Fundraisers produce an extensive amount of data, from individual donors’ information to trends in retention, donation amounts, engagement rate, and more. However, collecting and making use of this data can be challenging without the right tools.
Fortunately, there is a wide range of fundraising software available to your nonprofit for running organized, streamlined fundraising campaigns. Chief among these is your donor database or constituent relationship management (CRM) solution.
In this guide, we’ll explore how your nonprofit can leverage its donor databases to improve every part of your fundraising efforts, from initial outreach to post-campaign follow-up.
Personalize Donor Communications
Donors are far more likely to give to your nonprofit if they feel a personal connection to your mission and community. As such, personalized messages tend to have better response rates and yield more gifts for your cause.
Of course, building personal relationships with all of your supporters is only possible by leveraging the data in your CRM. Your donor database should contain an individual profile on each of your supporters. When used in combination with your marketing tools, you can easily use the information in your database to send each supporter messages tailored just to them.
Meyer Partners’ guide to donor communications provides insight into personalization strategies and how your software can help execute them, as follows:
- Address each donor by their preferred name. In all of your direct message templates, create an entry field for recipients’ names that can be autofilled with the information in their donor profile. Within each profile, make sure you’ve noted what the supporter wants to be called and that their name is spelled correctly.
- Mention involvement details. Create areas in your messages that can be filled in with supporters’ engagement details, such as their gift amounts, past events they’ve attended, or specific campaigns they’ve supported. For instance, your donation thank-you emails should always include the amount the supporter gave to your nonprofit.
- Share information about projects and campaigns that align with their interests. Create supporter contact lists based on their interests. For instance, you might flag all current and past volunteers and create a separate communication list for them that includes messages that promote volunteer opportunities.
All of your communication with donors should be personalized as much as possible. Ensure your database is updated regularly so you can always draw on recent information when personalizing your messages.
Track Every Stage of the Donor Journey
When you know where each of your supporters is in their donor journeys, you can better move them along to the next step on their individual paths. For instance, a prospective supporter who has just started showing interest in your cause is far more likely to respond to outreach inviting them to explore your mission and initiatives further than an immediate donation appeal.
This process of identifying where supporters are in their donor journeys and building relationships with them to move them to the next stage is called moves management. DonorSearch’s guide on this topic walks through the donor management lifecycle and how data can help streamline the moves management process:
- Acquisition. During this stage, you’ll identify prospective supporters and make initial contact with them. For instance, a new website visitor might subscribe to your newsletter, or your major gifts team may call a potential donor to set up a meeting. To track your relationship with this supporter, you would create a new donor profile in your donor database.
- Cultivation. Once donors show an interest in your nonprofit, start reaching out to them to learn more about their values, goals, backgrounds, and preferences. Store all information donors share with you in their profiles for future reference.
- Solicitation. After supporters have been properly familiarized with your nonprofit, you can make your donation appeal. For low-to-mid-level donors, this ask might come fairly quickly in your relationship with them. However, for those who look like major donor prospects, it’s usually best to make several small requests first (like attending events or volunteering) instead of jumping to soliciting a major gift.
- Stewardship. After a supporter donates, show your appreciation and continue to build the relationship. Your stewardship efforts should be proportional to each supporter’s gift amount. For lower-level donors, appreciation emails and handwritten cards are generally sufficient. For major donors, consider larger displays of thanks, such as inviting them to exclusive galas, adding their names to donor walls, or even giving them naming rights to programs and buildings.
- Retention. Maintain donors’ engagement with your organization after their first gift to retain them. Keep gathering the data they provide, such as their average donation amount, donation frequency, communication preferences, and direct feedback, to personalize your outreach. This demonstrates you care about their specific contributions, helping you make more targeted asks and increasing the chances they will give again.
- Upgrade. Use the information stored in your database to assess when a donor is likely ready to give and if they would be willing to upgrade their gift. For example, you might notice a supporter makes annual donations of $100. As an upgrade request, you might ask them to consider instead making a recurring gift of $20 every month. They’ll be able to give more conveniently, and you’ll get an extra $140 from them per year.
Use your donor database to gather and store whatever information you think is most helpful for cultivating donations in your donor profiles. Most nonprofits create dedicated information sections for:
- Personal information, such as a supporter’s name, and demographic data
- Contact information, such as mailing address, email, and phone number
- Donation history, such as gift amount, giving frequency, average gift and lifetime value
- Other engagement history, such as if a supporter volunteered or attended an event
By maintaining consistent, long-term records on your donors, you can consistently engage them over the course of many years. This is especially important for your major donors, with whom you will likely cultivate highly individualized relationships.
Integrate Other Fundraising Tools With Your Database
You can create a consistent experience for donors by integrating all of your fundraising and donor management tools. Some tools you might integrate with your donor database include:
- Prospect research software. Donor screening tools allow you to assess how able and willing a donor is to make a major gift. When you connect this information to your donor database, your major gift officers can easily assess your entire donor base to find major giving prospects and focus their efforts on the most promising candidates.
- Fundraising software. Ensure that data between all fundraising tools flows into your donor database. This means connecting your peer-to-peer software, event registration forms, donation form, mobile bidding software, and any other tools.
- AI tools. AI has existed in nonprofit tools for a long time, even before the rise of popular generative platforms like ChatGPT. This software can help analyze your data, provide suggestions for how and when to engage donors, and assist with creating outreach materials, improving your donor engagement abilities.
When data transfers seamlessly from system to system, you can get a holistic view of each donor’s history with your nonprofit, improving your ability to create personalized messages and reducing the need for manual data management.
Whether you have a donor database that you want to use more effectively or are planning to implement a new one, this tool should be at the heart of your fundraising strategy.
Gather your supporters’ data and leverage it by creating streamlined messages that speak exactly to where each donor is in their own personal giving journey.
