You may be wondering why CRM is important for charities. The simple answer is that they’re not only important; they are crucial and more essential than ever.
When you are looking to strengthen and grow valuable opportunities and relationships that support your mission, a CRM like Flowlu needs to be considered.
What Exactly Is A CRM?
In case you never heard about CRM systems, they’re also known as Customer Relationship Management systems. The main goal of this such system is to help companies to properly and effectively manage documents and contact data as well as systematically maintain interactions with clients.
The truth is that CRM systems are a must-have not only in the commercial sector to make sure that they manage customer information and spot sales opportunities. However, what about charities? Do they really need a CRM system? After all, they’re not selling a product. However, with all the digital transformation over the last few years, it’s important for all organizations, including charities, to improve the way they deliver services and how they communicate with customers or members.
As you can easily understand, by its main features, CRM systems play a huge role in how contact data is collected, managed, segmented, and then used to engage with the audience. This will allow your charity to prioritize resources, maximize fundraising efforts, and find efficiencies across the board.
Why Is CRM Important For Charities?
The reality is that using a CRM system for charities can bring many different benefits. Here are some of the most important ones:
Manage Relationships With Constituents
Even though charities aren’t selling any products, these mission-driven organizations need to maintain strong relationships with constituents. When this doesn’t happen, charities won’t be able to segment their supporters by interest areas or issues, keep track of membership activities, or streamline the donation process.
Ultimately, when you are using a CRM system like Flowlu, you can easily manage all your data not only effectively but also confidently. Above all, you have a secure place to store and manage all your information.
If you think that you can keep using Excel spreadsheets to store and manage your data, you should think again. After all, it’s easy to get incomplete or outdated data, not to mention that it’s almost impossible to keep track of historical data.
With a CRM system, you can have all the data stored in one place, organized, and accessible. This way, it can be easily managed by the different team members over time.
Segment Contact Types
When you are using Excel spreadsheets with your data, you simply can’t segment your contacts. This task can become even more difficult as time goes by. After all, data tends to become inaccurate, outdated, and may not even be in the same format.
Fortunately, you can start using a CRM for charities that allows you to store high-quality data and segment your list by the criteria you want. It may be by the constituent type, geographic location, interest area, or any other. When you need to get in touch with a specific constituent, you’ll immediately have access to all his information. This means that your messages will be more valuable, will create more engagement, and may even contribute to more support for your charity.
Know Your Audience
One of the things that many people who run a charity usually forget is that they need to know their audience. Even though you’re not selling any product, you are looking for different types of support. So, when you are using a CRM system, you can keep track of the activities of your audience. For example, you may only be interested in asking for more support at a specific moment from people who attended a specific event or the ones who signed up for a recent volunteering campaign.
Overall speaking, a CRM system gives you access to all this information about your audience. This is the type of information that you are just not aware of if you’re still using Excel spreadsheets.
How To Choose The Best CRM For Charities
If you just realized the importance of using a CRM for charities, you might be wondering about how to choose the best one.
The truth is that there are many different CRM systems on the market. However, when you’re running a charity, you want to make sure that it delivers what you need. Here are some of the aspects you should take into account when searching for the best CRM for charities:
Determine What You Need & Want
One of the first things you need to think about is what you really need and want. To get a better idea, you may ask yourself some questions:
- What are my goals?
- Will it be beneficial to segment contacts?
- Will I benefit from improved reporting?
- Do I need to have more robust contact records?
As you define your needs and wants, you’ll be able to determine the functionalities that are must-haves, the ones that you don’t need, and the ones that would be nice to have.
The Number Of Users
Charities are all different. So, you may have the need of having more users accessing the CRM system or it may be just one or two individuals. In addition, it’s also important to consider if any of these users have analytical and technical expertise.
All in all, you don’t need a complex CRM system. You just need to find a customizable CRM like Flowlu that allows you to do everything you need, with a very small learning curve.
Consider The Tools You’re Already Using
Just because you’ll start using a CRM system, it doesn’t mean that you should stop using other tools. It all depends on the tools.
One of the best things about Flowlu is that you can easily integrate with other apps. Besides, whenever you want to send a message either to a constituent or a specific list of constituents, you can do so directly on the platform. This allows you not only to save a lot of time (and probably money) but also to have all the email content stored in one single place.
Your Budget
When you run a charity, one of the aspects that you have always to keep in mind is the cost.
One of the things that you might not know is that the cost of implementing a CRM system varies a lot. After all, it is usually based on the number of users but also the number of contacts. Flowlu CRM system works exactly this way. This is actually an advantage since you’ll get a completely flexible system that is scalable.
Bottom Line
There’s no question that a CRM system like Flowlu will help your charity stay organized and efficient. Ultimately, when you are using it, you’ll be able to set your charity in the right direction to reach your goals but also to maximize your impact on the community, and professionalize your approach.
One of the main advantages of using Flowlu is that you can try it for free. No matter how many users you have, you can try the best package for you.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Why do charities need a CRM?
Without a CRM system, charities won’t be able to segment their prospects, track activities related to them, and build proper communication.
What is CRM for charity?
CRM for charities is a tool to easily organize and manage prospects, donors and other contacts, as well as track their activity log and grow loyalty to your company.
Does a nonprofit need a CRM?
Sure! CRM for nonprofits is an important tool to streamline management and communication with clients. CRM also stores all the vital information about donors and prospects in one place.