A Donation Management Software (DMS) system can be a significant investment for a nonprofit organization. If your organization is new to implementing or you haven’t upgraded your software and an overhaul is required, perceiving the solutions you need to add to your existing software can seem overwhelming.
The Covid-19 pandemic has placed more obstacles and created challenging situations for charitable firms around the globe. In this scenario, choosing a church donation software or a non profit donation software can be fraught with uncertainty.
It is, therefore, more imperative than ever that organizations identify new donors while at the same time retaining existing donors. Choosing the right upgrade for your donor management software will enormously help you in this endeavor enormously.
Let’s look at some ways in which implementing the right DMS tool with the required features can assist your nonprofit.
Make Fundraising Easy
Donation software helps nonprofits generate funds from donors without reaching out to donors individually. You can use donation management software to secure the donations without emailing each donor manually when you launch new fundraising campaigns.
DMS helps automate the entire process based on demographics, geographical location, etc. Solutions offer a welcome reprieve from the woes of repetitive record-keeping for many nonprofits.
Pledge and Donation Tracking
Nonprofits that solicit donations accept pledges at a mutually agreed future date. As these nonprofit organizations grow, there arises a need to develop systems to track the amount promised by individuals along with the expected fulfillment date. Comparing the amounts donated against the amounts pledged is a crucial feature.
Easy Tax Filing and Receipts Provided to Donors
Whether church donation software or nonprofit donor management software, donation management systems make tax filing part of the year considerably less hectic. All the information required is located conveniently within one program.
Nonprofit staff entrusted with the responsibility for filing taxes can quickly fill in the applicable tax forms and file them electronically by using the inbuilt templates.
Tools that Analyze Fundraising Trends
Tools that are an integral part of DMS packages help analyze donor trends and the current financial situation of the nonprofit. They can closely monitor the fundraising campaigns generate reports. Periodical reports can help the nonprofit make appropriate decisions regarding budgets and strategies.
Digital Records Available On-Demand
The added advantages of using donor management systems are that all the records, such as the amount received from donors, tax receipts, etc., are digitally maintained. You can download these records on demand by the donors based on their requirements. Donors may prefer soft or hard copies of the required data, and they can access either for their taxation purposes.
Email Automation: Communicating Seamlessly
Email automation is all about scheduling emails to be sent automatically based on the events such as donations received, a new donor signing up, etc. It can also be helpful to organizations that need to send updates to donors and volunteers regarding the activities of the nonprofit organizations.
As with donation processing, automating email communication can save the employees considerable time for activities such as appreciation letters to donors. A good DMS should also be able to track statistics such as when the emails are sent, opened, etc.
Comprehensive Donor Profiles
Comprehensive donor profiles serve the dual purpose of combining and integrating your donors from various data sources into one software. This feature can be helpful for any organization that currently relies on multiple spreadsheets or even has to flip back and forth between programs to get all the needed information. Potential information stored in a comprehensive donor profile should include a list of your organization’s staff, volunteers, aid recipients, sponsors, donors, etc.
Detailed donor profiles also include donation history, contact information, hobbies, social media presence, prior event attendance, etc. You can use this information to personalize your approach according to your target audience. You may be able to conjure up new strategies with the relevant information regarding potential donors at hand. The strategies made possible by DMS will help increase the amount donated through fundraising efforts.
Conclusion
It is good to contemplate and think about what you want in a donor management program. You may or may not require a comprehensive system. It’s a possibility that your currently used fundraising tool may be more than capable of satisfying the requirements of your organization.
It is important to research and identify the program that best suits the requirements of your nonprofit. If your current fundraising platform is sufficient for your needs, you continue with it rather than investing in an upgrade, thus saving you time, money, and a potentially steep learning curve.
