To overcome this and to minimise human error its vital to ensure that personal and financial data received through your organisation’s platforms are flowing directly through to your organisations accounting software through API technology. This means that systems can be set up which are automated and minimise the amount of time and resources your charity spends on reconciling accounts on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis.
Integration also allows the fundraising and accounts teams to pinpoint the exact moment a transaction has been received with incorrect information allowing transparency to help resolve these occurrences with confidence, saving your organisation precious time and money. Xero is the best accounting software platform for API integration, and MYOB can be configured to receive files directly from your CRM.
Finally, look out for our future blog where we talk about infrastructure needed to support digital lead generation conversion programs.
Kerin Welford
Director, Bluestone Fundraising
