Today’s philanthropists run on data. Comprehensive data helps nonprofit organizations access an abundance of information about current and potential donors and what motivates them to give to a good cause. The challenge lies in using data effectively as part of a smart donor management strategy. To meet this challenge head-on, nonprofits are taking up new donor management tools, such as constituent relationship management (CRM) systems, to make the most of their donor data. Innovating, integrating, and automating donor management in this way can support nonprofits’ highest priorities in such areas as donor acquisition and retention—all leading to greater financial stability for their organization. This article explores leading practices in donor management and the potential benefits they bring.
What Is Donor Management?
Donor management is the process of establishing and nurturing nonprofits’ relationships with their supporters. Across the donor life cycle, from prospect to long-term supporter, nonprofit organizations connect digitally and personally to establish and build financial ties and supportive relationships with donors.
As part of an effective donor management strategy, different types of outreach and messaging are tailored to donors’ profiles to draw them in and keep them close. This makes donor management a data-intensive process.
Key Takeaways
- Effective donor management can increase donor acquisition and retention rates.
- Donor management best practices include donor segmentation, multichannel fundraising, and stewardship activities.
- Nonprofits improve donor management by employing digital strategies and tools, such as constituent relationship management (CRM)—an adaptation of customer relationship management systems but geared specifically to nonprofits.
Importance of Donor Management
Donors sustain most nonprofit organizations and programs. This simple fact of philanthropic life makes donor management one of a nonprofit’s highest priorities—and a top challenge. In fact, a 2025 survey by the Nonprofit Finance Fund found that 36% of U.S. nonprofits ended 2024 with an operating deficit, the highest in 10 years of survey data. Meanwhile, the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) reports that donor counts fell 3.6% in 2025—extending a five-year decline that began in 2021. But that trajectory seems to be turning around, as reported by both the Fundraising Effectiveness Project and Giving USA’s 2025 Annual report, which found that total giving grew 6.3% in 2024.
These conditions are compounded by intense competition for donors and continued growth in demand for nonprofit services, throwing off the financial equilibrium of many organizations. Nonprofits everywhere are looking for new and better ways to raise money for the arts, social justice, poverty reduction, and other causes. By focusing on building strong relationships with donors and implementing effective donor management strategies, nonprofits can enhance their fundraising efforts, secure sustainable financial support, and achieve their mission-driven objectives.
What Does Good Donor Management Look Like?
Donor management operates like any other type of relationship-building effort, thriving on personal insights and interactive engagement. Good donor management plumbs data to gain insights on donors’ giving histories, identities, and motivations. Nonprofits segment current and prospective supporters into different categories, depending on these and other attributes, and then tailor their interactions accordingly. Here are some of the most important categories:
- Donor interest, such as the arts, social justice, or poverty reduction.
- Donor demographics, such as age, location, and occupation.
- Recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM), which is a “score” that can, for example, distinguish a major one-time donor who has dropped off from a small donor who provides sustaining monthly contributions via credit card.
- Communications preferences, such as in-person, direct mail, phone, or online via email or text.
Donor segmentation can delve further into data to determine whether a donor might be at risk of lapsing, for example, or ready to give more in a moment of crisis. That’s because, increasingly, nonprofits use sophisticated constituent relationship management (CRM) systems to enhance donor management with real-time monitoring in customizable dashboards.
The Donor Management Process
Donor management paves the way for better results in acquiring, nurturing, and retaining donors at increasing levels of giving. Otherwise, donor relationships tend to be short-lived. In fact, according to the FEP, 82.6% of donations in 2024 were from donors who only gave once or twice over the year.
How does a nonprofit recipient of that first gift work to scale the donation into a lifelong commitment? For that matter, how does a nonprofit even get the first donation? Management techniques throughout the donor life cycle are broken down below, and best practices call for tracking donor interactions and analyzing data at every stage.
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Donor Identification and Acquisition
Adding donors starts at home. That is, nonprofits first need to dig deep into their own constituent data to find lapsed supporters, untapped volunteers, and any other people who have expressed interest in their work. Organizations should also encourage board members, current donors, and volunteers to help with introductions to their networks of peers. In both cases, familiarity can increase the chance of success. Other ways to identify and acquire donors include:
- Digital advertising: Search and social advertising can generate leads at relatively low cost. For instance, according to M+R’s 2026 benchmarks report, 71% of lead generation campaign spending went to social media, and overall digital ad spending increased 18% in 2025. In hard numbers, M+R says nonprofits invested 10 cents in digital ads for every dollar raised online, with the average lead costing $2.81.
- Mailing lists: Nonprofits can buy lists of people who give to causes similar to their own, or they can purchase research on prospects who have attended their events. Organizations can also look into wealth screening tools, foundation directories, giving platforms, grant search engines, mailing list rentals, and many other donor identification and acquisition tools.
- Do-it-yourself donor identification and acquisition: Nonprofit development teams can do more hands-on research instead of—or in addition to—the tactics described above. For instance, public records on real estate transactions, political donations, and business affiliations can yield important information to combine with social media and other online data to start painting a donor profile. At a more institutional level, researchers can visit foundations’ websites to analyze recent grantmaking; ditto for the corporate social responsibility sections on companies’ websites.
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Donor Cultivation
Donor cultivation often precedes any requests for donations. The cultivation phase is a time for nonprofits and potential donors to get to know each other, with organizations gauging what their prospects care about while also sharing relevant information about their mission and programs.
One-on-one meetings, events, online social interactions, and even simple web forums can feed into this stage of the donor life cycle. Key questions nonprofits can ask might focus on how donors prefer to interact, as well as on which types of activity they’d most likely support. Volunteer programs can also play a role in cultivation, since volunteers often become donors.
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Donor Solicitation
Solicitation is where “the ask” happens. A nonprofit that has completed the identification and cultivation phases should be in a better position to ask prospects to support a cause they care about, at an amount that makes them comfortable, during a time when they are most likely to be in giving mode.
The operative word in any solicitation is “personal.” Used right, nonprofits can personalize solicitations to everyone, from foundations and major individual donors to small contributors on an email list. Here’s how:
- Big donors: The bigger the donor, the more hands-on the donor management process should be. When it comes to soliciting a major foundation, for instance, the first step is to understand the particular grant maker’s mission and programs. The solicitation process is usually formal, involving published guidelines, letters of interest, deadlines, meetings, and other steps. Unless a nonprofit’s work aligns with the prospect’s strategy, a foundation is unlikely to invest in it. With major individual donors, personal networks and extensive profiling should inform the type and amount of the appeal. The solicitation process could be less formal for a major donor than for a foundation, with an emphasis on personal meetings. A nonprofit’s approach to corporate giving will vary by company size, combining foundation and major donor tactics and adding the promise of brand recognition.
- Small donors: According to the FEP, micro ($1-$100) and small donors ($101-$500) made up more than 80% of donations in 2024. Digital fundraising strategies can reach wide swaths of small donors, across email, social media, fundraising platforms, and other channels. Consider automating digital appeals by segmenting email lists to target specific groups with messages that are likely to resonate. On their own or integrated with email marketing tools, CRM systems can automatically personalize solicitation mailings with the names of recipients, as well as pull data from fields such as giving history to emphasize programs donors care about.
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Donor Acknowledgment
Delayed gratification is no way to treat a donor. On the contrary, according to the Association of Donor Relations Professionals, donors should receive grateful acknowledgement of their gifts within the same week (plus five business days for receipts sent by mail). Tax documentation should accompany the message of thanks, which should include personal touches, reemphasize the purpose of the gift, and make the donor truly feel a part of the organization by sharing some exciting new information.
For some donations, private acknowledgement is only the prelude to public expressions of gratitude, whether in a nonprofit’s newsletter, at a special event, via press release, with membership in a special “giving circle,” or otherwise. Nonprofits should be sure to understand donors’ preferences regarding public acknowledgement.
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Donor Stewardship
Providing prompt, sincere, and appropriate donor acknowledgement is the on-ramp to donor stewardship. Long after that first “thank you,” nonprofits should continue to steward strong, healthy donor relationships that can lead to recurring gifts and other benefits.
Donors want to feel good about their engagements with nonprofits. To nurture mutually beneficial relationships, nonprofits need to understand supporters more deeply over time—in part, by continually recording and analyzing information from every interaction with them. Then, knowing the donor well, a nonprofit can continue to engage them in conversations about the impact of their gift, the importance of the cause being supported, and the mutual benefit of a donor’s further engagement.
At a customer service level, understanding donor preferences, in matters such as publicity for their support, frequency of communications, and transparency in grant accounting, can also contribute to donor stewardship in a big way.
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Donor Reporting
Impact is the gold standard in nonprofit work. Donors want to know that their gifts are actually going towards effective expenses that advance a cause, elevate local culture, or address a pressing global issue. Nonprofits should send impact statements and compelling stories about their beneficiaries as often as possible to their broad constituencies, in the form of alerts, newsletters, annual reports, or other communications.
Official donor reporting is even more demanding. Foundations and other grant makers may require specific accounting reports as a condition of their grants. Development teams and finance departments need to work together to deliver both accurate financial reports and program-impact narratives to fulfill these donor reporting requirements.
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Donor Retention
The ultimate priority of the entire donor management process should be donor retention. While donor acquisition ranks nearly as high, donor retention can often deliver more benefits, at a lower cost. The importance of retaining donors puts a high premium on capturing and analyzing information from all steps in the donor management process that are described above.
Donor retention can mean heavy lifting if not supported by CRM systems that, ideally, integrate with other fundraising and accounting tools. Donor contact details need to be kept current, past donations tallied, event participation noted, volunteer work recorded, outreach and meetings documented, donor reporting tracked, email interactions captured, and external prospect research incorporated with internal commentary from the development team.
Donor Management Process
Benefits of Good Donor Management
While retention has edged up recently, according to the FEP, it is being driven by established givers sticking around, not new donors upgrading to an ongoing donation. This hesitation to return is often compounded by economic uncertainty and poor initial post-donation outreach. To keep doing their philanthropic work, many are stepping up donor management by using more and better data and digital tools. Qualitatively and quantitatively, nonprofit experts report the benefits of strong donor management in the following areas.
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Increased donor retention: Only 19.4% of new donors are retained—a 5.9% YoY drop—according to the FEP. Nonprofits often spend time and money on donor acquisition but then fail to follow up with donor retention efforts. Donor management can facilitate donor retention by enhancing the data collection and analysis involved and then automating its use in more targeted campaigns. Early investments in retention can pay long-term dividends as retained donors keep coming back to give. This improvement reflects the fact that retained donors often increase the amount they give year after year, provide word-of-mouth recommendations to other prospects, and eventually consider legacy gifts. Focusing on donor retention can also reduce the need for higher-cost donor acquisition efforts.
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Enhanced fundraising efficiency: CRM systems can help development teams analyze data and recognize patterns human analysts might miss. By combining external screening data with internal signals—email opens, event attendance, content engagement, and giving history—nonprofits can identify high-potential donors and target outreach accordingly. AI tools can accelerate this process, helping to surface prospects, predict giving likelihood, prioritize leads, and personalize content so staff can spend more time with the donors most likely to yield results.
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Improved donor satisfaction: Some experts, such as nonprofit academic Adrien Sargeant, consider donor satisfaction with the quality of nonprofit service to be the biggest single driver of loyalty. Nonprofits can improve donor satisfaction by segmenting donors according to their communications preferences, automate prompt acknowledgments of gifts and avoid the annoyance of duplicated mailings. Directly asking for feedback, with a short online survey, can also help improve the donor experience, while also showing contributors that they matter.
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Increased giving: Donors make decisions about giving based on limited information. So, impact metrics can be a game-changer for nonprofits, swaying contributors to their side and keeping them there, amid stiff competition for donors. According to a 2026 Foundation Source survey, 64% of donors say making an impact is their top priority, yet 27% cite measuring impact as a leading challenge. Integrating CRM with program and financial management systems can produce this kind of data and convey it to donors in targeted online email campaigns.
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Greater accountability: Donors demand and deserve statistical and anecdotal accounts of how their gifts are being used and to what effect. According to the 2025 Bank of America Study of Philanthropy, 62% of self-described “expert” donors monitor and evaluate the impact of their gifts, compared with only 20% of all affluent donors—and in 2024, these expert donors gave six times more than novice donors.
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Improved organizational culture: People work at nonprofits to solve pressing societal problems or to advance other lofty altruistic goals. Working with minimal funds and diverting their time from the primary mission to raise funds can sap their motivation. So, anything that enhances and automates donor management to make it more lucrative contributes more broadly across the overall organization. In the for-profit sector, 66% of organizations surveyed by Deloitte in 2025 plan to invest in AI/GenAI/Automation over the next three years—the top pick—citing enhanced productivity and efficiency as expected benefits. Nonprofits can follow the same trend to increase their capabilities and effectiveness.
18 Nonprofit Donor Management Best Practices
According to BDO's 2025 Nonprofit Standards Benchmarking Survey, 40% of nonprofits are pursuing operational efficiencies to manage costs, and that trend is expected to continue. These pursuits include: consolidating systems and processes, investing in platforms that integrate donors and programs, and deploying AI to automate outcome measurements. Here are 18 best practices for improving donor management—many of which can be supported by those efficiency tools—with examples of each.
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Donor Segmentation
Nonprofits sort donors into different segments to target them most effectively with fundraising appeals and other communications. Segments can go to any level of granularity, depending on the donor management tools being used. Segmentation examples cited in one academic paper include:
- Demographics: Age, location, gender, household size, educational level.
- Preferred types of charities or causes: Child well-being, health, education, civil rights.
- Preferred source of information: Newsletter, direct mail, email, social media, display ads on mobile devices, personal solicitation, word of mouth.
- Preferred method of donating: Nonprofit’s website, mobile payment, text message, through the workplace, postal service, at a fundraising event, via sustaining subscriptions.
- Preferred social media: Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, LinkedIn.
- Motivators: Compelling mission statement, solid reputation, knowing how the gift will be used, hearing a compelling story about beneficiaries, seeing evidence of impact, receiving acknowledgment for a donation.
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Data Analysis
Data analysis tools, including AI, are improving the predictability of giving. While 96% of nonprofits surveyed in TechSoup's 2025 AI Benchmark report say they have a basic understanding of what AI can do, only 24% of respondents have an AI strategy. For those organizations that have implemented AI, data analytics was in the top three use cases, alongside grantseeking/fundraising and marketing/outreach. These tools help data teams analyze donors’ past giving patterns and engagement behaviors to surface high-potential prospects and tailor outreach accordingly.
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Personalized Communication
Digital fundraising tools can target different personas with messaging specific to that particular segment in the database software. They can personalize email messages to varying degrees, starting with the now-standard practice of including the name of the recipient in the message. AI tools can do more, for instance, to help curate outreach to major donors. Some nonprofits build psychographic profiles of donors, based on their attitudes, interests, hobbies, emotional triggers, and lifestyle, to inform more personalized outreach. Research from the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy suggests that emphasizing the donor’s identities with three key elements of “human wellbeing”—connection, competence, and autonomy—can double giving and boost donor satisfaction.
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Multichannel Fundraising
Nonprofits use many online and offline channels to reach donors, often tracking their communications preferences and reviewing which channels perform best. Online outreach may include email, social media, digital advertising, mobile apps, crowdfunding platforms, and an organization’s own website. Offline contact includes direct mail and ads in the media. The M+R 2026 Benchmark report found that spending for multi-channel ad formats was up 131% between 2024 and 2025, with an average cost-per-lead of $6.32 and return on ad spend of $1.82—second only to returns from search.
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Simplified Donation Process
An easy donation process prevents donors from abandoning their donation mid-process and makes it more likely that they’ll give again. Simple processes like donation buttons on a website, mobile-optimized forms, and one-click recurring gift options help make donating as painless as possible. But to meet supporters where they are, nonprofits benefit from an omnichannel approach. According to M+R's 2026 Benchmarks study, mobile messaging revenue increased 48% in 2025, while email-driven revenue climbed 16% and direct mail revenue rose 9%. Desktop visitors still generate the majority of donation revenue—72%, despite accounting for just 48% of website traffic—but mobile giving is catching up with 52% of traffic and 28% of revenue. It’s essential to track which channels each donor prefers and use that data to simplify the giving experience for all touchpoints.
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Acknowledgment and Recognition
Donors deserve (and expect) prompt acknowledgment of their gifts, as well as receipt of related tax documents. CRM systems can automate acknowledgment of small-donor contributions online, including personalization of thank you notes. For big-donor contributions, these systems can facilitate a more curated approach, because they hold important data about those donors’ altruistic motives and other characteristics. The systems can also store information about how much or how little public recognition a big donor might prefer.
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Donor Retention Plan
Donors don’t usually remain loyal to nonprofits out of inertia. As one of a nonprofit’s top priorities, donor retention requires assiduous planning, especially since long-term donors have been found to provide more funds, at lower fundraising costs, than one-off contributors. Yet nonprofits still struggle to retain new donors. Every organization should have a nonprofit retention plan for analyzing current donors, setting retention goals and executing objectives by means of donor segmentation, personalized communications, reactivation of lapsed supporters, and other measures.
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Regular and Transparent Reporting
Reporting can deliver the key to donor retention. Donors want to see a nonprofit achieve measurable results with the contributions they’ve made toward the causes they care about. They want to hear stories from beneficiaries whose lives have improved. Indeed, when a donation comes from a foundation or company, specific expenditure and reporting requirements are often included in the grant agreement. Leading practice is to provide clear, accurate statistical data embedded within a compelling narrative, delivered on a regular schedule. Many nonprofits post their IRS filings on their websites, demonstrating an additional act of transparency and audit-readiness.
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Stewardship Activities
Donor reporting feeds into donor stewardship, and both can be data-intensive processes. At a donor-by-donor level, data management tools help to plan, execute, record, and follow-up on all the activities involved in keeping a contributor informed, satisfied, and likely to renew. Data analysis can help target email and in-person communications, invitations to events, engagements as volunteers, and other stewardship activities that may be included in a nonprofit’s donor retention plan. Data collection might capture phone call responses, email engagement metrics, response to fundraising appeals, and other touchpoints with donors.
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Donor Surveys
Donor relationships should always be interactive, and surveys provide an avenue to strengthen connections in two ways. Even a short, emailed survey can show a nonprofit’s inclination to involve its donors in its work, contributing to donor satisfaction. And surveys can also help fill in details in donor profiles, allowing the nonprofit to improve donor service and to send donors appeals that match their interests. For instance, the 2025 Bank of America Philanthropy study of affluent donors found:
- 68% chose a cause for personal values or beliefs.
- 57% were interested in the issue.
- 50% had firsthand experience.
- 48% trusted a recognizable or reputable organization.
- 47% felt the organization or issue had a special need.
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Planned Giving
Planned giving defers a gift for a span of time, which can occur during the donor’s lifetime or upon their death. Donor-advised funds (DAF) is a common form of planned giving. Major financial services companies and others hold these tax-efficient investment accounts for wealthy donors, who can direct where the funds are to be contributed over time. According to the DAF Research Collaborative’s 2025 Annual DAF report, contributions to DAFs represented 15.3% of total U.S. charitable giving in 2024, with DAF grants to charities reaching $64.6 billion—a 17.9% increase from 2023. Given the significant giving capacity these holders represent, many nonprofits apply similar stewardship and donor management practices to DAF givers as they would to other major donors.
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Donor Privacy
Privacy policies assure donors that their personal information will not be used without permission. In some cases, this involves providing a choice to opt out, rather than opt in. Nonprofits also need to follow an increasing number of data privacy regulations, including such globally influential standards as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Payment Card Industry (PCI) directives. Nonprofits need to communicate their privacy and security standards to earn the trust of their donors—according to Johnson Center research conducted in 2026, only 31% of the public feels confident that regional nonprofits can keep their personal data secure. And because nonprofits are frequently targeted by cybercriminals looking to steal personal data, they should also have a specific cybersecurity strategy in place.
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Collaborate With Board Members
Beyond setting organizational and fundraising strategies, board members can be particularly useful when it comes to donor management because of their influence among networks of potential donors. Most board members understand that fundraising is part of their responsibilities, but many have reservations due to feeling ill-equipped or fearing their appeals will be rejected, among other concerns. Nonprofit executives should encourage board members to advocate and raise funds in several ways, such as making fundraising and donor engagement part of the formal job description for open board seats, providing directors with the support they need, and periodically reviewing board fundraising expectations and performance during board meetings.
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Staff Training
Nonprofits need to skill-up to use data more effectively for donor management. For instance, in The NonProfit Times’ 2026 Best Nonprofits To Work For survey, only 74% of nonprofit employees feel that their organization assists them in following a well-aligned career path. Without a clear path forward, nonprofits could face high turnover as employees take their skills to competitors or for-profit companies. It’s advisable to educate all staff in at least the basics of donor data management. That way, even those who don’t handle data directly can still understand the types of input available from trained staffers for use in their campaigns. Another tip: Nonprofits should drive home the need to maintain data hygiene, such as keeping data up to date and avoiding duplication.
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Impact Stories
Donors respond to tangible evidence of impact, and storytelling does a better job at delivering that than financial reports. Effective impact stories combine compelling beneficiary narratives with concrete data, such as the number of people served or programs funded. These two elements work together to give donors both quantifiable results and a more personal connection to their donation—driving the 87% of donors that find their giving personally fulfilling, according to the Bank of America Philanthropy study.
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Donor-Centered Culture
By centering decision-making around supporter relationships, organizations show donors that they’re partners in the mission rather than revenue sources. Nonprofits can demonstrate this focus by consistently showing appreciation for their contributions and offering customizable communication preferences—and sticking to them. When everyone from front-desk staff to program managers understands how donor relationships support the mission, organizations can deliver a positive experience that encourages long-term loyalty.
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Map the Donor Journey
Donor journey mapping outlines every stage of a supporter’s relationship with the organization, from initial awareness through first gift and (ideally) ongoing engagement. Visualizing these stages helps nonprofits spot gaps or friction points that lead to disengagement, such as delayed acknowledgments or inconsistent follow-ups. CRM systems can help development teams map the donor journey by tracking interactions at each touchpoint. Systems with AI capabilities, especially GenAI, can also help nonprofits develop tailored outreach content based on where each donor stands.
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CRM Software
Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) systems store, organize, track, and analyze donor data, creating a foundation for personalized communications and automation. With access to real-time and unified donor information, development teams can automate acknowledgments, create more granular audience segments, track multi-channel interactions, and identify giving patterns to inform future strategies. CRM systems with built-in AI capabilities can shift to a more proactive strategy by helping teams predict how specific audiences might respond to potential appeals, rather than relying on slower traditional models such as A/B testing. And with AI’s wide range of automation capabilities for both routine and more complex tasks, staff can spend more time working on outreach and giving high-value donors and initiatives a more personal touch.
What Is Donor Management Software?
Donor management platforms enhance donor acquisition and retention by storing, segmenting, updating, and analyzing information about current contributors and prospects. CRM systems represent the leading edge of donor management software, especially when integrated with other tools, such as donor prospect research, financial accounting systems, and email marketing tools. CRM can replace older tools, such as spreadsheets.
Manage Your Donor Connections in NetSuite
NetSuite CRM brings donors data, engagement history, and giving patterns into a single platform—giving development teams the unified view they need to segment audiences, personalize outreach, and track interactions across all channels. Part of NetSuite Nonprofit ERP, NetSuite CRM offers built-in AI capabilities that highlight high-potential donors, flag at-risk supporters before they lapse, and predict which appeals are most likely to resonate. And because NetSuite CRM integrates with fund accounting and program management, nonprofits can connect donor activity to financial and impact data without manual reconciliation. Through NetSuite Social Impact, qualifying nonprofits can access software donations, pro bono consulting from NetSuite employees, and capacity-building workshops to help get the most out of what the platform has to offer.
In today’s challenging nonprofit landscape, donor management is critical to organizations’ financial sustainability. By effectively managing donors, organizations can significantly boost donor acquisition and retention rates, as well as giving levels. Many are embracing digital strategies and tools, like constituent relationship management (CRM) systems, to strengthen their bonds with donors, paving the way for increased impact and long-term success.
Donor Management Best Practice FAQs
What types of data are handled by donor management systems?
Donor management systems store, sort, and analyze data across the life cycle of a donor, including contact information, demographics, favorite causes, communications preferences, interactions with members of the development team, engagement in a nonprofit’s events or volunteer programs, and more.
What is a donor management system?
A donor management system lets nonprofits store, sort, and analyze information about donors and prospective donors to better understand them, communicate with them, and persuade them to contribute. Donor management tools range from basic spreadsheets to sophisticated constituent relationship management (CRM) systems that can integrate with other program management, financial, and fundraising tools. Together, they create personalized, compelling messaging for specific segments of donors and automate interactions, such as email acknowledgments of online donations.
How do you keep donor information organized?
Constituent relationship management (CRM) systems represent the most advanced way to track donor information. When integrated with a nonprofit’s financial systems, CRM systems can help development teams use data about donation recency, frequency, and monetary value to communicate with donors and deepen their commitment. Donors are also organized into many other segments defined by attributes, such as demographics and altruistic motivations, to target appeals and other communications.
How do you prioritize donors?
First priority should go to retaining existing donors, which affords greater fundraising success at lower cost than that needed to acquire new donors. Nonprofits can prioritize donors in many ways when they are armed with insightful data about contributors’ giving histories, capacity to donate, affinity for particular causes, and other attributes. Constituent relationship management (CRM) systems facilitate this kind of donor segmentation and aid in prioritization.
