Communicate with your donors and understand your data
As a not for profit or fundraising organisation you need to raise money and spend money for your cause; acquiring supporters, increasing retention and upgrading donors whilst improving the effectiveness of your fundraising or grant applications management operations.
To achieve these goals you need to adopt sales and marketing best practice, a major part of which is the adoption of Customer Relationship Management. However you approach it and whatever the size of your organisation (and the size of your budget), you should be able to find a fund raising CRM system that meets your needs – provided you have planned for CRM and don’t just try to implement it without any thought.
Before we look at the specifics of implementing fundraising CRM for not for profit organisations, let’s familiarise ourselves with the basic concepts and key points that surround Customer Relationship Management. We’ve produced a series of educational (but short!) eBooks and videos designed to help you bring yourself quickly up-to-speed on the world of CRM. Hopefully these should help you make informed decisions when the time comes to produce a short-list of potential systems, and finally choose the CRM system for your organisation. We recommend starting with either The CRM eBook, or if you’re in the mood for a video, “What’s in it for me?”