The Benefits of a Charity CRM

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can be a major investment for a charity. If you are completely new to implementing a Charity CRM System, or it has been a while since you upgraded your software, then this process can be overwhelming. Knowing where to start can be difficult, but an important area to understand is what benefits a Charity CRM will bring to your organisation.

To help you understand this we have written a blog and split it into the following key areas (click one of the sections to skip straight to that part):

Benefits for your board

A better overview of all important information

With a CRM Solution, your charity gains a complete, real-time view of supporters, donors, volunteers, etc, at the click of a button. The information shown on a record can cover a wide variety of areas such as interaction history, donations made, hours volunteered, marketing preferences, engagement rates and much more.

Users now have a much easier time finding all the necessary information they need when making business decisions.

Discounted Licensing

Charities often have tight budgets, Microsoft provides discounted licensing for charities and non-profit organisations (often up to 75%)

Bespoke, scalable solution

It is common for some charities to seek a quick fix by purchasing basic out-of-the-box solutions. However, one of the disadvantages here is having to make your organisation fit around the software, which often isn’t designed to meet your specific needs. Dynamics 365 for Charities is a fully customisable solution, meaning that the technology fits around your current processes and not the other way around.

It is also important to bear in mind that once a system is implemented to suit current needs, it may need to be changed in the future. Dynamics 365 has the ability to grow with your organisation without it doesn’t mean that you’re backed into a corner. Your CRM can (and should) grow and change to meet the needs of your expanding organisation.

Boost fundraising and donations

Fundraising is a vital part of many charities and Dynamics 365 has various features that can support this, alongside other operational aspects. To understand more about the key fundraising challenges that charities face, and how D365 can specifically overcome these, check out our fundraising blog post.

Benefits for your employees/volunteers

Connected departments

It is essential that charities have a holistic view of their entire organisation, both internally and externally. Without a CRM, internal teams are often working on separate systems or their own spreadsheets. This means that data is siloed and processes become inefficient. Dynamics 365 enables you to capture and centralise all interactions, ensuring that all departments are working on one system, as one team.

Effective online and offline event management

Charities often conduct multiple events at the same time and juggling them can be difficult without a stable system to support you. With Dynamics 365, your charity can stay organised and manage all aspects of events (such as bookings, donations, reminders, etc), as well as leveraging the D365 integration with Eventbrite and other products.

Want to know more about the charity event management possibilities?

Reduced time spent on manual tasks

Without a CRM system in place, employees may spend large amounts of time on tasks that can be automated such as sending marketing emails. Dynamics 365 has the capability to integrate with Power Automate, a tool that helps automate tasks.

With fewer manual tasks taking up your employee’s time they can now focus on activities that carry a higher value, such as fundraising, donor targeting and more.

Benefits for your donors

Understand the impact donations are making

Donors, now more than ever, want to understand what difference their contributions are making. A CRM System has the ability to collate and interpret data and present this in easy-to-read visualisations. A clear overview of donations, and what impact these have made can be shown and shared with donors, making it easy to communicate key statistics to them.

Provide a personalised experience

Now that your data is stored in one system and you have got a thorough overview of information, you can really tailor your communications to your supporters. Personalised interactions are essential for gathering donations, so use your CRM to guide you in terms of content, tailored to suit the needs, wants, and desires of each donor. If you just send the same content to everyone, or the same ‘thank you’ message after a donation, then your supporters might not feel valued or be willing to donate again. Also, when it comes to events, you can personalise the communications to a particular segment that has shown interest in similar events previously.

Explore Donor Management possibilities

This is just an overview of how a CRM can benefit charities, however, there are many more ways in which technology can support your organisation. If you have any questions, please get in touch by emailing us at info@pragmatiq.co.uk, calling us on 01908 038110 or filling out the form below.

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