Digital Trends of 2019 for Nonprofits: all-inclusive donor management software

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Capturing today’s picture of Non-profits

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The present-day charitable sector is briskly disrupting the manner through which the donors, beneficiaries, and employees expect to network with the Nonprofits.

Although, the giving and donating by the baby boomers, millennials, philanthropist and social contributors of Gen Y was most influenced through the emails and social media Networking app.

The global industry of Nonprofits is striving to implement the technologies that people can trust-on in order to captivate the Gen Z donors tribe.    

The industry of Nonprofits is heading towards doing more with less and serving more and better.  This has made the stratum of Nonprofits to shift from paperwork to digital processes.

Yes folks! The only delta is digitalization for the current verticals of Nonprofits world over.

All the SMEs and large Nonprofits are centralizing their focus to provide a high level of transparency and donor experiences to earn the trust of donors.   

The best part is,

The industry of Nonprofits is becoming more creative with considering the Challenges of resource constraints, changing donor preferences, and disruptive technologies as some of the Great Opportunities like adopting Donor Management System.

This attitude among the Nonprofits is sensing digital transformation as a fancy phrase to adopt innovations.

Innovations as in upgrading the business processes of Nonprofits.

Nonprofits have all these processes to manage, gosh!

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Despite the fact that fostering and relying on the kindness of others is a tough business model, it definitely fuels up the Nonprofits.

Be it a church leader, charity volunteer, animal lover, member of a civic group or other types of Nonprofits.

They have their own set of challenges to reach the year-end donation targets.

For this, having highly manageable, transparent and smooth processes in place is in the mainstream.

There are varied business processes in Nonprofits. Like,

  • Receiving funds
  • Managing transactions
  • Donation tracking
  • Credit and collections
  • Optimizing the process for the donors
  • Managing and retaining donor relations
  • To maintain a reserve fund for uncertain conditions
  • Budgeting
  • Profit reinvested
  • Track budget deviations
  • Human resource management
  • Cash flow management

Among these, effective donation tracking and retaining the donors is at the top vertex of the business funnel.

Let’s clear out you’re ‘how comes?’

When donations are received in all shapes and sizes, it becomes a great crumble and difficult to manage the data sorting and fundraising activities in absence of Donor Management System.

Along with a managed donation cycle, today’s donors expect to receive a social, collaborative and mobile experience from the Nonprofits.

Rings true?

For large Nonprofits, donor management process is definitely not the scope of actions that can be managed manually.

They need a more data-driven and sophisticated process in the system, to mature the development of the fundraising process.

This calls for a need to migrate to the digital solutions for Donor Management System process.  

Manual process is really time consuming!

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The recent researches have derived that digitizing the ‘giving’ process and enhancing the customer experience can boost profit up to 20% on an average within five years.

While digitizing the business processes of Nonprofits can drastically reduce the cost and also help improve profits with on an average 36% over five years.   

Majorly, improving donor experiences and automating the manual back-office tasks are the domain areas that yield significant values for Nonprofits.  

What’s happening right now with Non-Profits!

There’s no such thing like stability when we talk about any damn businesses. Nonprofits are no exceptions to this.

Sometimes the Nonprofits themselves make a change but most of the times the changes happen to Nonprofits.

The latest trends in Nonprofits, offer us a window into what’s happening in their spaces. Like,   

  • High-end personalization in marketing and fundraising activities
  • Cryptocurrency coming to philanthropy
  • High value-added services for the recurring donor
  • Very important to increase efficiency and speed optimization in business processes
  • High impact of transparency in business processes
  • Smooth and secured database management

One Today by Google, Givelify, and Fundly are some of the mobile apps designed to help Nonprofits run smoothly.  

These types of web applications and mobile apps are high in demand especially across many states in the US, Australia, and across the Asian.  

Apart from these type of apps for donation management, there are many different kinds of apps that are specially developed to digitize their internal process of the Nonprofits. Like:

Some of the recent examples on this are:

  • The Jewish Education Tax Credit Organization (JETCO) puts the system in place for improved Donor Management System
  • Roswell Park Alliance Foundation digitizes fundraising event management system
  • Feeding America, Kentucky’s Heartland has made the giving process much simplified for the donors.
  • Lewis University has implemented a peer to peer fundraising system to raise funds for athletes  

Digitizing the business operations create a culture of innovations and a crystal clear clarity of the processes for the Nonprofits.

What is at the ultimate and really important area to digitize is the donor management system.

Have a glance at this lucrative concept!

Conceptual flow with features of Donor Management Software

Social entrepreneurs devote countless hours to plan, manage, organize, and control the fundraising for their Nonprofits.

Inconsistent data entries, massive spreadsheets, and low retention ratio of volunteers add to the donation tracking issues when done on Excel Sheets.

So the social entrepreneurs and the Nonprofits need to upgrade the internal business operations to put the systems into place and have a valuable process into motion.

Putting more weight on the donor management process is what we mean by upgrading the internal business operations for the Nonprofits.

It’s exactly transforming the Nonprofits to an active steward from being the passive fundraiser.

The concept of the Donor Management System should be a project crashing way to manage the fundraising with an optimum cost and time tradeoff.

It should be under significant consideration for those Nonprofits that want to get rid of time-consuming donor management for the hours that can be effectively spent in progressing with the mission.

A concept of Digitized Donor Management System

The concept of Donor Management software should involve a highly refined and simplified online system to track and manage the donor’s data and handle the fundraising process much smoother.

This concept should rely on exactly what the Nonprofits require- nothing extra, and much easier to understand the upright functionalities in the system.    

This type of online system must have tools for :

  • Donor data-sorting, filtering, backing up and managing the complete database.
  • Maintain relationships and good rapport with existing donors.
  • Generating new leads of donors.
  • Automate routine tasks.
  • Pitch the exact donor data speedily.
  • Optimized online process to make the giving activity quick and effortless for the donors.
  • Swiftly fetch report and analytics.   
  • Manage the team of fundraisers.

As switching on to the digital solutions has become a key factor to survive in the global market.

A high competition of the philanthropic dollars is changing the way Nonprofits connect with the donors.

So! To implement a powerful concept of Donor Management software needs in-depth research on the possible mission-critical features that should be added in the system.

Big ticks to the features on the wishlist for an online Donor Management Software:

A comprehensive feature wishlist for DMS app concept

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End to end management

Right from the tools to manage the ‘giving’ process for the donor, the lead generation process for the fundraisers till the management of the donor database is what should be better controlled with Donor Management software.

All the management activities of donors, volunteers, grants and charity events should be processed online.

They need not spend days and hours searching and managing records from the large spreadsheets.

Single repository

This type of concept should have a well-built single repository for all the details that allows the admin to know donors frequency of giving, events attended and other important details in the Donor Management System.

Multiple administrator accounts

When any donor or constituent has a team to handle the ‘giving’ activities, they should be facilitated with multiple administrative accounts.

There is no need to use a single login across the team.

Individual team members should be given permissions to have their own login to use the app services in Donor Management System.

Online Donations

The ‘giving’ process for the donors and the receiving process for the Nonprofits should be all online.

It should just take a couple of minutes for a donor to select from the type of donation/gift and make a payment for donations.

In the same way, it must save the time of the Nonprofits to accept, receive donations and send donation receipts to the donors.

Automated donation receipt management

As the donor completes the transaction on the system, a receipt should be automatically generated and send to the donor by the system.

The Nonprofits need not record an entry in Excel and send the files through email or another medium of communication.

The system should do everything to sort data and send receipts to the donor.

NGO connect

NGO Connect should be conceptualized on tracking and managing the constituents and nurture strong business relationships with them. They can be named as the platinum partners on the app.

Registration and renewals of membership

Depending on the type of membership plan the donors want to engage into, they should easily get registered on the app and use the online services.

Some Nonprofits make it completely free for the donors to get registered on the app. A simplified membership renewal process should also be available for the donors.

Manage donor contacts and donor activities

As the donor logins on the app, they should feed their contact details in the system.
With any transactions on the app, the fed contact details should be taken into account.

Also, the admin should be able to well manage all the donor activities on the app.

Like, the activities related to the donations, maintaining donor relationships, providing credits, and much more.

Online events

The admin should be able to create an event and manage all the event-related tasks on the app.

The system should help the admin to broadcast the event, handle registrations, manage payments and other event proceedings much easier.

Also, the donor management software should be made easy for the donors and other volunteers to participate in the event and get registered on the app itself.

Mass Mailing

This unique feature should be in the donor management software for the admin or internal staff to mail all the registered donors or sponsors at one go.

It can prove to be the best way to announce and update an important detail to all the donors with a single click.

Interactive module

The system should have a ‘Chatbox’ feature that helps the app users to communicate internally with fellow donors, employees, volunteers, and other funders.

Effective search options

The advanced search options should provide the users with customized filtrations in search related to the location, activities, fund limits and much more.

View donation histories

The donors should be able to have a look at all the details related to their past transactions or donations given.

Also, the admin should be able to use this effective feature to view donation histories of the clients.

Analyze relationships

The admin should be able to systematically analyze the relationships among different constituents.

This will help them locate the gaps and head on to build a lifelong relationship with the clients.

Dynamic analysis tools should be made available to scale out the relationship of Nonprofit with their donors, grants, platinum partners, volunteers as well as their employees.

Boost the fundraisers to work hard

A time savvy and simple fundraising process should make it easy for the fundraisers to track the clientele status of existing donors and conduct donor engagement activities regularly.

With promotional schemes and easy linking of social media accounts, the fundraisers should be able to target a mass much easily.

This will help them get more leads of donors on the app itself.

Accolade

Donors feel delighted and positive when their names are displayed on the dashboard of every user on the app.

This will also develop a sense of trust among them to know where exactly the money is being used.

Payment process

The system should have easy and speedy payment tools that give multiple options to pay through credit or debit cards, PayPal or other payment processors.

Automatic next day deposit through bank transactions should also benefit the Nonprofits in large scale.

Customized branding

The admin should be able to well customize on the branding features on the app.

This will help them to change, edit and even use design tools for a cover photo or a logo just as the way they want on the app.

Customize the campaigns

With conducting different fund drives and campaigns, it becomes easy for the supports or donors to choose medium through which they want their funds to go.

Admin should be able to effortlessly create a campaign, manage campaign proceedings, control transactions, and close a campaign.

Linking social media tools

The social media tools like Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, Twitter, and others should be linked on the app as per the feasibility and interest of the app owner.

This makes it easy for the volunteers and donors to log-in on the app through social media tools, share posts about their ‘giving’ activities and recommend your Nonprofit to other friends on their social media accounts.

A single click task completion

From accepting gifts or donations, generating receipts, managing funds, updating donor database and other tasks carried out by the Nonprofits should be performed with a single click.

Donor Retention Go-to-Guide

Learn how to turn your one-time donor into a lifetime supporter of your Non-Profit Organization.

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Figure out the eligibility for digitization

The need for an online Donor Management software is just half of the story. The other half of the story lies in being eligible to go for this type of digitization.

To figure out if you really need to roll out for a donor management software requires to know exactly where does the problem rest?

Going deep into the details and brainstorming the areas that need improvements is a firefighting task.

Let’s make it simple for you!

Good to ask a few questions before stepping ahead

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What should be the size of the Nonprofits to go for digitization?

What are the resources needed for the Nonprofits to go for digitization?

What should be the employee strength of the Nonprofit business?

Legality and Industrial Standards for Nonprofits

Checkpoints to choose the right Donor Management System

First of all,

  • First of all, identify all the stakeholders who will use the online Donor Management software.
  • Pen down the current fundraising process in your Nonprofit to try and understand each and every task in detail.
  • Analyze the whole process and filter it to come up with the areas of improvements needed.
  • Surf onto the best practices and standard processes implemented by successful Nonprofits.
  • Prepare a wishlist of rich features to be included in the system.
  • Prioritize the most essential features out of the wishlist.
  • Try and craft a donor management ecosystem to come up with 4 to 5 feasible systems that can be implemented.
  • Give a second scrutinizing to each derived system.
  • Select the best-matched system for your Nonprofit.

When done with selecting the right system for donor management, it’s much essential to chew over the critical points to be considered when migrating into digital processes.

Take a look!

Why you need digitization?

Get a FREE analysis of your Non-Profit organization business processes.
We will give you an obvious reason why you need to adopt digitization.

Migration plan: A journey from Manual to Digitization

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A proper PLAN to see the impact:

A holistic projection should be made for shifting the manual processes into digital.

For instance,

Will the database be securely stored in the cloud? Or
Is it reducing the person-hours? Or
Is it easing out the giving journey for the donors? Or
Is it reducing the overhead and other costs for the Nonprofits? Or
Finally, no paperwork for payments and accounting needs to be done.

Basically, it requires to verify if the purpose of digitizing is sufficed or not.

Another thing in priority should be to know the impact of digitalization on the donors and volunteers.

The Nonprofits should make sure there shouldn’t be any setbacks experienced by the volunteers and donors after digitizing the business processes.

The Nonprofits should analyze whether the parties involved in the process will happily accept and become accustomed to the change.

Data migration

It turns riskier to transfer the data from manual to digital. A single error can delete and scratch all the donor data.

There should be a secured backup system and backup log monitoring at the time of data migration.

This will help the Nonprofits to effectively take the data backup and also monitor the failed backup activities to restart the backup storage process.

Training the staff

Along with upgrading the business processes, Nonprofits need to train their employees in order to make them ready and comfortable with the change.

This proves to be a tough task training the employees and volunteers, especially when the employee’s belief, attitude and readiness to adopt the change is on the negative lane.

But at the same time, without training the employees, the migrating into digital solutions would definitely be a flop show.

Focusing more on testing and quality instead of just sticking to on-time implementation

No doubt the Nonprofits need to timely digitize the business processes to remain updated in the present world of competition.

They should also focus on testing before implementing the digital changes.

This will help them have a hard-line quality and unfurl the riches of digitalization with a greater impact on the targeted market.

Track the misunderstandings between company processes

Before going for digitizing the business processes, it’s much essential to deeply understand the organization defined processes and its purpose.

This will help the Nonprofits to locate the exact points responsible for clashes between the digital and manual business processes.

Consider it as a learning curve

It becomes a learning process for the Nonprofits when migrating the current manual process into digital processes.

As more and more they put their heads on business processes to be given a digital platform, more they explore on the digital tools.

This gives them a room to discover other areas that could be digitized for more resource savings.

Will the newer change upgrade or finely blend with the existing legacy systems

Nonprofits need to make sure that the digitized process will fine blend and gel up with the existing business processes.

For this, they need to analyze the other processes that will be affecting with the digitalization.

The Break-even analysis: Good to go for digitization?

It’s equally important for the clients to scale out the time by which they will regain the investment that they have put into digitalization.

Generally, this depends on the factors like,

  • The uniqueness of the business idea.
  • Whether the investment is for the entire app system or just for core applications?
  • How well are the end-users accustomed to the business concept?
  • The level of digital adoption among the customers and employees of the company.
  • Clients collaboration with digital techies.
  • The technical part of project complications like personalized features, unique selling point, level of customization, and third-party integrations.
  • The advanced set of functions (as mentioned on the blog)

Digital platforms play a key role in discovering the businesses for startup and enterprises as well as for upgrading the consumer purchase journey.

  • 55% of startups have already adopted digital business strategies.
  • Approx 23 % rise in revenue is marked with adopting digital-first strategies. This implies to the startups and enterprises.
  • 85% of enterprises feel that they have only two years to adopt a significant digital transformation to survive in this competitive market.
  • More than 55% of the companies are yet to adopt digital transformation.

Why TRooTech?

The trust factor-

Our high priority focus is on working in totality with complete responsibilities to serve the clients with high-end tech support before and after the app is made live.

What made us focus more on offering trustworthiness is the clients losing their trust in the freelancers and other app development companies for a high risk of getting stuck up on the project with incomplete or irresponsible app services.

Personalization has become our benchmark-

Providing app designing and development services with tremendous personalization has been the alpha-beta-gamma of our business goal.

When we talk of personalization, we mean providing personalized services to the businesses and even in the app features for the end-users as well.

Resourceful team-

Over the past few years, TRooTech has put heads on constructing an experienced, skilled and creative team of designers, developers, and digital strategists.

The digital freaks of TRooTech possess the expertise to deal with complex to simple app requirements.

More than 85 staff members have become a one-unit strong team to provide digital solutions for choicest business ideas.

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More About Author

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Vishal Nakum

Vishal Nakum is a tech enthusiast with a passion for exploring the latest developments in the world of technology. He has a keen interest in emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Blockchain, and enjoys keeping up-to-date with the latest trends and advancements in these fields. Vishal is an avid learner and is always on the lookout for new ways to expand his knowledge and skills. He is also a creative thinker and enjoys experimenting with new ideas and concepts. In his free time, Vishal enjoys playing video games and reading books on technology and science.