Donor Management Software

Without donors, nonprofits simply could not succeed. Understanding information about your donors is critical to your organization's success, and a more efficient system for storing, organizing, and viewing this information can help you achieve your mission.

A donor management database system helps you manage relationships with donors and prospective donors by keeping records of correspondence, archiving your relationship's history, tracking grant proposal deadlines, and producing reports. These software packages can also help you manage your relationships with board members, foundations, and volunteers. They can even help you discover new relationships, share information, and become a more effective fundraiser.

Donor Management without the Tears

Most organizations find that using a donor management system increases donations while reducing costs, stress, and frustration. Here's how:

• Organized data maintenance: All information about a donor (name, address, phone, etc.) and pertinent donation history are easy to access. In addition, you can keep track of the information mailed to the donor, events the donor has attended, the reasons why donations were made to your organization, and other details of the donor’s profile.
• Improve fundraising efforts with less time and aggravation. Whether it's simply automating the printing of thank-you letters, tracking the effectiveness of different variations of a mailing, or implementing a new funding program, donor management software will make it possible to evaluate your efforts and analyze the results.
• Increase your productivity by tracking fundraising activity in reports. You can also increase your productivity by optimizing the methods of tracking volunteer efforts and Board member visitations by major donor.

The popularity of fundraising software packages has increased enormously over the past ten year. Now they are nearly an indispensable tool for nonprofits with a large donor base.

The Right Match

For most organizations, selecting a donor management system requires balancing fundraising needs with the cost of the system -- not only for the initial set-up and for converting your old data into information the new system can read, but also for training, support, and upgrades.

There are a number of different fundraising software packages available. But without considering your organization's needs, trying to make sense all the software options can be daunting. Therefore, we have included a few factors for you to consider when you're evaluating your needs:

What types of fundraising activities (e.g., special events, major gift campaigns, annual mailings) do you do at your agency?

The fundraising software package selected should be able to manage the types of gifts you receive, your acknowledgement procedures, and your tracking process. Before trying to find a package, we recommended that you map out, from beginning to end, your agency's individual and institutional giving programs. Then carefully select a software package that fits your specific needs. All fundraising database software needs to be configured to reflect how your organization records and identifies constituents, labels gifts, reports information, tracks prospect cultivation, etc. Keep in mind that the more comprehensive your giving program is, the more planning and set-up time you will need.

What is your price range?

Fundraising software can be divided into four categories based on price range:

$1,500 and under

At this price level you can expect a very simple package with basic features that allow you to track what project or fund a gift goes to, enter multiple addresses for a single constituent, allow more than one user, and produce simple reports. This is an option for organizations with modest development programs and a very limited budget. (For the smallest of budgets, read our article, Inexpensive Donor Databases.)

$1,500 to $5,000

At this range, you are entering into a new world of functionality. Packages at this level are network-ready and have all of the characteristics necessary for most development programs including coding, tracking, and reporting capacity.

$5,000 to 10,000

Packages at this level include all of the qualities above, and they often have a wider range of data recording and data management functionality. They offer an assortment of comprehensive add-on modules.

$10,000 and up

Packages that cost $10,000 and more are typically customized systems designed for large institutional or organizational settings. These systems are designed to work with LANs (Local Area Network), WANs (Wide Area Network), and multiple sites. They are made to handle huge amounts of constituents and data.

How much software training is required for the fundraising software packages you have chosen?

To make optimal use of your fundraising software, we recommend you pay for sufficient training. Some of the more sophisticated fundraising software will require a significant amount of staff training, so you may need to invest in additional training after any initial free training the company offers. All staff that have access to the database should be trained. If you expect that one person will be the primary user, be sure to have an additional staff member trained as back-up. Keep in mind that if your fundraising efforts rely on volunteers or part-time workers, then it will be advantageous to get user-friendly software that requires minimal training. (Be aware that having volunteers enter sensitive donor data may mean that you need more complicated security measures to protect donor confidentiality.) Whatever your situation, training should include best practices for using the software, which is critical to helping you develop a manual for entering the data in a consistent manner.

What are the experiences of other nonprofits that have implemented this type of software?

Once you find a product that may be a fit for your organization, request at the least three references you can contact. It is important that you ask for clients that are compatible with your organization in type, size, and in development plan. Call the clients and ask them questions that will help you gather input on how effective the software has been for their organization.

Sample questions to ask:

1. Did you require any customization?
2. If so, how much did it cost?
3. How much training did it take to get a staff person comfortable?
4. Does the vendor offer ongoing support? Have you required it?
5. If so, how responsive is the vendor?
6. Did you have to upgrade your hardware in order to accommodate the application?
7. How often are new versions released, and how much do the upgrades cost?
8. Are there any "gotchas" I should know ahead of time before making the investment?
9. Did you feel pressure to be "oversold" -- getting more bells and whistles than you need?

Try Before You Buy

All donor management software companies should provide you with either a trial version of their product or a guided tour of the product and its functionality. Take advantage of these, and make sure that the individuals who will be using the product have the opportunity to do the same. This testing period allows you to get more of a feel for the product, how easy it is to use, what the reports might look like, etc.

To get an idea of the functionalities that popular packages have to offer, download the .