Ask a Responsive Fundraiser: The Benefits of Automation, Changing CRMs, and More

Welcome to the inaugural column of Ask a Responsive Fundraiser! I am so excited to share my experiences and the insights I gained from my decade in fundraising. This column will be published every Thursday with answers to your burning questions. In most cases, I will answer, but we’ll also bring in other experts to ensure your questions are answered thoroughly and thoughtfully. 

Dear Responsive Fundraiser: I spend much of my time uploading and downloading CSV files. We’re trying to grow, but we can’t innovate because we’re too busy manually doing so much work, and we don’t have enough staff to keep up! What can we do? 

-Floundering Under Files

Dear Floundering: Let me just say I have BEEN THERE, living in Excel jail! I feel for you—it’s so hard to focus on the meaningful work when you’re so focused on the menial work. If you have a CRM with automation, like Virtuous, I would highly suggest learning more about automating many of your internal processes. 

Automation is a great tool that can be used for both external communications and also internal administrative tasks. 

For example, if you normally pull a report of your major donors that gave in the last day so you can send thank you notes, you can automate that as a task so you get a notification. Another example is that you can automate a task for every new major donor that gives over a certain dollar threshold so you don’t miss potential high-capacity donors.

I would also highly recommend having technology that either allows for easy integrations or an OpenAPI so you don’t have to send CSV files back and forth between systems. Even better would be to have an Enterprise Platform with a full set of features tailored to the needs of nonprofit teams so that all of the tools you need are in one place.

Dear Responsive Fundraiser: Is a new CRM really worth it? It seems like a big cost for something that can do what my team is already doing. How can I justify the cost to executive leadership?

-Seeking CRMs

Dear Seeking: Switching CRMs is literally one of the most painful but rewarding experiences of my career. In fact, I think the only reason I did it was because I was naive about the amount of change management that would be necessary. 

I can totally relate to your comment that it’s sometimes easier to just stick with the status quo. 

One of my favorite phrases when I think about switching CRMs is this: “When the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.” That’s when it’s time to switch. You know those things in your legacy CRM that really annoy you? Eventually, they will cause you more pain than the pain of actually changing CRMs. That’s when it’s time to switch. 

For me, that was when it was really holding back our fundraising and our ability to innovate in any way because we were handcuffed by our legacy CRM.

Selling a CRM switch internally at your nonprofit can be extremely difficult. If I were pitching this, I would focus on:

• Current pain points that will be relieved.
• Expenses that will be reduced by switching CRMs. (In my own experience, we significantly reduced vendor costs after we switched to a new CRM thanks to available features, and we could look at other vendors that may be more affordable and work with an Open API integration.)
• Increased fundraising because we had better relationships with donors based on responsive fundraising and personal relationships with donors.
• Automation can decrease staff time, allowing staff to focus on more valuable and important work.

You asked specifically about justifying the cost, but I recently wrote a blog post about other barriers to overcome when switching CRMs that may be helpful.

Dear Responsive Fundraiser: What can I do to improve data health? It seems to be hurting our donor relationships and, in turn, our fundraising. 

-Data Doldrums

Dear Doldrums: You hit the nail on the head here—data health is the starting point for all other marketing and fundraising. Poor data health is like having a house built on a weak foundation. 

If you have software like Virtuous, you can use the data health tool to focus on a few key areas:

• Cleaning up duplicates
• Fixing unmailable addresses
• Adjusting phone numbers that are improperly formatted
• Identifying email addresses that need to be formatted correctly

In general, there are a handful of areas to look at when it comes to data cleanliness:

• Start by conducting a data audit
• Build a data cleanup project plan
• Establish a cadence of data health
• Adjust processes to minimize data issues
  • Standardize data and forms
  • Implement validation tools (like NCOA)
  • Leverage automation

Check out this blog post about data quality to learn more.

If you want your question answered, drop us a line on LinkedIn! Check back next Thursday to see what our Responsive Fundraisers have to say.