Nonprofit Tech

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Best Nonprofit CRMs in 2022

A fully capable CRM is key to your nonprofit’s mission, its growth and success. A perfect nonprofit CRM will help you organize and leverage your data to generate powerful insights, and to attract, engage and inspire your supporters, thereby empowering to amplify your mission.

Choosing the right CRM for your organization is crucial as you need a system that is easy to use, can be customized to your organization’s workflows and evolves as your needs evolve. And most importantly, a system that meets all your technology needs and eliminates the need for using multiple systems.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but here are the top three solutions and how they stack against each other.

LiveImpact

LiveImpact is one of the few platforms that covers the entire spectrum of your technology needs from fundraising to volunteer and client management all under one roof. It is designed specifically for Nonprofits.

LiveImpact’s advantage over Salesforce for nonprofits and Blackbaud:

LiveImpact is specifically built for nonprofits.

LiveImpact is a fully integrated and highly customizable platform that eliminates the need to use multiple systems and spreadsheets.

LiveImpact is cloud based and has a modern, intuitive interface.

LiveImpact is ready to scale as the organization evolves.

You do not need a consultant or spend thousands of dollars to customize the platform.

Affordable and honest pricing

Salesforce for nonprofits

Salesforce is a customer relationship management system (CRM)--a database to keep records of your customers, and track customers through a sales funnel. Like all “management software,” Salesforce orients towards organizing your data and reporting on the information that you enter. It is best suited for large organizations that have the budget and are willing to spend money on engaging consultants to customize Salesforce for them.

Salesforce’s pricing is based on the number of administrators (in addition to some other factors). The per administrator pricing schema makes it quite expensive to provide administrative access to large teams or networks, which can limit the effectiveness of the database, as only certain people can update contact information, add notes, from a meeting, or create a new contact.

Blackbaud

While Raiser’s Edge does offer other products for events, email marketing, and online giving, their parent company, Blackbaud, sells these tools a la carte, which makes it a good choice for large organizations and limits usage for small and medium sized organizations.

Raiser’s Edge is steeped in functionality that is tremendously difficult to use. Their product has developed over the years by acquiring new software companies and thus creating a patchwork effect where several products are meant to be complimentary but used separately. Raiser’s Edge sets their pricing based on both the number of users and records. In addition, Raiser’s Edge consultants are required to update and maintain the system for you, which means dollars that could be used for supporting your mission are now going towards operating costs.

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Top Case Management/Human Services / Program Management Software for Nonprofits in 2022

There are many Case Management / Human Services software out there and it can be hard to find the right software for your organization. Nonprofits having their own specific workflows for their programs makes it even more difficult to choose the right system. In this blog we will discuss what are the factors to consider and which are the best platforms that you should definitely consider.

Factors to consider:

Ability to Customize: When it comes to programs, every nonprofit has its specific workflows optimized for their impact. An ideal solution will be highly customizable so it can adapt to your workflows and should be easy and affordable to customize.

Fully Integrated: Look for a system where your Client Intake, Scheduling, Tracking of touchpoints, Services, Communications and Reporting happens in one system. This helps you save time and with all your data in one place you are able to generate powerful insights and make informed decisions.

Cloud Based, Mobile Friendly System: A cloud based and mobile friendly system will ensure that you are able to enter your data from anywhere be it working from home or working out of office with the community. This has definitely become even more important since the pandemic.

Ready for Scale: Organizations grow and needs evolve over time, your system should be supporting and empowering your growth and not become a bottleneck. You should be able to set-up new programs, update existing program workflows without having to pay thousands of dollars to get a consultant to customize.

Ease of Use: In an attempt to cover a variety of workflows systems end up making the interface extremely complicated and unintuitive. An ideal system will be easy to use, easy to manage and should simplify your workflows and save you time.

With these factors in mind we looked at the top options in this category and found these to be the best systems:

LiveImpact

LiveImpact is a great option for nonprofits of all sizes. It's modern and easy to use and super fast. It enhances your data quality and gives you the ability to interact with your data for quick and powerful insights. Organizations that have moved from Salesforce and Social Solutions to LiveImpact have become more successful and are very happy with its features and support and it reflects on their high ratings on G2.

LiveImpact’s advantage over Salesforce and Social Solutions

Built specifically for nonprofits with years of experience and best practices built-in to help you streamline your workflows and maximize your impact.

Highly customizable and can support a variety of workflows.

With its modern and intuitive interface, LiveImpact is super easy to use and helps you accomplish complex tasks with just a few clicks.

You do not need a consultant or spend thousands of dollars to customize the platform.

LiveImpact does a thorough onboarding and handholds you through the process and makes the transition seamless and sets you up for success.

Affordable and honest pricing.

Salesforce

Salesforce is a customer relationship management system (CRM)--a database to keep records of your customers, and track customers through a sales funnel. Like all “management software,” Salesforce orients towards organizing your data and reporting on the information that you enter. It is best suited for large organizations that have the budget and are willing to spend money on engaging consultants to customize Salesforce for them.

Salesforce’s pricing is based on the number of administrators (in addition to some other factors). The per administrator pricing schema makes it quite expensive to provide administrative access to large teams or networks, which can limit the effectiveness of the database, as only certain people can update contact information, add notes, from a meeting, or create a new contact.

Social Solutions ETO Social Solutions used to be the software of choice some years back and has the ability to customize. With Apricot under the umbrella, they now have tiered offerings and cover most of the requirements on Case Management.

But in recent times the users have found the interface is dated and makes it very difficult for them to accomplish even the smallest of tasks. You also have to engage consultants to customize and implement the solution which can push your costs further especially if you want a custom solution.

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3 things to consider when choosing a Nonprofit CRM

Nonprofits increasingly rely on technology to drive their missions forward. At the core of these technology solutions is a CRM that brings everything together and is at the core of your organization’s processes. A perfect system will have these capabilities: Constituent management (be it your donors, volunteers or clients), Planning and executing your Fundraising activities, Intake process for your Volunteers & Clients, Comprehensive reports to showcase outcomes and derive actionable insights

With several options to choose from, it becomes very difficult to figure out which Nonprofit CRM will be the best for your organization. We recommend keeping these 3 things in mind when selecting your Nonprofit CRM.

1. Data Driven Engagement & Insights for Growth

Your nonprofit CRM should help you organize your constituent data, keep it secure and to leverage it to effectively engage with your constituents. A nonprofit CRM that enables you to customize data you want to collect, to create rich profiles for your donors, volunteers and clients so you can effectively engage them based on their interests and preferences.

An ideal Nonprofit CRM will help you increase your data quality and present you with powerful reporting and analytics tools to build and strengthen relationships with your Donors, Volunteers and Clients and will help your organization grow. And at the same time it will project your data with strong security features.

2. Customizable, Easy to use & Easy to Maintain

An ideal Nonprofit CRM is highly customizable and adapts to your organization’s needs and processes (and does not ask you to change your processes in order to use the system). While customizable is something a lot of nonprofit CRMs offer but it doesn't make sense if you have higher tech consultants and pay thousands of dollars to customize it. Look for a solution that is built to be flexible and can be customized without spending so much time and money.

It should be cloud based, easy to use, intuitive and built for virtual working environments. It should also be easy to manage so you can manage it yourself and do not need to hire a staff or engage a consultant just for managing the system.

The time and resources you save with a flexible, intuitive and easy-to-manage platform can be invested in your mission and growth instead.

3. Integration

A typical nonprofit organziation uses 5-8 different systems and is constantly juggling data between these systems which leads to high cost, inefficiency and data loss. A perfect CRM will have integrated capabilities to carry out:

Fundraising: Seamlessly create fundraisers, in-person or virtual events, auctions and peer-to-peer fundraising

Outreach & Email: Segment your audience and create inspiring marketing campaigns to attract and engage your Donors & Volunteers. For your Clients/Beneficiaries it should help you send personalized messages, service reminders and feedback surveys.

Client/Human Services & Program Management: Automate your intake, services tracking and outcomes reporting and streamline your program workflows.

While there are several Nonprofit CRMs out there in the market and cover some of the key capabilities mentioned above, the one platform that covers all of these capabilities is LiveImpact. It is one of the few platforms that offers deep capabilities in Fundraising, Program/Client Management, Volunteer Management under a single roof and is highly recommended for its ease of use, comprehensive features and loved for its best-in-class customer support.