CiviCRM Donations: What You Need to Know

CiviCRM is a free, open-source constituent relationship management (CRM) that, as of 2020, almost 11,000 nonprofit organizations use. Made especially for nonprofits, NGO’s, and civic sector organizations, CiviCRM is a flexible platform with specific capabilities to help organizations like yours fundraise and thrive.

While the ability to expand your CiviCRM solution is a big reason why this CRM is so popular, on its own it still has some top-notch fundraising features. In this section, we’ll be diving deeper into CiviCRM’s own capabilities. After all, this is a system made for nonprofits and similar organizations.

Here are the top CiviCRM fundraising features your nonprofit organization can use with just the core system:

• Event management. CiviEvent includes a full set of tools you can use to plan and manage your event. Create customized event registration pages, set up recurring events, and automatically send customized confirmations and receipts. 
• Donor contact management. With CiviCRM, you have access to set up comprehensive profiles for each of your supporters. Easily record all key engagement, biographical and other data that will help guide interactions. You can also set a range of communication preferences to ensure that your donor relationships are always in good standing.
• Contribution tracking. One of the most important jobs of a CRM system is to record your entire fundraising progress. With CiviCRM, you can process and track online gifts, send thank you emails, and report on key trends and patterns. 
• Nonprofit membership program management. If your nonprofit organization offers memberships, this is a key feature to utilize. Your supporters can easily sign up and renew their membership online, as well as receive member-only emails.
• Email marketing tools. With CiviCRM, you can engage your supporters in more personal ways with segmentation and A/B testing. Additionally, keep an eye on your email marketing efforts with CiviCRM’s ability to record open and click-through rates, as well as other key email statistics.
• Built-in and customized reports. It’s not only important for your CRM system to record key data, but it should also provide you with insights that continue to improve your overall efforts and processes. CiviCRM hosts 40 reports, and gives you the ability to create your own, enabling you to track your data in smart ways.
• Peer-to-peer fundraising. P2P fundraising is a great way to engage a broad audience and raise a large amount of revenue. With CiviCRM, you can enlist your own group of volunteers and supporters to create their own fundraising pages and engage with their peers. 

The best part about all of the above CiviCRM components is that you can turn them on and off as needed. Your system always remains uncluttered and completely personalized to your organization’s needs.

As you now know, CiviCRM is a popular system for its customizability and expansive list of features. But how do you know if you’re making the best of your current CiviCRM solution?

While each CiviCRM system will be uniquely customized for each organization that uses it, there are definitely a few best practices that all users should know about to ensure that they’re maximizing all of the opportunities available. For instance, you should:

• Stay up-to-date with the latest version updates and extension updates. Every month, CiviCRM comes out with a regular update release to fix any system gaps or slow areas. They also have security releases to their code, directly focused on ensuring the platform remains as secure as possible. Similarly, extensions might undergo updates and version developments. While you might not think updating your system so often is necessary, failing to do so can actually cause system failures and extension compatibility issues down the line. 
• Leverage donor data within marketing communications for more personalized and targeted content. One of the best ways to increase the success of your organization is to develop meaningful relationships with your supporters. After all, these are the people who actively help you achieve your mission. Use your CRM data to optimize donor communications and provide more meaningful content for supporters.
• Continue to refer to reports to take note of trends and pinpoint areas for improvement. The data in your CRM can provide valuable clues to increase fundraising, but it’s not enough to just collect and store it. Make use of both the built-in and customized reports to better track trends and make decisions that genuinely helps your organization. With a comprehensive view of your data, you can note any gaps and then take the moves to fill them.

Along with the above, remember to take advantage of CiviCRM’s customizable and flexible nature and use extensions. This is the best way to utilize CiviCRM to its fullest potential for your organization.

You already know that customizing your CiviCRM solution is important, but how exactly should you do it? The best method is to explore the extensions directory, as it is ranked by popularity. You can even search for a specific feature that you’d like!

In this section, we’ll be going over our recommended CiviCRM extension, iATS Payments.

iATS Payments: Top CiviCRM Donation Extension 

It’s likely that your organization is no stranger to the need of processing online financial transactions. Whether it’s for a gift, an event ticket, or even a merchandise purchase, your supporters will have to input their personal and financial information into an online form. It’s only fair on your part that you choose the most dedicated payment solution to ensure these transactions are secure.

iATS Payments is a payment processor extension that all CiviCRM users can freely take advantage of. Over 1,000 CiviCRM users currently use iATS Payments to ensure that all online payments are made safely.

With over 20 years of experience, iATS Payments is the only online payment processor dedicated to the nonprofit sector and works to meet your unique needs. With iATS Payments, you can:

• Process most major credit cards, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. 
• Process direct debit and ACH payments, allowing donors to securely pay directly from their bank account.
• Accept payments from anywhere with international processing capabilities.
• Protect your supporters with security features like tokenization, encryption, and Level 1 PCI Compliance.

To increase donations for your nonprofit, it’s vital that you have a dedicated tool to process them. iATS Payments is the perfect solution for your organization to take advantage of, and it fits perfectly with the rest of your CiviCRM system.