This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.
Author Archives: Guest Author
Passion Doesn’t Pay the Rent: Why the Arts Must Embrace Pay Equity
If you want to make it in this field, you’ve got to pay your dues. That’s been the ethic in the arts and culture sector for generations. And it’s such a familiar concept—akin to the iconic American “bootstraps” mythology. Alas, it is just as mythical.
Because what lies behind this “pay your dues” ethic is a very different logic, namely pay to play—an inherently elitist system that makes entry into the field of the arts exceedingly difficult for anyone who doesn’t already derive their financial security from other sources.
The result is a far less diverse workforce and leadership pipeline, high turnover, low morale, and ultimately, arts and cultural offerings that are less vital and fail to reflect the values and visions of our communities.
A Regional Coalition Emerges
In western Massachusetts, in a region known as the Berkshires, and across the state line in Columbia County in New York state, a group of arts organizations have come together to do something about elitism in the arts and to advocate for fair compensation.
For over a year, a group of six (later expanded to eight) arts organizations coordinated and carried out a survey to systematically understand the real experience of entry- and mid-level workers, humanize their experience with first-hand stories, and make recommendations and commitments to increase pay equity—both as individual organizations, and as a growing movement. My role, as a consultant, has been to support this coalition.
The resulting effort—the Pay Equity Project—was inspired by a few separate informal grassroots whistleblower efforts initiated by brave arts workers in the region.
The coalition members, who were initially brought together by a local organization called Multicultural BRIDGE, are: Art Omi, Berkshire Art Center, Community Access to the Arts, Flying Cloud Institute, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, WAM Theatre, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. A local community foundation, the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, has supported this effort and was the study’s primary funder.
The full report, published in June, can be found here.
“It’s really difficult to feel passionate about your work when you can’t get out of debt, afford a house or a car that actually gets you to and from work.”
Survey Findings
The study’s results are based on surveys with 188 entry- and mid-level workers. The participants came from 43 area arts and cultural employers and held 33 different position titles.
A few highlights include:
- About half of respondents consider their pay and benefits “unfair, and expectations unreasonable.”
- The average hourly wage ($19.49) barely exceeds the livable wage rate for the region ($17.78) for households with no children and no unemployed or dependent adults, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator. For workers with children and/or adult dependents, $19.49 becomes severely insufficient.
- Over half of respondents (56 percent) have additional jobs to get by.
Beyond the numbers, we solicited long-form insights from respondents and conducted two focus groups. Here is a sample of those verbatim responses:
- “My life isn’t sustainable. I get further and further behind in all ways: financial, social fabric, health, education.”
- “It’s really difficult to feel passionate about your work when you can’t get out of debt, afford a house or a car that actually gets you to and from work, or even enjoy a nice dinner out. I gave up all my free personal time and still struggled to make ends meet and was pushed even further into debt.”
- “It is not worth it in the arts anymore.”
Employers were also asked to share anonymized data about salaries and benefits for their entry- and mid-level staff, which we consolidated into a database. Compensation information for the highest paid employees in nonprofits is easily accessible for free online using GuideStar or ProPublica to access IRS 990 forms. But compensation information for people on the lower rungs is much harder to find. That made our new database, fed by 38 participating employers representing 963 total employees, extremely valuable.
Here are some highlights:
- A third of the employers reported that some or all their interns are unpaid.
- Employers reported that 30 percent of their full-time employees earn less than $50,000 annually (before taxes), and some are earning much less than that.
- Nearly two in three employers (65 percent) lack plans to increase pay equity or aren’t sure what steps to take.
A National Problem
Of course, the issues uncovered in our local survey are not unique to our region.
Two larger scale initiatives with similar objectives are:
- Valuing Our Nonprofit Workforce Survey 2023: This effort is led by Third Sector New England. The survey stresses persistent disparities: “Compensation benchmarks across the nonprofit sector have changed drastically since the start of COVID-19. But there are still disparities when it comes to ensuring equitable wages for nonprofit employees.”
- The national Arts Compensation Project is led by the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) and AMS Analytics. The survey is framed as “an important step towards greater pay transparency, parity and equity for arts workers.”
Two completed initiatives provided additional insight and inspiration. Racial equity is the focus of The Burden of Bias in the Bay State: The Nonprofit Racial Leadership Gap in Massachusetts, undertaken by the Building Movement Project in 2019. Insight regarding Massachusetts and national trends helps underscore the added burden for people of color. That report found that more respondents who are people of color experienced bias through “organizations that lack ladders, succession planning, or effective mentoring, as well as nonprofits in which favoritism and inconsistent standards yield unfair outcomes;” that fewer people of color reported receiving cost of living and performance-based raises; and that about half of people of color surveyed said their race had been a barrier to career advancement.
The most important recommendation is for employers to develop compensation frameworks which outline how compensation is set.
A second important initiative is the Pay Equity Standards certification program, which was developed in 2020 by a small organization in Chicago called On Our Team. Originally created to address labor and pay equity issues in costume design and other theatrical design areas, the program has expanded to other sectors and other cities. To earn the Pay Equity Standards gold badge, employers must satisfy a series of criteria, such as a maximum five-to-one salary ratio between CEOs and the lowest paid employee.
Recommendations and Commitments
The following recommendations were the culmination of quantitative and qualitative insights from entry- and mid-level workers themselves, anonymized compensation data from employers, and a national scan of compensation equity initiatives. As such, these recommendations are also commitments that all eight lead organizations have made. The recommendations and commitments fall into two categories: recommendations for employers, and recommendations for movement building.
The most important recommendation is for employers to develop compensation frameworks that outline how compensation is set, including minimum pay rates, targets based on living wage data, and consistent and transparent salary bands based on job titles and responsibilities.
Additionally, the report calls on sector organizations to analyze and track the compensation ratios across the organization between the highest and lowest paid employees. Many of the recommendations concern transparency, such as listing rates of pay on all job descriptions and hiring postings, as well as having transparent protocols regarding overtime.
The report also emphasizes the need to eliminate practices that foster exclusion, such as unpaid internships. Related changes outlined include valuing lived experience in making hiring and promotion decisions and adjusting job training and professional development strategies to increase retention and help a broader range of people to succeed.
Finally, the report calls for incorporating concrete targets for compensation equity into planning, including incorporating equity commitments in multiyear financial projections and making compensation equity a regular board agenda item.
From Report to a Movement
The members of our coalition are under no illusion that a report alone will change practice and culture in the field.
Once employers practicing pay equity reach critical mass, assumptions and expectations will shift.
We now have the data. The next step is to move toward advocacy. To this end, We plan to host an annual regional Pay Equity Summit, with broad participation among arts and culture organizations, as well as other nonprofit and for-profit regional employers, to track progress, showcase pay equity initiatives, and increase accountability.
Additionally, priorities of the group are to advocate for pay equity both at the governmental level—local, state, and federal—and in the private sector, including individual, institutional, and corporate donors. Part of this work, too, is narrative in nature—that means both challenging still commonplace notions that justify exclusionary practices such as unpaid internships, as well as amplifying stories that highlight the essential role of arts and culture workers in communities.
How Do We Pay for It?
One of the most common reactions to the project and our findings is, “Sounds great. How do we pay for it?”
There are several answers to that important question. One is to increase funding for the field. While the extent of the increase in donor backing for racial justice can be overstated, the racial reckoning of the past three years does create greater possibilities to generate donor support for transformative change.
A second answer is cultural. Once employers practicing pay equity reaches critical mass, assumptions and expectations will shift, and it will make no more sense to ask how to find resources to ensure equitable compensation than to ask how to free up resources to ensure the presence of bathrooms at a workplace.
A third answer is simply about setting priorities to pay workers what they are worth.
Sometimes, this can be fixed internally, by narrowing the gap between executives and staff. But in cases where that won’t work, programming should be aligned with actual human and financial resources. In the short term, pay equity is achieved by reducing workload. In the longer term, the message is sent about what the real costs are to provide a full program without exploitation.
Clearly, the Pay Equity Project is part of a larger national conversation. Individual organizations, regional coalitions, and industry associations throughout the nation are gathering data, changing pay structures, advocating for legislative reform, and more.
One important discovery from our survey is that there is an extraordinary cultural divide between entry- and mid-level workers on the one hand, and board members and donors on the other. Making visible the experiences of what remains a largely invisible arts underclass is critical to changing how the art world functions.
So long as working in the arts is considered a privilege, the privileged will dominate the field. Not only is this result unconscionable, but it also diminishes the quality of artistic expression, and it ultimately threatens the viability of the sector.
This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.
How To Increase Board Fundraising Without Having To Ask for Money
One of the most pervasive problems in the nonprofit sector is getting your board to be more engaged, and more specifically, to increase board fundraising. The objections shared usually involve board members not wanting to ask people they know for money.
The irony is that the people your board members know are the MOST likely to donate. This means that getting board members to ask their personal network for money is the fastest way to hit your board fundraising goals. Yet it can still be tempting to allow board members to skip fundraising because it makes them uncomfortable, they’re unfamiliar with it, or you don’t feel prepared to successfully guide them.
Yes, holding our boards to high standards can be challenging and stressful, but our stakeholders are counting on us. That’s why many nonprofits are looking for options to engage board members in fundraising without requiring them to directly solicit people for money.
To help nonprofit board and staff leaders address this challenge, I created a list of more than 100 fundraising tasks for nonprofit board members. The list offers a wide range of activities to choose from to support the financial growth of the organization. Because board members can be hesitant with personal solicitation, only a few options involve directly asking for money.
Here are the top 10 easy-to-implement tips to increase board fundraising
Let’s dig in.
1. Use the power of a story to highlight the organization’s accomplishments
I am a huge believer that board members don’t need to be subject matter experts to be good fundraisers. They don’t need to memorize all the programs or statistics. They simply need to be good storytellers.
Board members can practice telling the story of one person helped by the organization, or the story of how they came to be on the board. This simple act will put board members in a strong position to explain the value of the nonprofit to others, making fundraising easier later on. Storytelling opens doors and creates interest and can be coupled with an invitation to “take action” on the organization’s website which hopefully helps them acquire email addresses.
Board members who want to go further are well-served to stay on top of the organization’s latest accomplishments and share these as stories or anecdotes. Stories are powerful at opening doors and hooking people’s interest.
2. Keep membership data clean
Board members can help you keep your donor data clean. It hurts your organization to have bouncing emails or supporters who didn’t “double opt-in.” In some cases, your mailings may not reach people because their mailing address has changed or has a typo. Maintaining membership hygiene is a very important task that board members can help with. They can make sure member records are spelled correctly. They can also reach out to donors and ask for their cell phone number or birthday month to be appended to their record. Later, your organization can encourage the donor to run a birthday fundraiser. Ask your development staff or executive director about additional fundraising tasks, especially those that always get pushed to the bottom of staff members’ to-do lists.
3. Get the organization approved on Facebook and other platforms
501(c)(3) nonprofits are raising billions on Facebook using birthday fundraisers or personal fundraisers or simply adding a donate button to posts. Board members can get your organization approved for fundraising on Facebook and Instagram. They can also apply to Google for Nonprofits for a suite of free resources. Board members can monitor the organization’s Facebook account to see when people start birthday or personal fundraisers and then reach out, thank the volunteer, and give them pre-written tips about how to raise the most money.
4. Curate a list for others to solicit
A hugely powerful way to grow your nonprofit’s audience and supporter base is for board members to generate a list of 20-50 individuals who may be interested in the organization’s work. A board member can invite their list to learn more about your organization without making a solicitation. They can also encourage their list to take action on a campaign from the organization’s website. This is a low-lift activity that gets prospects in the “funnel” for a later solicitation by someone else.
The board member can also share their list of potential supporters and let someone else in the organization invite these individuals to a cultivation event or information session.
5. Offer tours of the office, website or other resources
Board members can serve as tour guides or “do good docents.” This is fun and easy and could become an ongoing activity. Using the list generated in the activity above, a board member can invite these new prospects to an in-person or virtual tour of your offices, program sites or even part of your website. Be sure that the event highlights your organization’s mission and accomplishments. The tour doesn’t have to involve solicitation. Simply showing people around could be just the nudge they need to get involved. You should include some call to action at the end of the tour, like signing a pledge to get involved or scan a barcode to take people to a specific accomplishments page on the website.
6. Follow up with lapsed monthly donors
Monthly donors may stop giving because a credit card expired or was shut down. If you have a lot of lapsed commitments, ask a board member to locate the donors on social media or get new contact info from people in your organization. The board members can simply email these lapsed donors with a link to re-start their giving. Don’t think of this as a solicitation, but rather helping a donor who already decided to give an opportunity to reconnect.
7. Pitch newsrooms
Nonprofits can benefit from free or “earned” media. Getting covered by the media immediately expands your audience and interest in your issues. Not only are you building a relationship with the newsroom, but you are helping the media cover feel-good stories. If you don’t have a media list of broadcast reporters and editors and print and blogging sites in your area, have a board member find that list from coalition partners or build it themselves. Then, this board member can occasionally pitch newsrooms about your events or other developments.
8. Make programs more fundable
One powerful tactic in nonprofit fundraising is to break down your program budgets into clear categories and then translate them into “fundraising language.” For example, if you can explain that $500 will cover the cost of feeding one person for six months at your homeless shelter, you are more likely to get donors at that level. Many nonprofits have not yet broken down their expenses into these bite-sized donation amounts. This is a perfect task for a board member.
9. Build and research prospect lists
Board members can help create the conditions for fundraising success by prospecting. Prospecting is the act of compiling lists and contact information for potential funders, including individuals, foundations, businesses, and other grantmakers. Board members can gather and organize information on foundations in your area or state, as well as government grants that may be available and corporate grantmaking opportunities.
10. Demystify fundraising
Nonprofit fundraising can feel daunting and overwhelming, especially to board members. But a little bit of education about fundraising basics can demystify the process and even get board members excited about pitching in.
Board members can start by joining online communities where people discuss fundraising best practices and share successes. These exist everywhere, including Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Twitter where a simple search of “fundraising” yields a plethora of groups and resources. Board members should join, observe, engage, ask questions, and then report back to the board and staff. Not only does this fact-finding help the organization stay on top of current trends, but it also “seasons up” the board members to understand the practice, and art, of fundraising.
Board members can also be put in charge of investigating additional and innovative ways for your nonprofit to receive money. For example, board members can spend time researching how to receive and use Google ad grants, how to receive gifts of stock or cryptocurrencies, or how to implement “donate now, pay later” applications. There are many platforms opening up that are very specialized in the areas of grant writing, corporate sponsorship, crowdfunding, and more. When a board member is put in charge of investigating, they may just want to try it out!
Take these ten tasks and turn your board members from “fundraising-hesitant” to active revenue generating supporters. If you need additional ideas, check out the full list of 100 board fundraising activities. I’d love to hear which ones work best to increase board fundraising for your organization in the comments below!
The post How To Increase Board Fundraising Without Having To Ask for Money appeared first on Bloomerang.
This article originally appeared in Bloomerang. See the original article here.
The 25 Best Fundraising Software Solutions to Boost Results
As a nonprofit professional, you understand the importance of fundraising for your organization. It’s crucial to maintain your impactful programs, develop projects, and work toward achieving your mission. Fundraising software can help your nonprofit manage all fundraising activities from one platform.
According to Double the Donation’s fundraising statistics roundup, organizations routinely leave a lot of fundraising revenue on the table. Whether through a lack of fundraising capacity, marketing reach or data analysis, there are a number of reasons why nonprofits might not be making the most of current fundraising opportunities. The right fundraising software can help ensure your nonprofit can take steps to maximize your fundraising potential.
We’ve put together this guide to help nonprofit professionals like yourself understand the different fundraising software types and choose the right solutions for your organization. Here’s what we’ll cover:
Let’s start by exploring the basics and benefits of fundraising software.
What is fundraising software?
Fundraising software is the tools and solutions nonprofits use to plan, manage, and measure fundraising campaigns. This includes solutions to help manage and grow donor relationships (including major donor relationships), collect online donations, hold online auctions, launch marketing campaigns, manage in-person and virtual events and more.
Using robust fundraising software offers multiple benefits to nonprofits. These solutions help:
- Simplify the fundraising process. Manage all fundraising campaigns and communications from one central system.
- Enable donors to give from wherever, whenever. Allow donors to give using an organized, user-friendly online donation form.
- Grow relationships to foster recurring donations. Track past donor interactions to send donors personalized engagement opportunities, build genuine relationships and promote recurring giving.
- Keep donor information safe. Store all donor contact information, payment details and other personal information in a secure platform.
- Track progress over time.
25 fundraising software options that boost nonprofit fundraising
Because of the vast number of software solutions available, finding the right platforms for your nonprofit can be challenging. We’ve organized the top platforms into different categories based on the type of solution they offer.
As you browse these options, consult your nonprofit’s fundraising strategy to reflect on your goals and the software solutions that will help reach those objectives. For example, if one of your goals is to improve your email marketing approach to retain more donors, spend some time reviewing top email platform options.
We’ll cover these software categories:
Donor Management | Online Giving | Auctions | Marketing | Major Gifts | Events | Other Activities |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bloomerang | Qgiv | OneCause | Mailchimp | DonorSearch | Eventbrite | Double the Donation |
CharityEngine | Fundraise Up | Handbid | Gratavid | Pursuant Insights | Regpack | TrueGivers |
EveryAction | Bonfire | Causevid | BoodleGPT | Pathable | Quickbooks | |
NeonCRM | GiveButter | Zapier | ||||
Salesforce | GoFundMe |
Best Fundraising Software for Donor Management
Bloomerang: Best all-in-one donor management and fundraising software
Bloomerang’s donor management software helps nonprofits raise more by enhancing relationships with supporters to improve donor retention rates. The donor database tracks all of your supporters’ engagement activities and donation history so that you can make more informed outreach decisions and craft better fundraising requests. Because of these features, Bloomerang users retain 10% more recurring donors than the industry average.
When you can accurately and effectively track supporter engagement data, you’ll be able to gauge who may be in danger of lapsing, who engages with specific types of activities, and who might be an excellent major donor prospect. From this information, you can segment your audience and further engage your supporters according to their interests and abilities.
Catching donors prior to their lapsing and strengthening your donor retention strategy can lead to thousands of additional fundraising dollars for your nonprofit.
Why we love this fundraising software
Bloomerang offers comprehensive features that allow for both a deep dive and surface-level tracking for various aspects of your nonprofit data. These features include:
- An interactive dashboard that keeps your donor retention rate front and center. You can also use this dashboard to track your latest fundraising campaigns and see what tasks your staff members should complete to drive your mission.
- Constituent timelines that show the historical engagement of each of your supporters. You can view the latest email they received, the last event they attended, and their most recent gift to your organization.
- Giving summaries that show the donation histories of your organization’s individual supporters. You can watch their gifts grow over time as your nonprofit develops stronger relationships.
Bloomerang’s pricing
Bloomerang’s pricing starts at $119 per month.
CharityEngine: Best for automation
CharityEngine is an all-in-one nonprofit solution with a variety of tools ranging from major gift management to event planning and auction functionality. This database is designed to track every aspect of the donor journey, from their first donation through your CharityEngine-powered donation page to their attendance at your favorite fundraising event.
In addition to their built-in and customized data records in their CRM, CharityEngine also offers fundraising tools such as peer-to-peer fundraising pages, online stores, advocacy campaigns, email templates, and more.
Why we love this fundraising software
Similar to Bloomerang, CharityEngine was designed specifically for nonprofit use. This means that instead of adopting a for-profit system and “making do” with the non-specific features, CharityEngine is designed with your organization’s unique structure in mind.
This fundraising software solution offers most of the tools that organizations need to function and create a successful fundraising strategy, minimizing any complicated custom integrations or disconnected tools. Unlike Salesforce, the various tools and applications you need are already built into CharityEngine, maximizing accessibility while somewhat limiting customization. If your organization is looking for a complete tech overhaul, CharityEngine is an option to consider!
CharityEngine pricing
CharityEngine’s pricing starts at $350 per month.
EveryAction: Best for unified relationship management
EveryAction offers nonprofit fundraising software that helps organizations manage relationships, reach their supporters, launch advocacy campaigns and raise funds.
The platform’s unified CRM consolidates all donor management activities into one platform, allowing nonprofits to create targeted, personalized donor communication campaigns, boost efficiency, and avoid data silos.
Users can also develop automated multi-channel communications based on donors’ actions.
Why we love this fundraising software
EveryAction is a truly scalable platform, with solutions for small and grassroots organizations, mid-size nonprofits and enterprise-level organizations. Even organizations that start at the small or grassroots level can benefit from a solution that grows as their needs scale up.
EveryAction Pricing
Request pricing information here.
Neon CRM: Best for flexibility
Neon One designs software for small and midsized nonprofits and associations to help reach their fundraising goals by developing deeper relationships with their supporters. Their CRM software, Neon CRM, is a connected solution that helps foster personalized donor relationships through tools like an engagement timeline and segmented communications.
This CRM also facilitates connected payments, enabling nonprofits to seamlessly accept gifts made using credit or debit cards, ACH, Apply Pay and Google Pay.
Why we love this fundraising software
Neon CRM understands the needs of small shop nonprofits. In many cases, individuals working at smaller organizations will be in charge of handling everything from marketing to events, grant management and more. Neon CRM comes equipped with all the features you need to manage these activities in one place and save time.
NeonCRM pricing
NeonCRM’s scalable pricing structure starts at $99 per month and increases based on the features you need.
Salesforce
Salesforce is a powerful and completely customizable CRM that all organizations can use. Nonprofits and for-profits alike find success on the platform when it is fully built out to meet the organization’s needs.
Nonprofits that use Salesforce first turn the CRM into a fundraising donor database by downloading the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). The NPSP configures the original data fields to be fundraising-related. Then, your team can build out the solution with various apps and integrations to create a complete fundraising system.
Why we love this fundraising software
Because Salesforce is so customizable, it’s a perfect solution for large nonprofit organizations that have the time and resources to build out the entire system to meet their exact needs. Unfortunately, it often takes a lot of energy and money upfront to build out Salesforce to work perfectly for your organization, requiring a consultant or tech expert to complete the project.
However, once you build your software out, your organization can rest assured that your specific needs will all be accounted for in your software system. After all, you designed it that way!
Salesforce pricing
The NPSP is free for your first 10 users. The Nonprofit Cloud Enterprise Edition is $60 per user per month.
Best Fundraising Software for Online Giving
Qgiv: Best for mobile giving
Qgiv’s fundraising software solution is designed to help nonprofits easily collect online donations. With Qgiv, you can launch online campaigns with standard donation forms, peer-to-peer fundraising pages, text-to-give numbers, and auctions.
All of these resources are designed specifically for nonprofit professionals to use without extensive guidance. You won’t need to worry about a complicated or tech-heavy setup process. The best part? Qgiv integrates with Bloomerang! You can easily connect these two resources to collect, store, and use your fundraising data efficiently and effectively.
Why we love this fundraising software
If your nonprofit uses a donation form that leads supporters to a separate off-site page or limits your ability to use your organization’s branding, you may unintentionally cause donors to abandon the page.
Qgiv solves this problem by creating completely customizable forms. Add your organization’s brand colors, logo, fonts, and more to make sure your donation pages match your website’s overall feel. This establishes recognition and trust among your supporters by creating a seamless and cohesive experience.
Qgiv’s pricing
Qgiv’s pricing starts at $0 per month for new users looking to try out the platform. As you scale up your services, you gain access to more and more of Qgiv’s extensive features. They also offer quarterly and monthly payment options for your nonprofit to choose from.
Fundraise Up: Best for boosting conversions
Fundraise Up offers a fundraising tool that’s specifically designed to help nonprofits avoid losing their donors during the checkout process. With this tool, nonprofits can create easy-to-use forms to convert interested supporters into dedicated donors.
The UI fundraising components help donors engage with your donation page and with your website as a whole. Features include:
- Buttons
- Jump-start forms
- Donate cards
- And more to help convert donors!
Plus, the speed of their tools helps prevent donation abandonment.
Why we love this fundraising software
Fundraise Up offers innovative machine-learning technology that analyzes your website visitors’ behavior to generate appropriate suggested donation amounts for each individual user. This allows you to ensure you’re asking for the right amount without leaving money on the table.
Additionally, Fundraise Up offers functionality to collect cryptocurrency gifts. And best of all, it integrates with Bloomerang, allowing you to automatically sync donation data with your Bloomerang CRM.
Fundraise Up’s pricing
Fundraise Up offers a range of payment processing fees depending on the payment method used. Visit their pricing page for more information.
Bonfire: Best for merchandise fundraising
Bonfire offers fundraising software that fits in perfectly with events and allows organizations to raise additional funds. Bonfire provides customized t-shirts and a platform to sell them on for nonprofits.
Using their design tool (or by reaching out to Bonfire design experts), you can customize your very own event t-shirt with your organization’s brand and logo. Then, sell those t-shirts directly to your event attendees through your online store powered by Bonfire.
Why we love this fundraising software
While Bonfire’s main product is t-shirts, they also offer other merchandise to brand and customize for your next event. You can sell face masks, mugs, hats, and even doggie tees, all branded with your organization’s logo, colors, and information pertinent to your event.
You have the option to sell all of this merchandise entirely online, or you can bulk order your items to sell in person. If you’re hosting (or planning to host) hybrid or in-person events, bulk ordering some merchandise will be handy to have at the event venue to sell during event activities.
Bonfire’s pricing
Bonfire’s design tool is completely free to use! A small percentage is taken out of the sales that you complete online, meaning you also only pay for what you sell. This percentage is decreased from 8% to 3.5% for certified nonprofit organizations.
GiveButter: Best for recurring gifts
GiveButter is a fundraising software platform that helps nonprofits collect donations online through online donation pages, event registration forms, and social fundraising campaigns. You can customize your GiveButter forms and embed them directly onto your website.
The forms you design through GiveButter include a recurring gift option so that your supporters can choose to either give one time or regularly (monthly, weekly, etc.) for the foreseeable future. These regular gifts make it easy for your supporters to give periodically without filling out their information every time. Plus, it provides a sustainable revenue stream for your nonprofit.
Why we love this fundraising software
GiveButter provides an excellent opportunity for supporters to sign up for recurring gifts and provides multiple giving options. In addition to the classic gift acceptance methods like credit cards, GiveButter allows your organization to accept donations through Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, and Venmo.
You can also use the dashboards on GiveButter’s platform to track donation trends and patterns.
GiveButter’s pricing
GiveButter’s basic plan is free when you enable optional donor tips. There is also a processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30.
GoFundMe: Best for crowdfunding
GoFundMe is a crowdfunding platform for organizations and individuals alike. It’s a well-known, trusted platform, so your donors can rest assured that your donation funds are safe.
Not only is it secure, but GoFundMe also offers donation software that charities can use to keep all of their fundraising data on a single platform. You can also customize your donation page with your organization’s logo and colors so that it matches the rest of your website.
Why we love this fundraising software
GoFundMe has both an online interface and a mobile app that your organization can use to track fundraising progress. This means that every aspect of your GoFundMe fundraising process is mobile-responsive! They offer mobile-responsive crowdfunding pages, donation forms, and fundraising dashboards.
GoFundMe’s pricing
GoFundMe has a platform fee of 0% and a transaction fee of 2.9% + $0.30.
Best Fundraising Software for Auctions
OneCause: Best for silent auctions
OneCause offers all of the tools that your nonprofit needs to ensure a successful silent auction. With their mobile bidding tools and their event planning solution, your organization will be ready for a successful event.
OneCause provides a comprehensive mobile bidding solution so that your nonprofit’s supporters can engage and mingle during your event without worrying about being outbid or constantly leaving to check their bidding sheet. Instead, they simply receive an “outbid” notification on their phones. They can participate in a bidding war without ever leaving their table!
Why we love this fundraising software
OneCause offers the tools you need for a successful silent auction along with robust event planning tools. Draft solicitation letters and track the item procurement process directly on OneCause’s platform. You can also sell tickets and encourage supporters to register for your event on the OneCause platform.
There’s no waiting in lines to check out and pick up the auction prize. After the silent auction ends, your supporters can check out quickly and easily from their mobile devices. Then, your nonprofit can send the prize to the winners.
OneCause’s pricing
Contact OneCause for more information about pricing and packages.
Handbid: Best for mobile bidding
Handbid offers an easy-to-use and comprehensive mobile bidding app for your nonprofit’s next auction. Auctions are a great fundraising opportunity for nonprofits and an engaging way for your supporters to get involved with your cause. Handbid makes that experience even better by making mobile bidding easy on both Apple and Google OS devices.
When you use Handbid for your next auction, you can drive fundraising further with outbid push notifications, easy-to-find maximum bid amounts, and buy-it-now options. Plus, your supporters can search for the items that interest them the most or use a QR code to find exactly what they’re looking for.
Why we love this fundraising software
Handbid allows supporters to checkout easily with a mobile payment process on their app. makes auctions easy throughout the checkout process. And even if your supporters don’t download the app, that’s okay. They can still use Handbid’s web-based platform to browse and bid on your nonprofit’s auction items.
Handbid’s pricing
Handbid offers custom pricing packages.
Best Fundraising Software for Marketing
Mailchimp: Best for email campaigns
When conducting marketing and fundraising campaigns, your nonprofit must determine its ideal audience, then draft messages that resonate with that audience and motivate them to give. Within Mailchimp’s platform, you can draft and distribute email messages accordingly.
Mailchimp’s vast marketing and promotion tools are a crowd favorite among nonprofit organizations. Many nonprofit professionals enlist Mailchimp’s platform to help spread the word about their various fundraising campaigns. Within the platform, you can draft well-designed emails that are mobile responsive, attractive, and attention-grabbing.
Why we love this fundraising software
Mailchimp integrates with top CRM platforms, like Bloomerang, and can use the data segments in your database to distribute your emails to the most appropriate and influential audience. You can even automate your email messages to get more from your marketing.
Set a trigger action that initiates the beginning of an email stream for your supporters. For example, you might set up emails to go out when a new supporter subscribes to your newsletter. Then, you can set a trigger for when you want to stop sending these emails, such as when the supporter completes a donation.
Mailchimp’s pricing
Mailchimp’s pricing starts at no up-front cost to you. You may choose to scale up to their Essentials, Standard, or Premium plans.
Gratavid: Best for video stewardship
Gratavid offers a fundraising software solution that helps nonprofits thank, engage, and effectively communicate with their donors using video. Your nonprofit can create, upload, and distribute your thank-you videos via text or email.
You can also use this software to request a video from any of your constituents. For instance, as a fundraising coordinator, you may decide to request a thank-you video from team captains after a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign so that they can show their gratitude to donors who contributed to their campaign pages.
Why we love this fundraising software
While collecting donations from your supporters is incredibly important for an effective fundraising strategy, it’s also essential that your organization strengthens the relationships you have built with your supporters.
A Gratavid video is a perfect way to send the following videos:
- Personal shoutouts
- Birthday wishes
- Outreach messages
An effective stewardship campaign is a great way to increase your donor retention rates. And, as you know, improving your donor retention rate is one of the most effective ways to boost your fundraising revenue!
Gratavid’s pricing
Contact the Gratavid team for pricing.
Causevid: Best for video storytelling
Causevid is a video platform that allows nonprofits to connect with their supporters through personal messages. You can use this platform to build relationships with your supporters through engaging communications.
Causevid empowers nonprofits to reach out and thank donors, tell their stories and acquire new supporters, and collect stories and testimonials from their constituents. It creates a more personal and connected experience for your supporters when they can see and hear you in video format. For a more immersive donation experience, use the platform to add a video on your donation page that explains the impact that giving to your organization has on the community at large.
Why we love this fundraising software
Causevid is a comprehensive platform that allows you to track your video campaigns and stay up-to-date with data like your open and view rates, email open rates, and click and video view rates.
Use this data to see how your supporters are engaging with your video content. Are you using the videos effectively to grow and strengthen your audience? Concrete data will help you determine this and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Causevid’s pricing
Contact the Causevid team for pricing.
Best Fundraising Software for Major Gifts
DonorSearch: Best for prospect research
DonorSearch provides a vast online database that allows your organization to improve its prospect research approach. Prospect research helps you note your supporters’ wealth and philanthropic indicators to identify major and mid-level prospects for your organization.
Some of the information you may collect during prospect research includes other philanthropic causes the donor has contributed to, how much they gave, real estate holdings, and more. This data can help your fundraising team identify prospective major donors and choose the right donation amounts to request from each prospect.
Why we love this fundraising software
DonorSearch works hand-in-hand with Bloomerang’s software to develop a generosity score for each supporter in the donor database. This score uses DonorSearch’s software to measure donors’ potential giving scores and then labels them as “cold,” “cool,” “warm,” “hot,” or “on fire!”
In conjunction with Bloomerang’s donor engagement score, your organization can easily and quickly tell which of your supporters will respond positively to a major, mid-level, or even smaller gift request. Knowing this can help you recapture lapsing donors and improve donor retention.
DonorSearch’s pricing
Contact DonorSearch to learn more about their pricing system. If you use Bloomerang’s CRM, you can access philanthropic capacity data from the DonorSearch dashboard even if you don’t have a subscription to DonorSearch.
Pursuant Insights: Best for data analysis
Pursuant is a fundraising and marketing agency that helps nonprofits learn valuable information about what drives their donors to give. The Pursuant team is made of experienced data analysts who are ready to help your organization organize and interpret data about your donors so that you can reach them more effectively.
Pursuant offers segmentation insights that help you discover your donors’ unique passions and the needs that drive them to engage with your organization. Armed with this information, you can make more compelling fundraising asks to individual supporters.
Why we love this fundraising software
Pursuant helps your nonprofit make more informed decisions about your existing donors, but it can also help you make the best acquisition decisions as well. Their data allows your nonprofit to discover the audiences where your mission will be most compelling.
Between effective market research and useful data analysis, you can feel confident reaching out to new audiences for donations. Be sure to start a strong relationship with these audiences, then continue to engage with them using the data insights you’ve collected.
Pursuant’s pricing
Contact Pursuant to learn more about their pricing.
boodleGPT: Best for AI insights
Boodle AI has rebranded to boodleGPT, a new fundraising AI tool. In the vein of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, boodleGPT is a conversational Ai support tool nonprofits can use for advice and support with marketing and fundraising. boodleGPT is an “enriched analytics platform” that leverages a database of over 300 million records to help organizations create data-driven fundraising strategies.
Why we love this fundraising software
AI fundraising is the future, and tools like boodleGPT will help nonprofits access more targeted data insights than ever before. Adopting AI fundraising tools into your organization’s toolkit will help you stay ahead of the curve and benefit from the latest technologies.
Boodle AI’s pricing
Sign up for the boodleGPT waitlist here.
Best Fundraising Software for Events
Eventbrite: Best for event marketing
Eventbrite is an event management software solution nonprofits can use to sell tickets to events and track attendees before the event festivities begin. You can download the Eventbrite app to keep track of all of your event activities on the go.
Event pages are pre-configured so that they’re quick and easy for event planners to set up. You can design your event’s page on a user-friendly platform and have it ready to present to your supporters in just minutes.
Why we love this fundraising software
If you’re not charging for entry to your event, selling tickets through Eventbrite is free for your nonprofit. Your organization can get started quickly on a trustworthy platform without worrying about purchasing the necessary software to design your event pages.
Not only this, but Eventbrite also offers additional marketing opportunities for your organization! When you create your event using their platform, you can post the event page on their website to find and register new supporters.
Eventbrite’s pricing
Eventbrite’s ticketing packages each use ticket sales as a price-calculating tool. Check out their pricing page for more information.
Regpack: Best for event registration
Regpack is an event registration and payment solution that makes it easy to set attendance goals for your nonprofit’s fundraising events and then reach those goals using their intuitive tool.
You can allow individuals or groups to register for your event and make it easy to register with easy-to-use forms. After the event, you can track and pull reports on the most critical metrics you collected, including registrants, check-in rates, and revenue insights.
Why we love this fundraising software
Regpack’s online registration software is customizable for your organization and based on the responses your registrants provide. They use a system of conditional logic to give a personalized form to registrants.
For example, if you ask about dietary restrictions and someone clicks “yes,” then the following question might provide options for typical restrictions (vegetarian, pescatarian, vegan, no peanuts, etc.). If someone else answers “no” to the initial question, the form will move them forward to the next question.
Regpack’s pricing
Pricing plans for Regpack start at $125 per month with a 2.1% payment processing fee.
Pathable: Best for virtual events
Pathable offers a fundraising software solution that addresses the needs of both in-person and virtual events. This platform provides registration forms, ticketing options, and event planning features. Some of these features include meeting scheduling for exhibitors and sponsors, an interactive dashboard to keep your team organized, and real-time updates on the metrics you prioritize.
Why we love this fundraising software
Pathable makes it easy for attendees to make the most out of their experience at your event by offering their mobile app that you can use for various event activities. For instance, attendees might decide to schedule meetings or create a personalized agenda directly through their app.
Plus, this app allows your organization to quickly and easily get in touch with attendees through direct messaging and push notifications.
Pathable’s pricing
Contact the Pathable team for pricing.
Fundraising Software for Other Activities
Double the Donation: Best for matching gifts
Double the Donation’s software solution, 360MatchPro, is designed to help boost your nonprofit’s fundraising revenue by tapping into your potential matching gifts. In a matching gift program, businesses match donations that their employees make to eligible nonprofits. For example, Home Depot offers a 1:1 match for employee charitable gifts of $25 or more.
The problem is that many donors don’t realize that they’re eligible for these matched donations and never submit the proper form for the match. Double the Donation provides a search tool that you can embed directly onto your donation page to let supporters see if their gift is match-eligible.
Statistics show that $4-$7 billion is left on the table every year in lost matching gift revenue. Plus, 84% of donors say they’re more likely to give if they know their employer will match their gift. In other words, merely educating your donors about their eligibility will boost your nonprofit’s fundraising revenue.
Why we love this fundraising software
Double the Donation integrates with a wide array of online fundraising software, meaning you can use the tool with pretty much any online donation platform. Plus, 360MatchPro helps you identify eligible donors and send them follow-up reminders if they haven’t yet submitted their matching gift request.
Double the Donation’s pricing
The 360MatchPro Standard Plan is $999 per year.
TrueGivers: Best for data hygiene
TrueGivers is a software solution that helps keep your organization’s donor database clean so that you can reach out to supporters confidently knowing that you have the most up-to-date contact information available.
TrueGivers scans and updates your donor database with NCOA information. This interface provides you with additional access to information such as address updates, demographic data, and deceased information.
Why we love this fundraising software
While TrueGivers isn’t directly fundraising software in that it doesn’t collect donations, it does help nonprofits create and better organize their fundraising strategies.
Around 11% of individuals change addresses within a given year so your nonprofit could be wasting precious resources simply because your information is outdated. Instead, use TrueGivers to scan and update your database, so you can ensure all of your fundraising asks and appeals have the best chance of reaching donors. TrueGivers integrates with Bloomerang, meaning Bloomerang users automatically benefit from ongoing database scans and updates.
TrueGivers’s pricing
TrueGivers offers several pricing packages that your nonprofit can choose from. These packages include $25 per thousand records for data appends and $85 per thousand records output for traditional screening. As a service, TrueGivers is available at a $2,500 per month minimum.
Quickbooks: Best for accounting
Quickbooks tracks your fundraising progress and financial status through effective accounting processes. Quickbooks offers fund accounting software for nonprofits to track their fundraising revenue and expenses for accurate budgeting.
With Quickbooks, your nonprofit can automatically update your general ledger and budget as new fundraising revenue streams in. If you use Bloomerang for your CRM, you can regularly export financial data to Quickbooks because of the robust integration between the platforms. And, you can sync your nonprofit’s bank account to always have an eye on your financial progress and your banking information.
Why we love this fundraising software
Quickbooks helps nonprofits track revenue and expenses easily. You can immediately allocate your fundraising revenue to cover operational expenses and programming costs or reinvest in another fundraising campaign.
Quickbooks makes it easy to access your financial data on the go with mobile capabilities. This way, you can easily track your finances from your computer or from your mobile device—whichever is most convenient for you.
Plus, since Bloomerang is an Intuit Quickbooks Solution Provider, new Quickbooks users can receive 30% off for their first year.
Quickbooks’ pricing
Quickbooks provides several pricing packages to choose from, with the lowest pricing tier starting at $15 per month.
Zapier
Zapier makes it easy to connect all of your software together as a single functioning unit. Your nonprofit likely uses several different fundraising software solutions to raise funds during campaigns. For instance, you use a CRM solution to store data and personalize fundraising outreach messages. Online fundraising solutions allow you to collect funds through your website, event software helps manage registrations, and auction software enables you to launch auctions.
Zapier helps you connect all of these solutions. You can seamlessly automate the data transfer process between different software solutions.
Why we love this fundraising software
If your nonprofit has already invested in one type of fundraising software, you don’t want to let that investment go to waste when you find other software types that may not integrate with your first selection.
Zapier makes it easy to connect all of your solutions. Essentially, you can craft and leverage both existing and new integration options. You can create easy-to-understand workflows for your technology and, by extension, your fundraising team.
And, since Zapier integrates with Bloomerang, you can browse thousands of apps and choose the right tools to integrate with your CRM system or immediately integrate the tools you’re already using.
Zapier’s pricing
Get started on Zapier’s platform for free with their first pricing package. If you like it, you can start scaling up for $20, $49, and so on per month.
Wrapping up
Fundraising software helps nonprofits automate various aspects of their fundraising strategies and build lasting relationships with their supporters. By reviewing each of these solutions, you’re one step closer to finding the perfect fundraising software solutions to add to your organization’s fundraising toolkit!
Continue your research to grow your knowledge on effective fundraising and the best software solutions with the following resources:
- 19 Incredibly Easy Online Fundraising Ideas and Expert Tips. Review this guide for tips to help grow your online fundraising strategy and how fundraising software fits in.
- 16 Top Donor Management Software Solutions (+ Buyer’s Guide). Browse this roundup of top donor management solutions for a look at even more robust solutions that may help your nonprofit.
- Fundraising Apps: Must-Have Tools for Your Nonprofit. Looking for software to use on the go? These fundraising apps are the best in the business!
The post The 25 Best Fundraising Software Solutions to Boost Results appeared first on Bloomerang.
This article originally appeared in Bloomerang. See the original article here.
[ASK AN EXPERT] What’s The Best Way To Deal With Disgruntled Donors?
Our Ask An Expert series features real questions answered by Claire Axelrad, J.D., CFRE, our very own Fundraising Coach, also known as Charity Clairity.
Today’s question comes from a nonprofit employee who wants advice on how to handle complaints from donors:
Dear Charity Clairity,
I’m really uncomfortable handling donor complaints. My boss acts like I’ve done something unforgiveable any time we receive one. She says: “One complaint received means there were at least 10 others thinking the same thing.” I feel: “Many complaints are outliers; I don’t want to alter a winning strategy to appease one disgruntled person and then risk losing the lion’s share of donors who were perfectly happy.”
— Not Feeling Complaint Friendly
Dear Not Feeling Friendly,
I’m going to tell you to do exactly what I do.
Don’t ignore a single disgruntled supporter.
If someone takes the time to tell you they’re unhappy, this means they care. They’re connected to you. They want something from you, and you’re disappointing them.
Begin with learning where the donor thinks you went astray. Maybe you really did. If so, embrace your errors. Express compassion and contrition. Seth Godin says “customers who feel listened to help you improve (and come back to give you another chance.)”
This is your golden opportunity to get inside your donor’s head and find out what they really care about! Don’t blow this person off.
Here’s a personal example from an interaction I had with a Clairification e-news subscriber:
I have a place on my unsubscribe form where folks can let me know why they unsubscribed. Jeanette’s reason was: “Tell me something new!” She was intimating, of course, that my blog bored her. I could have just shined her on, said a few choice swear words under my breath and called it a day. After all, you can’t please all of the people all of the time, right?
Wrong. You can, if you know what pleases them. And that’s the challenge.
In this particular case, I wrote back to Jeanette, and asked her what she’d like to hear more about. Guess how she responded?
LOVE that you wrote back to me Claire! Brilliant.
She then proceeded to give me a specific example of a topic she wanted to hear more about. I wrote back with a few suggestions. And, the next day I saw she had not only re-subscribed but also enrolled in Clairification School.
A donor complaint is a terrible thing to waste.
You’re not alone. Most organizations terribly mishandle complaints. They ignore them entirely, or overreact. Let’s look at some frequent complaints, and ways to address them:
1. You mail too often.
Too often the response here is to mail less. Worst case? Mailing less to everyone (pretty crazy when you’ve had one complaint out of 500 pieces of mail sent, but I’ve had executive directors insist I do this based on just one whiner). Mailing more raises more! You could be a rare exception. But understand how rare you’d be, and don’t make this change without conducting a study (e.g., next time you send an appeal randomly divide your mailing list into two segments; mail to one and not the other. Then, when you mail your subsequent appeal, mail to everyone. See if the group that did not receive the interim mailing responds at a lower or higher rate).
ACTION TIP: Send a letter to the complainer explaining why you mail as frequently as you do. Tell them your research shows most supporters enjoy learning about your programs and the outcomes of your services through these mailings, and they often share them with friends. This enables you to educate a broader community about the cause and the ways they can become active in creating positive change. You might also take the opportunity to suggest this person join your monthly sustainer program (a good reason to start one if you’ve not already done so!) and therefore receive less frequent mailings – all while assuring your services continue year-round.
2. You don’t need to waste expensive mailings on me.
One unfortunate response is to make your next mailer look cheap. Guess what? In my experience working with dozens of nonprofits of all shapes, sizes, and stripes, making mailings look cheap is never an effective strategy – no matter what folks tell you. Our eyes are attracted to color and photos and good design.
ACTION TIP: Send a letter explaining you do everything in your power to save trees and cut costs; your mailings are actually much less expensive than they may appear. You get a good deal… use recycled paper… have underwriting… etc. In addition, let your donor know it’s actually less expensive to mail more than less. So, if they don’t mind, you’ll keep them on the list because it brings down the costs for others who want to receive the mailings. Then suggest, perhaps, they share their mailing with a friend – a great way for them to leverage their support!
3. I don’t like the stance you took on [fill in the issue].
Resist the temptation to write this person off. Their opinion is important, and one you should incorporate into your ongoing dialogue about what works and what doesn’t work to achieve your organization’s mission. This is an opportunity to open up discussion.
ACTION TIP: Pick up the phone (send a letter if they won’t answer) and let your donor know how much you appreciate their taking the time to voice their concerns. Then, gently explain the rationale behind the position your organization took. You may be pleasantly surprised at how pleased the donor is to have their concern acknowledged. While you may not change their mind, you may be able to make them understand why you differ. And they may be able to accept your stance in this instance.
4. I thought that last newsletter was in poor taste.
Resist the temptation to pass the blame. Never say “Oh, that was the marketing department” or “we outsource that” or “Sorry, that’s not my job.” Anything that comes from your organization to your donor is everyone’s responsibility.
ACTION TIP: When you weren’t responsible for the objectionable offense, listen to the complaint, validate it and then offer to look into it. And make sure you follow through on your promise!
Sometimes it’s okay to take a pass.
While it’s best to be complaint friendly, sometimes complainers are belligerent. They’ll fill the reverse side of a remit envelope with vitriol, and often these folks are not even supporting you at present. You can’t be logical with these people, so it’s best to just suppress them from your file. Put them out of your mind, and hope they’ll put you out of theirs.
Otherwise, come from a place of gratitude. Make it part of your culture to welcome folks who reach out, rather than treat them with condemnation. Most people just want to know they’ve been heard. Demonstrate this, and you’ve taken a forward step in bonding with them and drawing them closer to your community.
— Charity Clairity
How does your organization handle disgruntled donors? We’d love to hear from you!
Please use a pseudonym, like “Not Feeling Friendly” did, if you prefer to be anonymous.
The post [ASK AN EXPERT] What’s The Best Way To Deal With Disgruntled Donors? appeared first on Bloomerang.
This article originally appeared in Bloomerang. See the original article here.