At the same time, it takes a lot of resources to recruit and the return is statistically quite low. In fact, it can take upwards of 2 or more years to recoup typical donor acquisition costs.

This is why the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP), a joint project between the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the Urban Institute, is so helpful for development professionals. This annual report gives us a thorough look at current donor retention trends to help us develop new strategies for retention and engagement.

Not surprisingly, the 2015 FEP reported that 19% of first-time donors were retained by nonprofits, compared with 63% of repeat donors.

What does this mean for your nonprofit? It suggests that your first priority should be retaining your current, active donors.

Before we dive into calculating your rate, let’s look at some donor retention basics.

What Is Donor Retention?

Donor retention refers to the number (or percentage) of donors that return to give another gift in a specific time period. Most nonprofits and charities measure donor retention year over year.

Why Is Donor Retention Important?

A high retention rate indicates that a nonprofit has a healthy support system. Here are some other reasons why donor retention is so important to nonprofits and charities.

1. Donor Acquisition Costs Are High: Nonprofit professionals focus on donor retention because of the high initial cost of recruiting first-time donors. As mentioned above, it can take 18-24 months for nonprofits to recoup the amount of money they spend to attract a first-time donor, as most gifts are generally 2 to 3 times less than the marketing/recruiting cost.
2. Gain Access To Bigger Networks With People Fundraising: If you’ve impressed your donor enough to warrant repeat donations, then there’s a chance that donor may be recommending your cause to friends and family—which is the basis of People Fundraising. Thus, that relationship is leveraging additional donations.
3. Potential For Larger Gift Amounts: The 2015 FEP found a direct correlation between retention and gift size. Returning donors of gifts less than $100 were retained at 53% while retention was 76% for those gifting $250 or more. This could mean that as your nonprofit grows along with your donor, their gifts are likely to increase over time.

Now that you know more about donor retention, it’s time to establish your retention baseline. If you haven’t been tracking donor retention, then now is the perfect time to start. Follow these steps:

“If you haven’t been tracking donor retention, then now is the perfect time to start.” tweet this

Measuring Donor Retention

1. Capture The Data

It’s impossible to calculate your retention rates without tracking your donors and gifts. While there are a number of ways to do this, remember that the decision to use one method over another is determined by your nonprofit’s size and resources.

• Donor Management Software: Nonprofits of all sizes can benefit from using a donor management software platform. These programs track donor information, gift amounts, and interactions.
• Your Fundraising Platform: Depending on the online fundraising platform you use(i.e. CauseVox), you may be able to track individual donor information along with overall trends right on your dashboard.
• Spreadsheet: Smaller operations sometimes use a simple Excel spreadsheet to track donations. This method may seem primitive, but for those without the financial or technological means to purchase a program, it’s a good first step.

Make a concerted effort to track as much information as you can on your donor in real-time so you’re not just storing it all in your head for a later day. The more accurate your data is, the better you can accommodate donor trends year after year.

2. Make Your Initial Retention Calculation

To figure out your retention rate, follow this formula:

For example, if 100 donors from last year returned to give gifts again out of 250 total donors, you retained 40% of your donors and lost (attrition) 60%.

100/250=.4 (40% retained)

Download your donor retention calculator template below:

3. Dive Into Your Data

Donor retention focuses the number of donors that come back year after year, but there are other data subsets to consider.

We suggest you dig deeper and learn more about your donor base by also calculating the following:

First-time Donor Retention

The number of first-time donors giving a second gift.

Because of the FEP we know that, on average, only 19% of first-time donors give another gift. Thus, if your percentage is higher than this than you’re retention and engagement strategies are on the stronger side.

A low percentage means that you’re not keeping donors interested in your cause. In this case, analyze the steps you take to engage your first-time donors and incorporate donor engagement and retention best practices featured later in this post.

Returning Donor Retention

The percentage of donors giving 2 or more gifts that give again.

Remember that, for the average nonprofit, roughly 63% of returning donors give another gift. Again, if your rates are at or around 63%, then your efforts are working. If you find that your retention rate is lower than this benchmark, focus on ways to improve your efforts.

Average Annual Gift

When analyzing your donor retention rates, it may also help your organization to look at average annual gift amounts. Any changes, particularly negative ones, indicate you should refocus your efforts on increasing gift amounts by incorporating recurring giving campaigns, and major gift efforts, etc.

By comparing the average annual gift amount of year #1 to the average annual gift amount from year #2, you can also learn whether your average gift size is growing or decreasing alongside your retention rate.

Lifetime Value

The monetary amount you can expect from the average donor.

Yes, the cost to acquire a new donor is high. Couple that with statistically low first-time donor retention rates, and it’s safe to say that recruiting and keeping a donor is difficult. When you perform the Lifetime Value (LV) calculation, you can clearly see how much your average donor will give over the course of your relationship.

Let’s say your average annual gift is $100 and your attrition rate is 50%. You can assume your average donor will give $200 to your organization ($100/.5=$200).

Now, consider a lower attrition rate of only 25%. Even with an average annual gift of $100, an average donor will give a considerably higher amount of $400 ($100/.25). Wow!

Donor Acquisition Costs

The cost to recruit each new donor.

We suggest you track donor acquisition costs to get a clear picture of how much you’re spending per new donor.

For example, if you spent a total of $20,000 to bring in gifts from 150 new donors this past year, your donor acquisition cost was $133.33 ($20,000/150=$133.33).

But what if your average gift was only $100? Then you’re actually losing money bringing new donors in.

When all’s said and done, the key factor in the success of your fundraising efforts is donor retention. And as you can see from the 2015 FEP report chart below, even a 1% increase in retention pays!

The Ideal Scenario

In a perfect world, you’ve captured accurate data for as many years as you’ve been collecting donations and your donor information is up-to-date. And then, when you calculate your retention rate, it’s always an impressive 70-100%.

But in reality, donor and gift tracking can get messy, especially if multiple people manage the data in *gasp* different locations. That’s why it is so important to commit to a system of tracking your donor information and stick to it, no matter the circumstances.

On thing to keep in mind is that there’s no “one-size fits all” when it comes to retention rates, as they can vary for a million and one reasons (size of your nonprofit, economic issues, fundraising budget, etc.)

Just focus on your own numbers. As you track your returning donors, you’ll get a good idea of where you are starting from and you can work from there to improve.

Expert Tip: Don’t get hung up on other organization’s retention rates. Determine your benchmark and then work forward.

8 Essential Tips For Effective Donor Retention

Donor engagement leads directly to retention. So, keep your donors consistently flowing through the donor engagement cycle to continue to strengthen your numbers.

Here are 8 tips to use that will inspire, activate, and rally your supporters and ensure retention.

1. Personalize The Giving Experience

Show your donors how much they matter to you by speaking directly to them. Here are a few suggestions:

• Refer to each donor by their name. Avoid generic greetings.
• Acknowledge the donor’s last gift amount and your history together, especially when asking for another gift
• Learn about your donor’s interests and communication preferences and use this information to tailor messages about donor impact and upcoming engagement opportunities.

If you remember that your donors aren’t just a number, you’re on the right track to higher retention.

2. Inspire Through Education

Keep donors informed about WHY their gift matters.

• Share nonprofit stories about those impacted by your organization’s work
• Use powerful images and videos to educate your social media followers
• Include information in your communications that is relevant and useful for your supporters. If your donor thinks your content is of use, they’re more likely to share it with others.

As a reminder, keep your website, online fundraising pages, and all social media pages clean and organized with current information to help your donors easily find the information they’re looking for.

3. Engage Donors With Activities

There’s a good chance that if that supporter is donating, there is something about your cause that resonates with him/her. Use this knowledge to cater personalized opportunities for engagement that help develop a strong relationship. Engagement takes many forms such as:

• Volunteering
• Advocating for your cause
• Serving as a board member
• Connecting you with others interested in the cause
• Networking
• Fundraising

Don’t think of your donors as simply a vehicle for donations. Instead, think of them in a holistic way as a “supporter” and give them opportunities to get involved on many levels.

4. Activate Supporters

A sure-fire way to retain supporters is to activate them. When supporters get out there and “do something” for your organization, they’re helping you out while also becoming further invested in your nonprofit or charity.

Consider running a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign and recruit donors to become personal fundraisers. Use CauseVox to power your online fundraising campaign and track the efforts of your loyal, active supporters.

5. Don’t Forget To Ask Again

By the time your next fundraising campaign rolls around, your donors will be expecting another ask. If you overlook your donors, especially your first-time donors, they may not give again down the road.

Donor tracking software can help ensure you don’t forget to ask each and every donor.

6. Thank Your Donors Immediately & Often

Here at CauseVox, we love to talk about thanking donors. In fact, it is one of our favorite topics because we believe it is THAT important. Here are a few ways you can thank your donors:

• Send them an immediate donation receipt with a thank you after they make a gift. If you use CauseVox, you can set up your account so it produces this donation receipt automatically.
• Handwritten thank you letter
• Video thank you (email)
• Social media shout out (if anonymity isn’t an issue)
• Phone call

While it’s absolutely necessary to thank your donors after they’ve made a gift, this shouldn’t be the only time you do it. Don’t forget to reach out to your donors at other key times of the year including Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve.

7. Report Results

Donor’s don’t just need, they deserve and expect, evidence that their gift had an impact. There are many ways to report results to supporters, including:

• Impact reports
• Newsletters
• Annual Report
• Infographics and statistics shared on social media and email

You speak to your donor’s heart constantly through stories and images and invoke emotion. Data reporting is a good way to balance all that “heart” with the mind.

8. Surprise Your Donors When They Least Expect It

We are greatly inspired by Watsi’s email marketing and recurring giving efforts, but the one thing that stands out most is Watsi’s commitment to providing donors with a touch of the unexpected. As a surprise, Watsi mailed their recurring donors a beautiful book of photos from their fieldwork.

If you can, try to add an element of surprise to keep your supporters interested in your cause and eager to see what you come up with next. Whether you decide to send out a heartwarming video, make a random call just to say “thanks,” or host a donor appreciation luncheon—the point is that you’ve made a concerted effort to show your donors how much they matter.

As you can see, donor retention has a huge influence on an organization’s bottom line. A high retention rate can lead to a decrease in fundraising costs, more engagement, and referrals. But measuring retention is only possible if you’re prepared. So start tracking donor information now with a platform that is right for your nonprofit. Once you have the data, incorporate retention and engagement techniques to increase your rates and keep your donors coming back.

Here are more resources that may be useful to you as you analyze your donor retention rates:

• The Donor Retention & Engagement Playbook
• Ultimate Guide To Peer-To-Peer Fundraising

More than half of donors worldwide prefer to give online with a credit or debit card, so your online donation page can’t just be an afterthought.

And lately, recent trends show an even bigger push toward mobile payments. In fact, consider these statistics:

• 54% of consumers have used a mobile wallet to make a payment.
• This represents around a 40% growth in mobile payments year-over-year.
• And out of all CauseVox mobile web traffic continues to grow each year.

How could we provide donors with a user experience that is convenient, easy and fast on small screens while people are on the go?

The new CauseVox donation page solves these problems and helps you convert more donations on your donation form.

This means more donations, more donor happiness, and more return on your marketing and fundraising efforts. 

With the new donation page, our customers will be able to raise more with less effort. You’ll now be able to experience: 

Enhanced Donation Form Interface

We know that nonprofit organizations need tools that can help them raise more with less effort. We heard those frustrations and updated our donation page so that the user interface offer your donors an experience they’ll love .

A good donation page inspires donors to give, connects fundraising to your mission and supports everyday giving and specific campaigns.

The best practices that make a nonprofit donation page work aren’t complicated or intimidating. With CauseVox, they don’t even require waiting on your IT person or becoming a tech wizard.

And with the additional enhancements that CauseVox has made to their donation page, you’ll experience less frustration and less clunk.

50% Reduction In Required Donation Steps = Less Frustration And Less Clunk

We’ve reduced the number of steps required to make a donation by 50%

While previously donors took 4 steps to complete their donation, we’ve now reduced it to a streamlined 2-step process.

The new 2-step donation process makes it easier for donors to complete their donation quickly, increasing your conversion rates and helping you raise more online.

One-Time and Monthly Recurring Selectors

One-time and monthly donation selectors are larger and more visible so that donors can opt-in to make a recurring donation easier. 

Plus, you can default recurring giving, or even make recurring giving mandatory to run recurring-driven campaigns and donation pages.

Recurring giving increases the donor’s lifetime value, which is tracked in our Fundraising CRM.

Enhanced Peer-to-Peer Donation Assignment

For peer-to-peer fundraising, donors have a more visible way to see who their donation is being assigned to as well as make any changes they’d like.

With the new easy selector, donors will be sure their donations are attributed to their friend or family member, helping them complete their donation with confidence.

Faster Performance With 3x Donation Page Loading Speed 

Once someone goes to donate on your campaign or website, your donors can either be provided with an inspiring and joyful experience, or it can frustrate them. Their experience directly relates to whether or not they give, or keep giving. 

The bottom line? Slow donation pages provide a poor experience.

No donor wants to wait around for your donation page to load, so the speed at which it loads can have a big impact on your revenue, positively or negatively.

Because we know faster-performing pages make a difference in improving your donor’s giving experience, we completely refactored our donation form engine for speed.

Now, donation forms load 3x faster than they used to.

Even before the donor selects the “donate” button, we pre-load your donation page on your campaign site, so the donation page loads instantaneously. No more waiting.

Plus, we’ve optimized our layout for mobile and desktop browsers and enhanced the page to include smoother animations, making your donors’ experience a delight.

Optional Postal Code

To help decrease the number of fields your donors need to fill out, we’ve now made collecting the postal address of your donors optional!

Without the postal address, your donors have to fill out 46% less fields to complete their donation, further decreasing the time it takes to make a donation and increasing conversions.

Here’s a look at the donation with the postal code enabled:

Here’s a look at the donation form with the postal address disabled:

To make it easier for your donors to give, here’s how you can disable the postal address on the donation form. With less friction, you’ll see more donations completed.

Additional Embed Options

With the new donation page, you have three options of embedding.

With the Unstyled Link, you can always link your donation page as a standard web link. The Styled Button, lets you use a pre-made clickable button that you can add to any webpage.

With the Embedded Form, donation pages can also be displayed fully as a secure form on any webpage too.

Apple Pay and Google Pay Mobile Payments

We’re excited to announce that now donors can use Google Pay and Apple Pay in order to complete their donation in seconds.

Instead of digging out their credit card, a donor can use their mobile wallet on their phone or computers.

For example, if a donor is using Safari on their phone, they’re automatically prompted to pay with ApplePay, helping your donors complete their donation using their preferred method.

Making a donation online has never been easier.

Fraud Detection Algorithm

Across the internet, unfortunately, there’s been an increased number of security breaches, leaving many people’s credit cards vulnerable.

With this, we saw an increase of stolen cards being tested through organization’s campaigns, leaving organizations liable for fraudulent charges.

So, we also implemented a new fraudulent transaction detection feature with an active prevention algorithm that detects fraudulent users and blocks them.

You can be sure that your organization always collects real donations, and you can fundraise with confidence. This works automatically behind the scenes for all donations.

What’s Next For Your Donation Page?

Now that these enhancements are live, you’ll be able to take advantage of them and increase your donations to meet your fundraising goals.

In addition, we’re working on making these additional updates, which we hope to have live very soon:

• You will be able to embed donation forms directly on your website, no pop-up required. (Released!)
• You’ll no longer be required to enter a description for your donation tiers.
• You’ll soon have the ability to add additional content to the donation form to help drive donations.
• Smart conversion for abandoned donation forms, so your donor’s information will be saved for when they return to complete a donation.

Raise More With Less Effort With CauseVox Donation Pages

Looking to make your donation process convenient, easy, and fast on any device?

Learn more about how you can use CauseVox donation pages to raise more for your organization.

Or, to learn more about this donation page update, view our recorded webinar of the new donation pages.

We look forward to releasing even more features and content that can help you make the most of CauseVox. We’ll keep you updated on everything with our Product Updates!

Questions? Contact us at support@causevox.com.

We’re excited to share CauseVox’s most powerful enhancement yet.

Earlier this year we launched a refreshed mobile-optimized campaign template designed to ensure your supporters could see, support, and share your campaigns from anywhere on any device.

In the latest release, we’ve taken that same level of attention and care inside of CauseVox, making your experience crafting and managing campaigns more intuitive and lovable.

Let’s take a look at what we’ve designed for you!

Click here to request your personalized demo of the all-new CauseVox and see how you can streamline your fundraising and reach new donors. 

The all-new CauseVox

The CauseVox account interface has been completely reengineered, making it easier and faster for you to launch and design fundraising campaigns, track your new donors and donations, and keep updated on your fundraisers progress.

In addition, we’ve taken the same enhancements and refreshed your supporters’ fundraising setup and dashboard too. This ensures they see the information that is most important to them successfully fundraising for your cause.

We want to ensure that using CauseVox is an intuitive and delightful experience for both you and your supporters. We’ve done just that with this refresh.

Meet Activity Feed

A new fundraising tool built into your CauseVox dashboard that provides you a real-time lens into the most important activities surrounding your fundraising campaign, as they happen.

Activity Feed gives you a live snapshot of recent supporters and advocates who’ve joined your campaign, alerts when you and your advocates hit key milestones, and new updates and stories that your community share.

Activity Feed provides you the information you need to successfully rally your community around your cause, at the right time, as it happens.

Start Fundraising Faster

Our platform is designed to help you fundraise, however, you there is a lot of work you had to do before you could actually start fundraising. We’ve changed that in the all-new CauseVox.

With our new quick campaign setup tool, you’re now able to launch a new campaign for your annual fund, capital campaign, spring fund drive, giving day, or year-end campaign in a matter of minutes. In just 5 quick steps, you can have your campaign ready for launch.

As fundraisers ourselves, we know how precious your time is and we want you to spend less time building your campaign and more time rallying supporters around your it.

We believe we’ve achieved that with the launch of our quick campaign setup tool.

A new, more powerful content editor

We’ve known for a few years now that our content editor needed some love. Many of you have told us of the limitations and complications that it’s caused you. We listened and went above and beyond to design a new, more powerful content editor just for you.

Our new editor is simple and intuitive to use—helping you do what you need, when you need to, with just a click. Write your fundraising appeal and stories with ease, quickly add and resize photos, and embed videos without knowing HTML code.

And for all of you technical folks out there, the new editor has something for you as well. We’ve updated the HTML editor so that you can dive in and ensure your campaign looks the way you envisioned it.

Our new editor let’s you do more with less, so you can spend your time on human things.

Your fundraisers are going to love this

We’ve always focused on making it incredibly easy for your supporters, advocates, and fundraisers to create personal pages, share their story, join teams, and share your campaign.

We’ve taken that a step further in the all-new CauseVox by simplifying the setup process by eliminating a step and streamlined the way they manage their campaigns to ensure they see what’s most important to their campaigns success.

Now your fundraisers will see their own live Activity Feed when they login. Activity Feed tells them who is interacting with their personal fundraiser in real-time. This provides them the information they need to follow-up and encourage further support of their campaign.

All of these updates (and future updates) are focused on making it easier for your fundraisers to raise more for your campaign.

We believe these updates make running a peer-to-peer or team fundraising campaign easier than ever before.

And much more!

We’ve retooled, optimized, and added many other features all in an effort to make it easier for you to inspire, activate, and rally supporters around your cause.

• CauseVox is now faster than ever.
• Live on-page site editing, so you know exactly how your changes will look to your supporters.
• Autosave enabled across the platform, so you never have to think about it.
• Enhance social sharing capabilities to ensure people see and share your message how you imagined it.
• Updated search and sorting capabilities so you can find donors, donations, and fundraisers easier.
• More control over your campaign end date—down to the hour.
• Preview your campaign on desktop, tablet, and mobile before you launch.
• Updated HTML editor allows you to have more control over your campaigns look and feel.
• And more enhancements to improve the overall usability of CauseVox for you and your supporters.

Click here to request your personalized demo of the all-new CauseVox and see how you can streamline your fundraising and reach new donors. 

We’re excited to introduce our new mobile-optimized and responsive crowdfunding and peer-to-peer campaign sites.

This update has been specifically designed with your donors in mind. These changes will provide a better experience for donors on all devices including tablets and mobile devices.

Mobile-Optimized & Updated Navigation

With our new campaign sites, your supporters will be able to experience, share, and donate to your campaign seamlessly on any device (mobile phones, tablets, and desktops). We’ve also updated the navigation elements to help visitors easily browse and find the right information they are looking for.

Improved Fundraisers & Stories

Stories (blog posts) that you publish on your campaign site are better showcased in its own content section, helping drive engagement and sharing.

Updated Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Pages

Personal and team fundraising pages have been refreshed to showcase the individual and teams in a distinctly personal format, helping their networks identify with their campaign.

Looking to start a campaign this summer or simply dive deeper into CauseVox’s platform as you plan a #GivingTuesday or year-end campaign? Now is the time!

You can get started and begin exploring CauseVox for FREE. There is no credit card required and no monthly fees until you raise $5,000 on the platform.

Whether it’s collecting more insight about your donors or streamlining your fundraising event’s processes, having the ability to ask your own questions in the CauseVox donation form is a feature that can help you be more effective at engaging donors.

Because of that, we’ve refreshed how the donation form looks and upgraded the functionality of the donation form to include donation custom fields.

Our goal is to make it quick and easy for your supporters to donate to your fundraising campaign, while also helping you to get the right donor insights. Check it out below.

Donation Form Design Update

The steps are the same as before, but with a new design. Here’s a preview:

Step 1: Donation form pop up. Select donation tier.

Optional: If running a campaign with personal/team pages, donors can choose to re-select the assignment of the donation.

Step 2: Donor information

Step 3: Email and Postal Address

Step 4: Billing information

Step 5: Donation complete!

New Donation Custom Fields

Donation custom fields are an easy way for you to ask your donor questions or collect additional info from your donors on CauseVox. Here are four examples of what you can do with this powerful feature:

1. Allow donors to donate on behalf of someone (great for corporate giving)
2. Find out the best way to connect with donors (email, social media, etc)
3. Ask donors for their t-shirt size if you’re running an athletic event.
4. Figure out where donors heard about your campaign/organization (through a friend, online, etc)

The possibilities are endless when it comes to using donation custom fields for your form. This feature is flexible enough to handle a wide array of use cases.

Setting Up Custom Donation Fields

Here’s how you you easily set up donation custom fields for your donation form.

Step 1: Login to your CauseVox Admin account and select your Fundraising Site.

Step 2: Go to your Site Settings, and select “Donation Custom Fields”.

Step 3: Input your custom questions.

Step 4: Go to your donation form on your live campaign site. Click through to the second screen to see your donation custom fields.

You’ll be able to see a donor’s custom field answers on their donation record in CauseVox as well as in the donation export.

For a limited time, custom fields are open to all accounts and plans. Take advantage of it today!

If you have any questions on custom fields and how to use it, contact us at support@causevox.com.

After years of fighting corporate human rights abuses in the courts, ERI decided that it was time to take their message out to the world. They set out to create a series of short films and training curricula that would give a voice to survivors of corporate human rights abuses and share information for activists.

About

EarthRights International (ERI) takes on corporate human rights abusers in arena of public opinion. Using the power of the law and the power of the people, they defend human rights and environmental rights around the world. Founded by Katie Redford, a lawyer who became passionate about human rights while teaching English in Thailand, ERI documents and exposes human rights and environmental abuses, organize and rallies activists, and litigates on behalf of survivors of human rights abuses in the U.S.

Challenges / Problem

Most of ERI’s donations come from foundations and larger grants. But this campaign was designed to create a message for the people and to share information among activists. So, for Katie and her team, it was important that this campaign also be funded “by the people.” Rather than reach out to major donors or find corporate sponsors, ERI wanted to crowdfund the campaign and reach out to individuals.

How CauseVox Helped

After researching crowdfunding options, ERI selected CauseVox because of the control it allows over the design of the page.

Additionally, the ability of individual fundraisers to create and tailor their own pages was a huge asset. Patrick Boyle, ERI’s Development Associate credits the ability of each individual fundraiser to customize their own page with the success of the campaign. Individuals who personally reached out with their own customized page attracted new audiences to ERI and allowed personal connections to be made.

Their Results

ERI set their initial goal at $15,000. When staff participation increased, they then bumped it to $20,000. Due to the incredibly warm reception and their success nearing the end of their campaign, they raised it again to $25,000.

The final total raised was $24,532. This, along with meeting Gillian Caldwell along the way (Gillian is, among other things, an experienced human rights film producer who offered her service at a discounted rate), ERI raised more than enough to complete their project.

This week we have a guest from Charlotte Ritter is a technology analyst for TechnologyAdvice. She’s a pro at business intelligence, gamification, project management, and other emerging technology. Let’s see what she has to say about cloud technology for nonprofits.

—

Is your nonprofit addicted to spreadsheets?

If you use them for everything from accounting, to contact management, project tracking, budgeting, donor tracking, and more—then you’re not alone. Nonprofits commonly rely on spreadsheets to organize any and all information.

Spreadsheets, email, and internet connection is the extent of many organizations’ business technology.

But spreadsheets aren’t the right tool for every job.

Spreadsheets don’t automatically notify you to follow up with constituents, for instance, or submit a grant application. They don’t track relationships between donors, such as spouses with separate donation records or coworkers. And they don’t provide the proper security, reporting, and ad hoc queries you get from nonprofit software.

Your nonprofit needs dedicated resources to support and grow your efforts.

But mention software or technology inside a nonprofit and “ka-ching” is all the board members hear. In reality, the software allows nonprofits to allocate staff resources away from administrative tasks and to more strategic efforts, like direct services provided by the organization.

There are many tools that enable nonprofits to increase their social impact and forward the organization’s mission. And right now, they’re more affordable than ever.

The Charitable Cloud

The biggest trend in nonprofit technology is the movement to cloud-based software. Donor expectations often cause organizations to manage short and long term goals simultaneously, all on a shoestring budget. Cloud services can help minimize costs and are a great way for nonprofits to increase their ratio of spending on core missions versus their overhead costs.

Nonprofits can experience the benefits of technology that, historically, have only been reaped by businesses or well-known nonprofits. Adopting business technology for use within nonprofits is becoming more popular, as vendors now offer nonprofit versions of their cloud software, often at discounted prices.

Web-based solutions for donor management, accounting, marketing, and more enable nonprofits to improve workforce and operational efficiencies in business-like ways.

Let’s take a look at what some of those ways are.

Stay Top of Mind for Donors with Email Marketing and Relationship Management

The accessibility provided by cloud-based services not only cuts costs, it enables nonprofits to be more interactive. Instead of just focusing on attracting new donors, you can concentrate on engaging and retaining current donors as well. While websites remain a top priority for most nonprofits, modern marketing tactics such as email marketing, landing pages, and drip campaigns are increasingly part of a successful toolkit.

Until recently, Development Directors, who consistently report being strapped for time, was spending extended intervals creating individual Facebook updates and writing new email newsletters each day. Marketing automation software can help you take a multi-channel approach to your email communication efforts without the time commitment. This means you’re able to send frequent, targeted appeals that can significantly increase response and click-through rates— which means more donations for your cause.

• For starters, Mailchimp’s beginner account lets you send 12,000 monthly emails to 2,000 subscribers for free. They also recently released marketing automation features, so you can have enterprise-level behavioral targeting at an affordable price.

• For more features like landing pages and embeddable forms, Boingnet is an affordable, lightweight marketing automation platform.

• For growing nonprofits with more powerful needs, ActiveCampaign is an end-to-end marketing automation solution that also offers constituent relationship management. This means you’ll have an actual database to house your donor information and track interactions as they happen, rather than an out of date spreadsheet.

Reduce Data Entry with System Integration

To keep up with growing needs for data and efficiency, nonprofit systems often need to be linked. Accounting and fundraising systems, for example, are often at the top of the list when it comes to nonprofit integration requests. Increased integration between payroll and HR systems is now a necessity for many organizations. Vendors like Zoho offer free and affordable modules for human resources, accounting, and more, so you have all the apps you need to manage day-to-day activities — tightly integrated.

Communicate and Manage Projects Efficiently

Project Management tools are a great way to collaborate effectively. Asana and Basecamp offer project planning software that can help get your nonprofit out of the email inbox and back to work. Task management, commenting and conversations, status updates, and document management are just a few of the features this type of web-based software has to offer. All of which are available to team members via web access no matter where or when they need it.

By leveraging the latest technology, you can set your nonprofits apart, save resources, and better focus on your core mission. As large software vendors continue to expand into the nonprofit space, organizations like yours will have an increasing amount of tailored options to choose from. Cloud-based programs, marketing automation, and project management can all have an immediate impact, and nonprofits looking to modernize their workflows and further their mission need to incorporate them.

Author Bio:

Charlotte Ritter is a technology analyst for TechnologyAdvice. She covers business intelligence, gamification, project management, and other emerging technology. She has also written about startups, company growth, and talent management. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

In this release, we enhanced how the Fundraising Site Listing works so you can better find and manage your CauseVox campaigns. New functionality includes:

• Create groups to organize fundraising sites
• Move fundraising sites across groups
• Rename and delete groups

Creating a Fundraising Site Group

After logging in to the CauseVox Admin interface, you are taken automatically to your Fundraising Site Listing page. Click on the + icon to create a new site group.

You can enter in any name for the group, and then click on “Create Site Group”.

The new site group will appear! Now you can begin to add CauseVox fundraising sites to the new group.

Add fundraising sites to your new group by clicking on the “Organize Group” button.

Click on the arrows that appear to drag and drop CauseVox campaign sites from the old group to the new group.

There you have it! The CauseVox campaign site is now in the new group. You can also collapse the listing by clicking on the arrow to the left.

Fundraising site groups can be renamed by clicking on the pencil icon near the name.

If you ever need to delete a group, you can click on the trash can icon in the group. All campaign sites in the group will be moved to the next group that you have.

Across CauseVox, campaigns that use our personal and team fundraising functionality raise twice as much as campaigns that don’t. To help increase that factor, we’ve released a major update to our team fundraising page functionality.

All team fundraising pages now include a donate button, and donors can directly make a donation to a team. It is easier than ever before for teams to meet their fundraising goal.

The donation is assigned to the team itself and increases the donation progress bar accordingly.

In the CauseVox Admin, you can see donations made to teams and export these donations as well.

Donation Receipt Update

Donation receipts feature new merge tags. The new ones include donor first/last name, donation amount, donation date, donor address, and transaction ID)

General User Interface Updates

We’ve also released an updated teams and fundraiser views that include more details for easier campaign management.

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If you have any questions or concerns about any of these updates, please contact us at support@causevox.com.

Even if you didn’t know what exactly it was, you’ve already encountered data visualization. Anyone who spends any amount of time online these days will have noticed the bumper crop of infographics that get shared throughout social media.

Because metrics and storytelling are crucial to successful fundraising, using data visualization in your fundraising campaign is a great way to help boost donations. Images are easy to share and to take in, which helps spread the word about your campaign and your cause. The more people you reach, the greater the likelihood of meaningful engagement with your organization — financially and otherwise.

Here are a few ways to visualize data:

Graphs

If you have Microsoft Excel, then you already have the ability to create graphs that you could share as an image. If you’re measuring progress over time, you can use a line graph; for example, you want to show how many people your nonprofit has served over the years this way.

Or, you can use a graph to show how your organization will use a gift. World Bicycle Relief created the graph above to show not only how much impact has been made by their organization over the years which also shows how their funds are used. This example of data visualization is so effective because it shows conveys a high level of transparency and strategy.

Charts

You could use a chart to visualize processes, the way the World Cocoa Foundation does in their process diagram of the Cocoa Value Chain (h/t Constructive). Use a chart to show the flow of money into impact and programs, or a pie chart to breakdown the allocation of funds.

Maps

Map from Beyond Borders

Here’s one way your organization can show where the money goes. If you work overseas, maps show the locations and the extent of your impact, communicating more deeply than a mere verbal description and explanation.

By using maps to illustrate the extent of your reach, you bridge the gap between clients and donors. North America and Africa are quite far apart – especially in our minds – but something as simple as money can surpass geographic boundaries to change lives.

Timelines

Use timelines to illustrate the history of your organization or a particular project. This type of data visualization is effective if your goal is to convey chronology in a graphically compelling way. In a culture and society whose motto is “Carpe Diem!”, timelines remind us of the progress that has been made and serve to help cast hope for the future.

This kind of forward-thinking and vision-casting may be the encouragement supporters need to act. For example, Hope for New York’s website features a timeline that simply but elegantly tells the nonprofit’s story and progress in a way to invite seeing the possibilities.

Infographics

These are forms of data visualization that may combine other kinds of data visualization and/or simply present numbers and text in graphically compelling ways. Infographics generally serve an array of purposes, like providing instructions (“how-to”s) or comparing two things (“this vs. that”).

To illustrate global progress on achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, GOOD and the Gates Foundation teamed up to create an infographic. At first glance, it looks like it’s just a map, but it also compares statistics on poverty, child health, and maternal health from 1993 and 2006.

A popular and effective way to display infographics is to animate them. For example, charity: water created a video for Earth Day 2011; it’s been viewed over 500,000 times and the nonprofit experienced an increase in online donations, per The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Pictures speak a thousand words, but numbers can tell a story, too. Data visualization translates metrics & numbers into terms that even the most math-phobic person can understand.

Don’t worry if no one on your staff is a graphic designer, or if you’re hard-pressed to find volunteer graphic designers. Thanks to resources like Infogram and Visually, your organization can use data visualization to boost donations and to meet other needs. (And if you know of other data visualization and/or infographics tools, let us know in the comments!)

As a nonprofit, you’re constantly putting money where your mouth is. If you do well in showing where the money goes, you build the confidence and raise the trust your supporters need to keep investing in your mission.