While it would be great if your non-profit could get everything accomplished through grants and regular monthly donations, the reality for most organizations is that fundraising campaigns a few times a year are essential to keeping your mission going forward. There’s more to a successful campaign than sending out an email blast or running a Facebook ad, though. To help you get the most out of your next campaign, we’re sharing ways a fundraising software platform like Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge, can improve results while saving you time and stress.
Send Out Tailored Messaging
If you fundraise by sending out the same message to everyone on your email list, your message isn’t going to resonate with every reader. This is because everyone is in a specific stage of the donor journey. For example, the relationship you have with someone who joined the email list a year ago but has never donated is different than the relationship you have with someone who has been a monthly donor for 18 years.
You need to reach people where they are in their journey and fundraising software helps you do that. You can divide up your email list into segments like “Never donated;” “Donated once,” “Sporadic donor,” and “Monthly donor,” and create targeted emails that will get the best response and highest conversions.
Spend Less Time on Administrative Processes
Planning, marketing, and launching your fundraising campaign are all time consuming processes, but you can see the fruits of your hard work through the increase in donations. Administrative operations are not nearly as rewarding.
Fortunately, your fundraising software can cut down on the time you spend doing the administrative work. For example, when you receive a donation, it will populate to the donor’s profile, be included in your reporting information, and populate into your accounting software if they are connected. This can save hours of data entry for you or your team while reducing the possibility of errors and issues.
Improve Communication with Your Team
When you launch a large fundraiser, you need all hands on deck to make sure it goes smoothly. If you’re solely relying on meetings and emails to keep everyone on the same page, it’s likely that something, somewhere is going to get missed. This is especially true if you have satellite and remote staff. Having fundraising software that ties your donor management information into your accounting software and your marketing channels means you can create convenient, streamlined workflows.
More than that, it allows everyone with access to see what’s happening at every stage of the campaign, see updates, and changes and be on the same page.
Discover New Areas of Improvement and Opportunity
Donor management software provides you with a wealth of information, and the more information you have, the more likely you are to continue to improve your results. Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge provides you with smart recommendations, such as top prospects and suggested ask amounts.
With each campaign you run, you’ll get in-depth reporting and information so you can analyze what worked during your fundraiser and what didn’t. For example, if you included recommended gift amounts in your segmented emails, you can see how high the conversion rate was on this method compared to a strategy you employed a previous time.
Contact Us to See How Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge Can Help Your Nonprofit
At Capital Business, we help nonprofits succeed by helping them leverage software platforms and put them to work for you. See how we can help you get the most out of your accounting and fundraising software by setting up a consultation with our experienced team. Call us at 888-249-6008 or fill out our contact form to get started.
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