Creating strategic touchpoints throughout the year with your donors (or prospects) is an important part of the fundraising process. While the best way to retain donors is by building strong relationships with them, how do you ensure you readily track that information?
A donor CRM is a great place to start. What’s more? With a little planning at the get-go, you can use personal data that you glean from donors over the years to customize your CRM and create ongoing touchpoints with your donors year after year.
Our free template this month, “Customize Your CRM with Personal Data,” walks you through how your CRM can aid in fundraising, the importance of tags and notes fields, and 10 ideas for how to pull reports based on donor information.
How to use tags in your CRM
Tagging is a way to segment donors into categories or groups such as major donors, monthly donors or board members. Before implementing tags, think through your tagging process and make a list with descriptions of the tags you’ll use to segment donors. Then, use those tags in your reports and communication strategy process throughout the year.
Special notes
Did you learn about a special moment a donor had with your organization? Were you chatting up a prospect at your latest gala event? Use your CRM’s notes area to keep track of key engagements with donors, communication methods and other insights that will help others in your organizations know more about each prospect. Building a habit among those that access your nonprofit’s CRM is key.
Customized reports
The more you enter about your donors in your CRM, the more options you will have to pull reports specific to fundraising needs. Set communication strategies to connect with donors based on geographic location, donation amounts or even key anniversary dates.
Your fundraising outreach is only as good as the data you collect. Your donor CRM will work hard for you if you set key processes in place to ensure profiles are set and you are using special fields, notes and personal info to your advantage.
Download our free “Customize Your CRM with Personal Data” guide for additional ideas to keep on hand to harness the power of your CRM to support fundraising throughout the year.
