Do you have the right CRM analytics to make informed decisions around fundraising? Reliable CRM analytics provide insights into effective tactics and areas needing improvement, offering a comprehensive view of your efforts. However, not all CRM systems are created equal. Follow along in this blog as we explore responsive CRM analytics, highlighting the benefits and introducing seven impactful reports designed to unlock the potential of your fundraising initiatives.
Figuring out where to allocate your fundraising budget can be a time-consuming undertaking, especially if you donโt have the appropriate data to inform your decisions. With reliable CRM analytics, your organization can pinpoint tactics and channels that are serving your mission well and which areas need a little more work.
However, this only works if you have full visibility of your data across all your efforts. Because todayโs nonprofit typically uses more than one fundraising tool, this goes beyond the CRM and extends to your entire technology stack: online donation platform, email marketing, social media management, event management, accounting software, data analytics, the list goes on.
Data living in isolation across your systems creates a big problem in maintaining data integrity. This disparate data increases the chances of inaccurate or incomplete information, resulting in fragmented donor communication that differs with each touchpoint. The inconsistencyโand potentially inaccurateโmessages lead to missed opportunities in cultivation and erosion of donor trust.
Traditional nonprofit CRMs like Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge are often limited in the way the platform can integrate with other systems. While these platforms might have integration capabilities, the process can be pretty cumbersome, leading you down a path of awkward workarounds. This can end up being more of a headache than a help, causing more frustration than efficiency.
Organizations like Mel Trotter Ministries have experienced this firsthand, which led them to explore other more effective and user-friendly CRM for nonprofits.
โIt just wasn’t an actual tool. [Blackbaud became] a place we just stored information, and that was so handcuffing. We were still using Excel printouts to record activity because nobody wanted to be in the system.โ
Seth McLaughlin, Director of Development of Mel Trotter Ministries
Responsive CRM Analytics That Grow as You Grow
Data is now the backbone of fundraising, empowering organizations to craft smarter, more effective campaigns and connect more meaningfully with donors. It’s completely changed how nonprofits operate and make decisions. While collecting data is pretty much par for the course for most organizations, forward-thinking nonprofits are using responsive CRM analytics to gain deeper insights into their fundraising.
With responsive analytics and reporting at your disposal, your system can turn complex data into actionable insights. This empowers your team to swiftly pinpoint both gaps and opportunities in your fundraising efforts. This is particularly useful for providing data visibility to teams across the organization.
Especially if you donโt have a dedicated data analyst on staff, making sense of all that data can seem overwhelming without a responsive nonprofit CRM, like trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces.
A comprehensive fundraising tool allows nonprofits to maximize the potential of their data. With Virtuous, nonprofits have the option to choose from prebuilt standard reports and dashboards, each designed to meet the core reporting needs of most organizations. Beyond this, organizations can even opt into creating automated workflows to have these reports delivered to key stakeholders, saving time and keeping everyone informed.
However, as your nonprofit grows in size and scope, your reporting needs might fall outside of the standard options. Anticipating this growth, our platform also provides custom reporting options that allow you to tailor your reports to fit unique requirements.
With our comprehensive library of tags, queries, and filters, our nonprofits can create highly customized and targeted reports that precisely meet their unique needs. This functionality allows them to segment their data in a variety of ways and glean insights that are most relevant to their goals.
โRaiserโs Edge imports are just a nightmare. The thing that I like about Virtuous is the tag system. For each individual who is imported, we create temp tags. If Iโm working with data and I need to work with a certain group of donors in the database, I do a tag import with their contact IDs, and then they get assigned the temp tag. I can do whatever I need to doโassign them to an event or run a report.โ
Bryan Fegley, Senior Director of Advancement at Dominican Friars
Introducing Virtuous BI โ With Virtuous BI, organizations have versatile data views and customizable dashboards, harnessing the ability to deliver the right insights to the right user precisely at the right time. Learn more
7 Standard Reports to Maximize Your Fundraising
Whether you’re a community organization or a large-scale nonprofit, knowing what reports to track will provide the actionable data you need to strategize effectively, deepen relationships with donors, and retain their support over time.
1. Rolling 12-Month
The rolling 12-month report is probably the most commonly used across teams, as it gives everyone an in-depth view of your fundraising performance over the past year. It also gives you a backdrop is compare against. By leveraging this historical data, your team can set realistic goals, predict what’s coming next with a bit more confidence, and tailor your strategies to fit your longer-term goals.
2. Gifts by Channel
The gifts by channel report gives a thorough breakdown of how supporters are engaging with each of your communication channels and provides comparisons between the last 30-day period, the previous 30-day period, and the same 30-day period last year. You can use this report to identify trends, see which channels perform best, and gain deeper insight into how your givers prefer to be asked.
3. Lapsed Donors
When donors are inactive for 12 months or more, they will be categorized as โlapsed.โ Remember, just because a donor falls into this segment, it doesnโt mean that theyโre lost forever. The next steps you take will be crucial to recapturing their support.
With the lapsed donors report, your team can identify who has drifted away in the last six months. But because these donors have supported you in the past, you know that your mission aligns with their interests. This is where you can tailor a re-engagement journey that resonates, taking into account what drove them to support you in the first place and what might reignite their passion for your cause.
4. Gifts by Giving Tier
You have a diverse set of donors supporting your nonprofit, each with their own story and reasons for supporting your cause. To keep these groups engaged and connected to your mission, a generic mass communication strategy just won’t cut it. What you need is a personalized approach to donor segmentation, one that tailors your message to fit each unique type of supporter.
The more personalized and relevant each message they receive is, the more they feel seen and valued. When donors feel that kind of connection, they’re far more likely to continue backing your mission. It’s all about making each donor feel like they’re not just another name in the database, but an integral part of your nonprofit’s journey and success.
This is where the gifts-by-giving tier report particularly comes in handy. It concisely breaks down recent donations into six different levels based on how much was given. For each of these levels, you get a clear picture of how many gifts came in over the last 30 days, the 30 days before that, and even what things looked like this time last year.
Use this report to gain a better understanding how what type of donors are supporting your organization. It might even surprise you to see the total value of gifts that come in from everyday donors vs. major donors.
5. Project Summary
Picture the project summary report as your go-to resource for understanding how well your projects are doing. Let’s say you run a local community organization focused on three key areas: arts, education, and urban youth. This report is equivalent to doing a pulse check, showing you which areas are attracting the most interest and funding.
With this insight, you can adjust your budget and increase marketing spend in the areas that are really drawing in the support, ensuring that your resources are being used in the most effective way possible to further your mission.
You can use this report for just one project or several at once, and you can choose these projects either one by one or group them by their type or where they’re located. Use this report frequently to monitor the fundraising progress for your organization’s key initiatives.
6. Campaign Giving
You likely run multiple campaigns at the same time. Because time is already a tight resource, itโs hard to keep track of the performance of each campaign at once. Using this report, you can effectively measure the success of your fundraising initiatives and analyze the performance of distinct donor segments.
This deeper dive into your data helps reveal which groups of donors are most responsive to specific types of messaging, allowing for more targeted communication strategies.
7. Real-Time Giving
There are times you need to know what’s happening in real-time, at this very moment. Particularly, this type of transparency and visibility is necessary for big giving days like GivingTuesday or fundraising events.
The real-time giving report was made for these high-energy fundraising moments. It offers a detailed view of the last 12 hours of giving activity, cataloging donations as they come in hour by hour. Whether itโs tweaking strategies on the fly or jumping on emerging opportunities, this level of real-time reporting ensures you’re always one step ahead, unlocking every moment of generosity.
Customizing CRM Analytics to Fit Your Needs
Although Virtuous already offers a pretty solid range of reports that cover most of what you would need to make better decisions on your fundraising, sometimes you need something more unique and custom.
Whether it’s zeroing in on a specific donor group, taking a closer look at a specific event, or tracking unique metrics relevant to your mission, custom reports let you dig a little deeper into your data in a way that standard reports might not.
Unlike other nonprofit CRM providers, we include all of our reporting functionalities as a standard part of our system. We’re committed to transparency and fairness in our pricing, so you won’t face unexpected additional charges out of the blue.
โWe were sick of feeling like we owed them something just because we’re a part of Blackbaud. A big thing for us was how opaque everything was. We just had no idea where to find things. Our users weren’t using it because it was just it was tough to manage, tough to make sense of it. Here we are trying to implement growth strategies, and the majority of our people are like, โI just donโt really use it because itโs cumbersome.โ
Seth McLaughlin, Director of Development of Mel Trotter Ministries
Transitioning to a new donor management software is a daunting process, filled with various phases from the initial evaluation to the final roll-out. But, for nonprofits that want to nurture more meaningful donor relationships and reach their fundraising potential, investing in a system with responsive CRM analytics is paramount.
If youโre ready to learn how Virtuous can help you take a more responsive approach to fundraising, schedule a chat with one of our team members.
