No fundraising system would be effective without the ability to easily enter and manage donations, but the systems we looked at vary a lot in terms of capabilities in this area.<\/p>\n
Most offer several ways to enter a donation: from an individual or organization contact record; from a donation or gift menu; using a quick entry form; or importing a spreadsheet of gifts into the database. When you enter a gift, most systems allow you to search for the donor in the system to prevent duplicate records. But will the system provide suggestions based on a partial match of a name? Does it offer a Soundex search that will bring in results that sound similar or a fuzzy search that brings in non-exact matches?<\/p>\n
As you consider the ease of adding gifts, also consider your own process\u2014especially when it comes to reconciling gifts with your accounting system. Some systems require that all gifts be entered as part of a batch (a grouping of gifts for a particular time frame that can be transferred as a single entity to your accounting system). Other systems offer little support for batches, which can be a problem if you\u2019re used to reconciling that way. Some offer a middle ground, such as defining batches for gifts you\u2019ve already entered. Can you associate a gift with a fund or even split gifts across funds?<\/p>\n
The systems also vary in their support for types of gifts. Most support pledges and let you log when donors promise gifts, but they don\u2019t all make it easy to create a pledge schedule, modify it to suit your needs, or log gifts against those pledges when the gift is made. Does the system alert you to open pledges when you are entering a gift? Will the system allow you to set up automatic pledge payments?<\/p>\n
Monthly donors\u2014also known as sustaining donors or recurring donors\u2014are becoming the cornerstone of many nonprofit fundraising programs. The number of sustaining donors has increased each year over the past five years, according to data from the 2020 donoCentrics Sustainer Summit<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Some systems manage recurring donations via a pledge module, while others separate out the functionality and reporting. Does the system automatically process recurring donations each month, or do you need to trigger the payment processing? How does the system handle recurring donors with expiring credit cards? Do you have to run a report each month and contact donors to get updated card information? If so, can you schedule this report to run automatically and be sent to you? Will the system or payment processor automatically send out notifications to donors that their cards are expiring? Some systems have the ability to automatically update expiring credit cards, but may require an additional fee.<\/p>\n How does the system support other gift types? Does it support gifts \u201cin honor of\u201d someone, tribute gifts, stock gifts, in-kind gifts, cryptocurrency gifts? Can you track part of a gift that isn\u2019t tax deductible because a donor received a \u201cpremium\u201d (a thank you gift, like a T-shirt, that has value)\u2014and can you track and report on premiums for fulfillment purposes? Define what you really must track for each of these gift types and see what each system offers for your specific needs.<\/p>\n All systems let you track things like the amount and date of a gift. But knowing what<\/em> made a donor support your organization and how<\/em> the money came in will help you understand what types of appeals work best for your supporters. Can you easily track a gift by a campaign, appeal, or source? Can you log a \u201csoft credit\u201d for gifts that someone else in the database\u2014say a board member\u2014helped to bring in?<\/p>\n Systems vary widely in how they support online donations. According to the 2018 Global Trends in Giving<\/em> <\/a>report, 60 percent of donors in North America prefer to give online. Key differentiators among systems include the ease of setting up online giving forms, the extent to which you can customize the look and feel of your forms, how the forms interact with your website (does the system provide you with a code that allows you to embed the form in your website, or do you have to link to a donation page on the vendor\u2019s site?), and how online donations are added to the database (do they wait in a queue for you to review and approve or are they automatically added to that database?). Also, as mobile giving becomes increasingly prevalent, it is important to consider whether a system\u2019s online donation pages are mobile-optimized.<\/p>\n Finally, what additional information do you need to collect on gift records? Can you enter free-form notes to refer to later or attach a document to a gift record? Can you add in custom fields to collect information not included in standard database fields?<\/p>\n Next Section<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"