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When thinking of nonprofits, many people do not realize the importance of having enterprise software.
Managing a nonprofit organization is not easy. On a day-to-day basis, nonprofit organizations have several events such as fundraising, donor management, acknowledgments, marketing campaigns, and the list is endless.
Picture this. You are the executive director of a charity organization. Everything is going well, and in fact, you just hired two employees to help. Though everything looks good from the outside, the reality is entirely different from the inside.
With new employees starting work, new projects, and donations coming in, it is getting harder to track everything. Overwhelmed, you collapse on the chair, needing a holiday. But it's only Tuesday.
And if this sounds like you, then your organization needs donation management software. It doesn't matter how small or large the organization is; each of them needs employees, volunteers, and donors to run successfully. And that's where donation management software can make life much easier.
Now, you might be thinking, what is DMS ? Keep reading to learn more.
What is Donation Management Software?
Donation management software is a set of tools that tracks everything about your nonprofit organization. It is a kind of constituent relationship management system but made explicitly for nonprofits and fundraising organizations.
The goal of DMS is to increase your organization's fundraising capacity and make employees' and volunteers' lives easier. From fundraising campaigns, sending emails, creating a donor database, managing volunteers to managing events, a DMS does it all.
There are several offline and online donation management systems available in the market. However, the kind of donation software your organization needs will depend on various factors such as scale, resources, and fundraising strategies.
Here are some key features of donation management software
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- Donor Management
- Volunteer Management
- Fundraising Campaigns
- Marketing Automation
- Custom donations forms
- Reporting and analytics
- Pledge Management
- Event Management
- Automated Acknowledgements
List of Top Donation & Donor Management Software 2023
1. Bloomerang
Founded in 2012, Bloomerang is cloud-based donor management and fundraising software for nonprofit organizations. One of the best things about Bloomerang is that it is constantly updated and equipped with the latest features and technologies. Its easy-to-use and intuitive interface make it easy to manage fundraising at any time efficiently.
Bloomerang's activity timeline makes it easy to track progress without manual intervention.
Furthermore, many nonprofits struggle to acknowledge every donation made to them. In such cases, Bloomerang ensures that no acknowledgment slips through the cracks amidst other activities.
Notable Features:
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- Nonprofit CRM: Bloomerang has an all-in-one CRM for managing the entire nonprofit ecosystem, including volunteers, donors, sponsors, and so much more.
- Robust Integrations: Bloomerang's integration lets you connect your system with any website CMS, fund accounting apps, peer-to-peer platforms
- Email Marketing: Create newsletters, appeals, and acknowledgment within your donor management system.
- Smart Reports: Easily manage data with intuitive reporting to highlight important information.
- Social Listening: Get notified when someone mentions your organization. Connect Bloomerang with Twitter accounts and monitor social media activities.
- Prospect Research Tool: Research potential prospects.
Why does this donation software stand out?
Bloomerang engagement meter is one of its kind in the industry. Every constituent's relationship with your organization is graded on a scale of 'Cold' to 'On fire.'
The engagement meters factor in various things like constituent’s giving, donations, interactions, soft credits, email engagement, and others. With the help of engagement scores, organizations can focus more on the most engaged constituents.
Pricing
Pricing is based on the number of donor records in your database. It does not have a free trial.
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- 0-1000 records: Starts at $99/month. Includes unlimited users, 5000 emails/month, and so much more.
- 1000-5000 records: Starts at $199/month. Includes 25,000 emails/month, unlimited users, 20GB storage, and so on.
- 5000-15000 records: Starts at $299/month. Includes 75,000 emails/month, unlimited users, 20GB storage, and so on.
- 15000-25000 records: Starts at $399/month. Includes 125,000 emails/month, unlimited users, 30GB storage, and so on.
- 25000-40000 records: Starts at $499/month. Includes 200,000 emails/month, unlimited users, 50GB storage, and so on.
2. Kindful
Kindful is an online donor management software designed specifically for growing nonprofits. Kindful lets our organization manage core aspects of fundraising- building donor databases, managing online giving, and generating donation insights. The intuitive interface makes it easy to use without prior training.
Moreover, Kindful is mobile-friendly, which lets donors donate from their smartphones, and organizations can check donation updates in real-time. Kindful also integrates with various third-party platforms such as MailChimp, PayPal, and Quickbooks to increase functionality.
Notable Features:
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- Segmentation: Segment your contact and donor records into groups to better understand and communicate with supporters.
- Automated Email Receipts: Automatically send email donation receipts to donors. Suitable for both online and manual documentation.
- Pre-made reports: Get 13+ pre-made report templates to get insightful data. These reports include offline transaction reports, batch deposit reports, soft credit reports, year-over-year reports, and others.
- Activity Tracking: Track your top donors' preferences and activities. From central dashboards, view the donor's latest transactions and other engagement activities.
Why does this donation software stand out?
To date, Kindful has tracked over $8.91billion with a 98.1% customer satisfaction rate. Kindful stands out due to its donor analysis features. With the donor analysis feature, you can keep your organization updated with data like donor's preferences, latest activities, transaction history, and so on.
Pricing
Kindful charges are based on the number of contacts in the database. The software does not have a free trial.
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- Starter: Starts at $100/month for 0-1,000 contacts,
- Launch: Starts at $200/month for 1,000- 5,000 contacts,
- Growing: Starts at $300/month for 5,000 - 15,000 contacts
- Pro: Starts at $400/month for 15,000 donors contact and above.
3. Salsa CRM
SalsaCRM is cloud-based donor management and engagement software for nonprofit organizations. Their online marketing platform is in itself a suite that helps your organization grow, manage and cultivate a base of supporters online.
It is powered by SmartEngagement Technology, also known as SalsaEngage. that combines the industry's best practices with machine learning and automation features. The SalsaEngage module includes responsive digital tools for email, social, and online donation forms. You can nurture and retain donors by automating marketing, such as sending emails based on donors' activities. It also offers donors the solution to share their contributions on their social media.
Notable Features:
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- Direct Mail Fundraising: Want to raise funds in old-fashioned ways? Salsa CRM has got your back. Salsa CRM's direct mail features let you create professional letters, exercise best label printing, and use barcode scanning for large-scale direct mail campaigns.
- Rich Donor Profiles: There is nothing more frustrating than unorganized data. Salsa CRM's rich donor profile organizes and tracks contacts, relationships, interests, social media accounts of donors. Moreover, duplication features remove duplicate entries to keep data clean.
- Advanced Reporting: Unified online and offline gift management provided detailed pictures of fundraising campaigns.
- Digital Marketing: Automated email series, manage social media, broadcast text messages with digital marketing module to increase engagement and conversions.
- Peer-to-peer fundraising: Create fundraising pages, manage P2P events, coaching and so much more with the fundraising module.
Why does this donation software stand out?
SalsaCRM is flexible fundraising software suitable for all types of nonprofits. It helps your team to work smarter and accomplish more.
Pricing
Salsa provides custom pricing based on individual requirements. Please contact their team to request a custom quote.
4. Network for Good
Network for Good is a cloud-based fundraising software founded in 2001 by America Online, Cisco Systems, and Yahoo! It has raised nearly 2.2 billion dollars since its foundation.
It is an all-in-one fundraising software suitable for growing and small nonprofit organizations to reach their funding goals and connect with supporters.
The platform is divided into two parts- donor management and fundraising. The donor management modules help in finding donors and creating donor lists based on habits. While the fundraising modules help create branded campaigns to raise funds.
Notable Features:
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- Online Fundraising: This feature helps create simple and beautiful fundraising pages to attract new donors and drive repeat donations.
- Personalized templates: Communication is key for successful fundraising campaigns. Network for Good provides several templates created by experts to create customized texts, videos, emails within minutes.
Why does this donation software stand out?
Network for Good is suitable for small and growing nonprofit organizations as it consists of every feature that a small and growing nonprofit requires to raise funds and accomplish its goals.
Pricing
Pricing is based on the number of contacts in the database. Network for Good also provides a free trial.
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- 0-500: Starts at $100/month.
- 500-1000 : Starts at $200/month.
- 1000-5000 : Starts at $300/month.
- 5000-10,000: Starts at $400/month.
5. Aplos
Aplos is a cloud-based accounting suite for nonprofits. It offers various features like fund accounting, invoicing, budgeting, and financial reporting. With Aplos, organizations can create unlimited fund accounts to track for specific purposes. It also hosts an unlimited amount of customized donation pages to help donors manage their giving with an option to schedule monthly or recurring donations.
Notable Features:
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- Flexible payments: Aplos integrates with all the major payment options, including credit/debit cards, ACH, and PayPal.
- Donor Management: Create detailed donor profiles, track historical giving data, donor progression, and get notified of important donor activity.
- Financial Reporting: Customize reports such as balance sheets and income statements by the Fund. Also, create custom reports or take advantage of donation reporting and budgeting reports.
- Grow Giving: Create unlimited donation forms to grow funds.
Why does this donation software stand out?
Aplos is an online donor management software for small nonprofits with one of the industry’s best bookkeeping features. It includes many FASB standard reports such as balance sheets, income statements, and fund balances. Moreover, Aplos automatically generates contribution statements for all tax-deductible donations, which helps streamline the end-of-the-year process.
Pricing
It also has a 15-day free trial.
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- Aplos Lite: Starts at $29.50/month. Includes donation tracking, financial and giving reports, event registration, etc.
- Aplos Core: $39.50/month. Includes everything in Aplos lite plus budgets, account payable, partner integrations, recurring transactions, user role permissions, etc.
6. Eleo
Eleo is a donor management software for small nonprofits that is affordable and easy to use. Eleo was created with the belief that every nonprofit organization should have access to affordable fundraising and donor management software- no matter its size. Moreover, to ensure full benefits to nonprofits, Eleo provides extensive support.
Notable Features:
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- Automated Mailing: Mailing wizard ensures timely acknowledgment to donors
- Volunteer Management: Tracks volunteer's availability, skills, knowledge, activities, and hours. Also, create volunteering opportunities, manage communication, and more.
- Donor database management: Eleo's database helps record donors' contact information, tracks gifts, evaluates solicitations and fundraising methods.
- Custom lists: It helps create tailored lists for an entire contact database and create targeted campaigns.
Why does this donation software stand out?
It's affordable. Eleo provides the most affordable pricing plans among all the donor management systems that start at just $39/month for up to 3000 contacts. In comparison, you will need to pay anywhere between $99 - $150.month for 3000 donor records for other donation software.
Pricing
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- 0-3,000: Starts at $39/month
- 3000-5000: Starts at $59/month.
- 5000-10,000: Starts at $99/month.
- 10,000-12,500: Starts at $139/month.
- 12,500-15,000: Starts at $159.month.
- $199/month for up to 20,000 donor contacts
7. Neon CRM
Neon CRM is a cloud-based donor management software for nonprofits. Its core features include a constituent relationship management (CRM) system, advanced dashboards, events and volunteer management, and email marketing tools. With Neon CRM, organizations can quickly maximize fundraising with all the donor data at a centralized place.
Notable Features:
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- Powerful Integration: Neon CRM easily integrates with over 50 popular tools such as Mailchimp, Quickbooks, Windfall, EventBrite, and so on.
- Customized Fields: Build customized donation and membership forms with a drag and drop builder.
- Automated Reminders: Build meaningful relationships by setting up automated activities and reminders for each of your prospects.
- Gift Processing: Tracks both offline and online donations along with pledge tracking and soft credits.
- Workflows: With Neon CRM's workflow features, you can send email reminders to donors 10 days in advance, send thank you emails to all the attendees, and so on. Neon CRM allows up to 50 unique workflows.
Why does this donation software stand out?
Neon CRM is an all-in-one CRM solution for nonprofits. As it was built by people who run nonprofits, it has all the key features needed to scale a nonprofit organization.
Pricing
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- Essentials Package: Starts at $99/month. Includes volunteer management, grant management, mass email and letter creation, and so on.
- Impact Package: Starts at $149/month. Includes peer-to-peer fundraising, an online store, survey builder, automation workflows, and so much more.
- Empower Package: Starts at $299/month. Includes monthly consultation, live support, advanced customization, and reporting.
A payment processing fee of 2.9% is deducted from all the funds raised through the system. Moreover, there is also a fee of $0.30 per transaction.
Wrapping Up:
As your organization grows, the need for new software will emerge sooner or later. If not addressed on time, these needs can manifest as frustrations for employees, volunteers, chaotic event planning, and others.
Many times, nonprofits try to make it work but end up spending too much time struggling with messy spreadsheets and unorganized data instead of focusing on the organization's mission.
There are many fundraising and online donor management systems to help your organization manage daily activities. And that's why we have made the above list to help you find the best fit for your nonprofit.
