Explore the benefits of automation and systemization with technology for nonprofits. This guide offers strategies to streamline your operations, allowing your team to focus more on your mission and donors. Discover how technology for nonprofits can reduce time-consuming tasks, enhance donor engagement, and increase retention, helping you optimize productivity and impact.
How To Make More Time In Your Busy Schedule
Many nonprofit leaders know how important donor retention is. We’ve all heard the statistics that tell us it costs 5+ times as much to acquire a new donor than it does to retain one. Despite the importance of donor retention, we’ve found that 74% of nonprofit leaders do not have a dedicated process for nurturing their existing donors. This startling statistic, gathered from our recent survey of 500 nonprofit professionals, highlights a critical opportunity.
Many nonprofit employees know how important it is to nurture their donors, but too often, they are swamped with other responsibilities. While nonprofits are often strapped for resources, knowing which tasks have the biggest payoff is important.
In today’s blog, we will reveal how you can free up time in your team’s busy schedules so you can focus on what matters most: your mission and your donors.
The Cost of Doing Things the Old Way
Think about how much time your team spends on manual data entry, sending repetitive emails, drafting donation acknowledgments, and managing spreadsheets. These tasks drain precious hours and lead to staff burnout.
But the hidden costs are even greater—lost opportunities to connect with donors on a deeper level, focus on improving your programs, and create a sound fundraising strategy.
Put simply, the costs of doing things the old way are too expensive. What’s needed is a sound strategy with excellent technology.
Real-World Story
We worked with a fantastic international development nonprofit struggling with high donor churn. Despite a passionate mission and robust programming, they didn’t have a system for regularly communicating the ongoing impact that donors make.
Sadly, this meant many generous supporters didn’t feel fully connected to the cause and chose to stop giving. Sadly, this is a very common situation that can be easily mitigated! By implementing automation and donor nurture strategies, we turned this situation around.
Think automated welcome emails for new donors, personalized updates on the organization’s work, and timely follow-ups. The results were incredible: increased donor retention, larger average donations, and a renewed sense of confidence that their fundraising department isn’t a leaky bucket.
Automation vs. Systemization: What’s The Difference
We wrote a recent newsletter on the difference between automation and systemization. To be clear, both are processes you create for your nonprofit to thrive. It’s important to look at your nonprofit the same way an architect looks at their blueprints. You want to think about every little step in the process of creating a thriving organization, and two of the biggest levers you can pull are automation and systemization.
What is Automation?
Think about your most boring and repetitive tasks. While these tasks may be extremely important, you may want to ask yourself if a person should complete them or if technology should take care of them for you. Automation is leveraging technology to complete tasks for you.
At the end of the day, technology has one role: to save you and your team TIME. One of the best things leaders can do is find creative ways to save their team’s time so they can focus on the responsibilities that are best left to humans.
Here are a few examples of automation at work in the nonprofit sector:
- Updating donor-giving history
- New donor onboarding email series
- Sending annual giving receipts
- And so much more!
What is Systemization?
Now, it’s time to look at how to integrate your team into these processes. Systemization is all about delegating responsibilities that are best meant for humans.
It’s important to understand that fundraising boils down to trust and connection. This is why nurturing relationships is so paramount and one of the most important development responsibilities.
As architects of your nonprofit, you want to create processes that automatically delegate the right responsibilities to humans.
How To Automate & Systematize Using Virtuous CRM
Learn how easy it is to create automations & assign team responsibilities using Virtuous CRM
Virtuous CRM: Streamlining Workflows and Donor Relationships
One of the greatest things about Virtuous is its user-friendly automation and systemization builder. Even if you’re new to creating workflows, you’ll find the process intuitive and accessible. Here’s why:
- Drag-and-Drop Interface: Creating automations in Virtuous is largely visual. Simply drag and drop elements to build your workflow logic, making it easy to see and understand the steps involved.
- Pre-Built Templates: Virtuous offers a library of best-practice templates. Get started quickly by customizing these pre-built workflows for welcome emails, donor acknowledgments, and more.
- Step-by-Step Guidance: Clear instructions and helpful tooltips guide you through the setup process, ensuring even those with limited tech experience can succeed.
Remember: One of the biggest gifts leaders can give their team is more time to work on what matters most, and technology’s primary role is to save your team time.
Virtuous offers excellent support and resources to help you make the most of its automation features. With tutorials, webinars, and a supportive community, you’ll have all the tools you need to streamline your workflows with ease.
Should you ever need any help creating new donor workflows or measuring and marketing your nonprofit’s social impact, reach out to [email protected] if you ever need any help.
