10 Questions to Evaluate Your Donor Management Operations

Donor management is mission critical for any nonprofit. Whether you have a dedicated group of recurring donors or receive a few major gifts, these donations are the lifeblood of your organization. 

Unfortunately, no matter the size of your organization or your donations, complex day-to-day operations can get in the way of good, effective work to build meaningful relationships with your donors.

It’s a good idea for any nonprofit to take a step back and assess their donor management operations on a routine basis. To help you with that process, we put together our Donor Management Report Card, a self-assessment you can walk through with your organization to determine if you need to make some changes. 

Download the self-assessment below and see if you’re on the right track.

Looking for New Nonprofit Software?

After your self assessment, you may find that one of the ways you can improve your donor management operations is to implement a new nonprofit CRM, often referred to as a donor database. 

If you start down this path, you’ll quickly find that there are dozens of vendors to choose from, and finding the right one for you can be challenging. But have no fear, we’re here to help. 

In this article, we’ll walk you through a few critical questions to consider when looking at updating your donor management process. 

What is a Nonprofit CRM?

A nonprofit CRM (constituent relationship management) is simply a database that’s used to track donor information. Back in the day, that might have looked like a filing cabinet full of index cards or a carefully crafted Excel spreadsheet. Today, there are many solutions to choose from that are specifically tailored to nonprofit needs. 

If you start your CRM search, you’ll quickly find dozens of options, all catered specifically to the needs of nonprofits. Almost all of them should cover the basics. They should store donor data, including contact information, donation history, and more. 

More advanced tools allow you to analyze this data, allowing you to create lapsed donor and donor retention reports. They might even have tools to collect donations online through embedded forms or fundraising pages. Some may even integrate with some of the other tools you use, like Quickbooks and Mailchimp, allowing you to track accounting data or send emails to constituents. 

So how do you choose the right one for you? It may be tempting to pick the low or no-cost option, especially if you’re a small nonprofit on a tight budget. And that may be the right fit for you. But there are a few questions to ask yourself first. 

Choosing the Best Nonprofit Software for Your Organization

When we’re talking to nonprofits about what software they should choose, we like to ask them a few questions to get started.

• What kind of constituents do you work with? Is it primarily individual donors? Do you also have volunteers, vendors, program participants, or other constituents?
• What revenue sources do you have? Are you primarily funded by individual donors? Do you also have sales or program fees? How about memberships, contracts, or grants?
• How many constituents do you have? Do you expect that number to grow?
• What kind of reporting are you doing currently? 
• What kind of reporting would you like to do?
• How are you currently tracking constituent data? Do you have a CRM? Are you using spreadsheets?
• Are you and your staff satisfied with your current workflow? 
• What budget does your organization have for software?

And of course, it’s important to make sure whatever donor management software you choose integrates with your current workflow. So we encourage nonprofits to assess the tools they currently use. 

• What software do you use for accounting?
• What software do you use to email your constituents?
• How do you accept online donations? 
• How do you manage your grants? 

If you ask yourself these questions and are satisfied with your answers, then it may not be the right time to switch. But if your answers make you nervous, it might be time to consider a new solution. 

That’s especially true if you track more than just donors, if you expect to add more constituents in the near future, and if your systems don’t integrate with each other.

If that sounds like you, we’d love to show you MonkeyPod.

MonkeyPod brings constituent management, email outreach, accounting, fundraising, and grant management into a single software platform. Instead of integrating a bunch of different tools, we built one that does it all.

And rather than charging you more as your list of donors and constituents grows, our prices are flat and you always get unlimited data. No matter how many records you add to MonkeyPod, your price is always the same.

Want to see if we’re a good fit for your nonprofit? Schedule a demo with our team today.