Donors are not your organization’s only constituents—you may also have volunteers, members, program participants, event attendees, or a wide variety of other people you work with. And chances are, you interact with many of these people in different ways. For example, one person might not just be a donor but also a volunteer for your food pantry and a youth mentor. It’s important to think through your approach to seeing a full picture of all your interactions with each person.
Many organizations rely on events for fundraising, constituent engagement, outreach, and more. It’s a lot of work organizing and running such events, and it can be helpful if your system supports them—for example, by selling tickets online, recording RSVPs and attendance, recording basic information like meal preferences, printing out attendee lists or checking people in onsite, taking onsite payments, or even selling assigned seats for a performance.
For galas or dinners, you might also want to be able to track guests against paying attendees, table assignments, or the amount of money raised per table. For workshops or conferences, it’s more important to be able to track registration for different sessions, or to easily generate name tags. Consider what event planning needs your organization is likely to encounter, and make sure the system will support them.
In addition, many of these systems help to manage volunteers—for instance, to track their interests so you can match them with appropriate opportunities, schedule volunteers for shifts, and then track the hours that they put in. Some also allow you to manage a membership program, including multiple member levels, payments, and expiration dates. Some provide peer-to-peer fundraising tools so that you can enable your supporters to solicit donations from their friends on your behalf. Some, in fact, support many different types of interactions, or provide functionality that lets you flexibly build support for your own custom types of interactions.