Fundraising is driven by building relationships with your community of supporters. But as your nonprofit grows, manually tracking donor interactions, sending follow-ups, and keeping donor data organized can quickly become too much to handle alone. That’s when it’s time to invest in fundraising CRM software.
A nonprofit CRM is more than just a donor database—it’s a tool that helps you understand your supporters, personalize outreach, and unlock continued support for your cause. With the right system, you can track donor engagement, automate routine tasks, and make data-driven decisions.
But not all CRMs are created equal. Nonprofits need a data management system designed for fundraising—one that strengthens your donor retention strategy. After all, retention rates are dropping, and nonprofits can’t afford to lose valuable supporters because of missed engagement opportunities.
Let’s explore how fundraising CRM software can help you deepen connections with supporters and what features to look for when choosing the best donor management solution for your nonprofit.
What Features to Look for in Fundraising CRM Software & Their Benefits
A nonprofit CRM acts as a centralized hub for donor data and simplifies necessary yet time-consuming tasks—like tracking engagement, automating outreach, segmenting donors, and personalizing donation ask amounts—so your team can focus on building stronger donor relationships.
But you need more than just a basic donor management system that does “just enough.” It’s important to choose the right fundraising CRM software that offers features beyond basic donor tracking. Here are key tools to consider:
Next Best Ask
Knowing when to make a donation ask is just as important as knowing how much to ask for. With engagement tracking, wealth screening, and social insights, a fundraising CRM helps nonprofits identify the right moment to reach out—whether it’s after a donor attends an event, interacts with an email, or reaches a key milestone in their giving journey.
Instead of sending generic appeals, a responsive CRM like Virtuous helps you know exactly when a donor is ready to give.
Take Frank, for example. He’s spent a lot of time browsing your website’s section on reducing carbon emissions, signed up for your upcoming webinar on sustainable energy, and even clicked on an email about your latest advocacy campaign. With a fundraising CRM tracking these engagement signals, you’ll know Frank is deeply interested in this cause—making it the perfect time to reach out with an ask.
Instead of sending a generic appeal, you can craft a message that speaks directly to his interests, showing him how his gift can support the sustainability efforts he cares about. By making the right ask at the right time, you’re not just increasing the chances of a donation—you’re strengthening Frank’s connection to your mission.
Dynamic Ask Amounts
Every donor is different, and your fundraising CRM should reflect that. Dynamic ask amounts allow nonprofits to adjust donation requests based on each donor’s giving history. Instead of sending a generic appeal, you can:
- Suggest a slightly higher donation for donors who consistently give
- Offer a lower, more approachable ask for first-time donors
- Customize giving tiers for mid-level and major donors based on past contributions
This level of personalization makes giving more intuitive for donors and leads to higher donation amounts and average donor retention rates over time.
Behavioral Insights
Your fundraising CRM software should provide valuable behavioral insights into how and when to reach out. This ensures your communications feel timely and relevant rather than random or intrusive.
By paying attention to key engagement cues, your team can recognize when a supporter is showing increased interest. For example, if a donor opens multiple emails about a campaign, attends an event, or revisits your donation page, they may be ready to give. Likewise, if a lapsed donor suddenly starts interacting with your newsletters again, it could be the perfect time to reconnect.
Instead of relying on guesswork, leveraging real-time data intelligence helps your team understand when supporters are most engaged. This means you can send the right message when it matters most—strengthening relationships and increasing the likelihood of a gift.
Donation Pages
Fundraising CRM software is only as effective as the data it connects to. Without seamless integration across your entire tech stack, donor information gets siloed across different platforms, making it harder to track engagement, personalize outreach, and report on fundraising success. To build meaningful relationships and make data-driven decisions, your CRM should integrate with key fundraising tools—allowing donor data to flow freely between systems and creating a single source of truth for your entire organization.
An online giving solution that integrates directly with your CRM ensures every gift is accounted for, eliminating manual data entry and reducing errors. By syncing donation history, engagement activity, and donor preferences in real time, your team gains a complete picture of each supporter—helping you craft smarter, more personalized fundraising strategies that drive generosity.
With RaiseDonors and Virtuous, nonprofits get an end-to-end fundraising solution that makes it easier to process donations and manage donor relationships. RaiseDonors helps create branded, mobile-friendly donation pages that offer multiple giving options, automated receipts, and frictionless donor experiences. Because it natively integrates with Virtuous, every donation is instantly reflected in donor records—ensuring accurate reporting, better segmentation, and tailored engagement at every touchpoint.
Key Features by Vertical
Every nonprofit has unique fundraising needs, and the right CRM system should support the specific work your organization does. Whether you’re a church, a human services nonprofit, or a university, you need a solution with features that fit your mission and make fundraising easier.
Faith & Ministries
For churches, ministries, and faith-based nonprofits, giving is more than just a transaction—it’s an act of faith and community support. A fundraising CRM should make it easy for members to give through tithing and recurring donation options while also providing tools to track engagement beyond financial contributions.
Text-to-give and mobile-friendly donation pages make it easy for members to give during services, while engagement tracking helps leaders understand non-financial involvement, such as volunteering, event participation, and small group attendance. By capturing a full picture of generosity and participation, faith-based nonprofits can strengthen their member communities.
Human Services
Nonprofits focused on poverty relief, community services, and disaster response rely on donor generosity and volunteer support to fulfill their missions. A strong CRM should provide the ability to track both volunteer engagement and donor giving in one place, giving organizations a full view of supporter involvement.
Event-based fundraising tools—like those needed for benefit dinners or auctions—help streamline donor outreach and registration. Automated thank-you messages ensure that every donor and volunteer feels appreciated, while direct mail integrations support multichannel engagement strategies for reaching new and existing supporters effectively.
Higher Education
Colleges, universities, and alumni associations need donor management software that fosters lifelong donor relationships. Alumni segmentation allows schools to personalize outreach based on graduation year, past involvement, or previous donations, ensuring that fundraising appeals are relevant and timely.
A major gift pipeline helps development teams stay on top of high-value donor relationships, while planned giving tracking keeps long-term support in focus. Plus, matching gift integrations make it easy to tap into corporate giving programs, boosting generosity without asking donors to give more.
Healthcare
For hospitals, medical research foundations, and healthcare nonprofits, a fundraising CRM should go beyond basic donor tracking—it should also help manage relationships with grateful patients and families looking to give back.
A robust CRM supports peer-to-peer fundraising tools for endurance and awareness events, helping supporters rally their own networks for the cause. It should also provide grant tracking alongside individual donor contributions, ensuring that all funding sources are properly managed.
Real-Life Success Stories With Virtuous
Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) in Omaha provides families with a supportive place to stay while their children receive medical care. However, managing donor relationships and fundraising efforts became increasingly difficult with its previous CRM. While the system looked promising on paper, it was clunky, difficult to use, and required extensive workarounds to track basic donor data. Staff struggled to access the information it needed, making it harder to build meaningful donor relationships.
By switching to Virtuous, RMHC Omaha gained clean, organized donor data that allowed them to create more personalized and meaningful donor experiences. The new system eliminated errors like treating long-time supporters as first-time donors, ensuring every interaction felt intentional and well-informed.
“For any RMHC, knowing that their whole mission is serving families, the way that Virtuous does business is right in step with that, making sure that the nonprofit has the tools, the resources to continue serving, to continue growing, and to continue fulfilling that mission for many years down the road.” — Hunter Samuels, Director of Stewardship & Communications, RMHC in Omaha
With real-time CRM analytics and improved reporting, RMHC Omaha gained a clearer understanding of donor behavior. Using this data to shape its fundraising strategy, the organization reached an impressive 68% repeat donor retention rate and 44.3% overall retention rate.
Just like RMHC Omaha, Jewish Voice Ministries International (JVMI) wanted to better manage its supporter relationships—specifically reactivating lapsed donors. To make this possible, JVMI needed a CRM with an open API that could offer two-way data integration to its existing tools.
With Virtuous, JVMI significantly improved its lapsed donor engagement strategy by using customizing automation workflows. The team could now tailor outreach based on donor interests, giving history, and engagement levels.
A key part of this strategy was a personalized communication cadence, including a voicemail from the CEO promoting a matching campaign and a trackable URL to measure donor engagement. This automation saved the team countless hours—what previously would have required 130 to 200 manual calls per day was now seamlessly handled by Virtuous.
“The ROI from the direct response is 684%, and then if you actually add in the subsequent giving after that—either people signing up as recurring partners right away or just giving secondary gifts—it’s currently at about 1,000%… Between email and voicemail, we sent out about 40,500 communications in the last nine months.” — Justin Ferris, Director of Data Operations, JVMI
Next Steps to Get the Best Fundraising CRM Software
Finding the right fundraising CRM software can transform how your nonprofit engages donors, streamlines work for your team, and grows generosity. But making the switch can feel overwhelming without the right plan in place. Download our guide to switching CRMs to learn how to narrow down what features to look for and ensure a smooth transition for your team.
