Donors are the lifeblood of your small organization, volunteers the strong backs upon which it is built. You rely on them, and on the partners and other constituents who interact with your nonprofit on a daily basis. Tracking them all involves creating and maintaining a lot of data.
Donors are the lifeblood of your small organization, volunteers the strong backs upon which it is built. You rely on them, and on the partners and other constituents who interact with your nonprofit on a daily basis. Tracking them all involves creating and maintaining a lot of data.
But that data also needs to be accessible. A database is like a First Aid kit—it doesn’t matter what’s in it if you can’t get to it when you need to. For example, if a donor calls, you want to be able to instantly access their donation history, their personal information and any other relevant data. Good luck doing all that with an Excel spreadsheet.
The right donor management database makes it easy to see the relationships between data and donors and other constituents, and more importantly, keeps that information accessible and reportable so that you can find and use it the moment you need to. The good news is, there’s a number of options on the market. That’s the bad news, too—if you’re a small organization on a tight budget, how do you distinguish between the systems and their features? How do you know which will best meet your nonprofit’s particular needs? What’s important to consider when choosing?
Join Idealware’s Andrea Berry and Jay Leslie for a one-and-a-half-hour session built upon our comprehensive Low-Cost Donor Management Report, newly updated in 2011, for a closer look at GiftWorks, Common Ground, CiviCRM, eTapestry, DonorPro, Donor Perfect Online, and other popular systems being used by small organizations on tight budgets.
We’ll walk through everything you need to know to choose the right database for your organization, starting with overviews of the most commonly used, affordable databases on the market that give the pros and cons of each. We’ll also talk about good data management practices and planning, and how to best assess your needs before you commit to a system—the best time to do so.
By the end of the session, you’ll have everything you need to guide your organization through the process of selecting a low-cost donor management system that puts all the critical information your nonprofit counts on right where you need it—at your fingertips.
