Your fundraising campaign can easily lose donors.
Without proper engagement measures for your non-profit organization (NPO), you may find it difficult to retain your current donors, as well as struggle to attract funding.
So poor donor engagement can lower your retention rates and decrease your recurring donations.Â
In fact, JMT recently established that NPOs lose 55% of donors each year. This was largely down to poor donor engagement and shifting priorities.Â
By leveraging the best fundraising software, you can increase your donor retention rates. It enables you to reach out to donors via various communication channels, and even automate messaging so that you stay in the minds of your donors.
The right solution can also help you raise donor trust through advanced report features that raise the credibility of your campaigns.Â
In this article, we’ll explore some of the best fundraising software & solutions to maximize your efforts in 2024 and help you increase your donations.Â
Quick summary:Â
- Continue To Give – Best for online giving channels.
- Givecloud – Best for fundraising software simplicity.
- OneCause – Best for hosting fundraising events.
- Donorbox – Best for monitoring donor transactions.
- Giveffect – Best for improving donor prospecting.
Let’s get started.Â
1. Continue To Give
Continue To Give helps you raise more money by offering more ways to give.
Its mobile giving features combined with embeddable website forms enables your donors to donate quickly and easily whenever they feel inspired to give.
Moreover, Continue To Give offers your organization a full featured donor management and accounting system so you do not need to manage many different software and integrations.Â
You can also use it to keep your donors up to date and engaged with its mass email broadcasting and mass texting system.
Best features:Â
- Text-To-Give and QR-Code Giving options make giving quick and easy at an event or fundraising dinner allowing you to collect more donations when people are ready to give to your cause.
- Unlimited Fundraising pages that embed right into your website allow you to keep donors giving to the projects they love most, since you can create different pages that focus on different touch points.
- Its complete donor management system for sending emails and text messages will keep donors engaged and giving! This will also elimite the costs of using other platforms and integrations, which oftentimes can run quite high.Â
Pricing:Â
- Unlimited free trial.
- Starting plan: free.Â
Verdict:Â
Overall, Continue To Give offers a variety of giving options, including mobile, online, and text giving, which enables you to increase your donations. Combining that with their full featured donor management and accounting system will streamline your operations and save you money, which is key to running a successful cause.
2. Givecloud
Givecloud helps you to boost donor experiences.Â
It enables you to create a donor portal, where your donors can set up their profile information and view their donation history. Consequently, this helps your non-profit organization to easily keep your donors updated.Â
What’s more, Givecloud allows you to communicate with supporters via text messages so that you can reach a wider donor audience.Â
You also get a countdown timer, which boosts your campaign by adding urgency to your fundraising projects.Â
Best features:Â
- Givecloud offers a variety of professional, fundraising form templates that you can use to create donation forms quickly without drafting one from scratch. Due to their intricate design, these forms can help you raise donor conversion rates.
- You get an online store, which you can use to create eCommerce funding streams for your charity beyond donations. Additionally, you can use this platform to raise awareness by selling merchandise themed around your cause.
- It provides dedicated tributes where donors can honor a place, event, or person whenever they dedicate money or an item to your non-profit organization. This may help you create personal connections that drive donor engagement.
Pricing:Â
- Unlimited free trial.Â
- Starting plan: free.
VerdictÂ
Givecloud offers a simple fundraising software that allows you to build a professional donor website without programming knowledge, making it a great solution if you don’t have any technical skills. Additionally, you get personalized communication channels that you can use to stay in touch with supporters to improve donor engagement.
3. OneCauseÂ
OneCause gives you flexible fundraising event features.
It provides your NPO with real-time event analytics for virtual, hybrid, and in-person fundraising events. Consequently, I find that it’s one of the best fundraising software in 2024 to help you make donor events more memorable and successful.Â
Interestingly, you can leverage OneCause to assign tables and seats so that you can easily group your audience and increase the efficiency of your staff.
You also get personalized fundraising pages where supporters can contribute to managing your campaign.Â
Best features:Â
- You get a top-table scoreboard that helps you rank donation amounts across tables during events. As a result, your charity can create healthy competition for your fundraising event, which can help you catalyze more donations.
- OneCause’s bidding feature allows you to put up various items for auction using striking imagery. This can help you to manage online, virtual, and hybrid auctions more effectively so that you may attract more bidders and higher bid amounts.
- With OnceCauses’s integrated ticking feature, you can easily sell customized tickets online to maximize your ticket revenue. Additionally, this feature also enables you to track attendees so that you can plan your event better.
Pricing:Â
- No free trial.
- Contact OneCause for pricing.Â
VerdictÂ
OneCause enables you to create unlimited events in a huge variety of formats so that you can boost attendance, conversions, and donations for your charity. However, since it sells all its fundraising features as separate solutions rather than as an all-in-one package, your organization may endure a high initial capital investment.Â
4. Donorbox
Donorbox helps you address donor drop-offs.
It enables you to speed up the donation checkout process by eliminating the need for your donors to enter data regarding their personal information.Â
Crucially, you can create Donorbox-hosted donation pages that you can easily customize to fit your brand and powerfully display your mission statement.
With NTG having recently discovered that 63% of people prefer to give online, this makes Donorbox’s Live Kiosk a very important feature because it allows your charity to collect donations online.Â
Best features:Â
- You can set up regular donation intervals which can help you to enable donors to automatically manage their recurring donations easily. With this feature, you can help prevent cases of lapsed donations while cultivating donor loyalty.Â
- Donorbox’s text-to-give allows you to ask for donations by sending mobile shortcodes to your donors. This enables you to collect funding during on-the-spot donation drives and from donors who may not be active on social media.
- You also get a QuickDonate donor portal that allows your charity to centralize donor data in one place. With centralized donor data, you can improve the efficiency of your team and gain data visibility for better decision-making.
Pricing:Â
- Unlimited free trial.Â
- Starting plan: free.Â
VerdictÂ
Donorbox offers key features, such as bank and Salesforce integrations, that you can use to monitor financial transactions to help prevent fraud. However, I find that since you have to pay for every add-on separately, and even foot significant levies for every transaction, its pricing model can inflate your subscription costs.Â
5. Giveffect
Giveffect combines multiple fundraising systems into one.
It arms you with a wealth screening feature for optimizing your fundraising efforts to help you uncover & track hidden prospects who you can quickly turn into recurring donors.
What’s more, Giveffect’s multi-channel marketing features enable your charity to cultivate stronger relationships with your donors and supporters.Â
You can also automate your fundraising workflows with Giveffect’s smart automation modules, which may help reduce errors in your donor engagement processes while making your fundraising team more time-efficient.
Best features:Â
- It offers you a volunteer management module that you can use to schedule tasks for your volunteers and even track their work hours. Consequently, you can manage your volunteers efficiently to maximize staff utilization.
- Giveffect also offers you an eCommerce storefront, complete with advanced analytics that track user behaviors. This can help you iron out bottlenecks that are hindering your eCommerce processes to unlock more online sales.
- By integrating with your grant management system, Giveffect arms your organization with the ability to track grant allocations and approval statuses. So it empowers you to manage entire grant lifecycles more efficiently and effortlessly. Â
Pricing:Â
- 14-day free trial.Â
- Starting plan: $399 per month.
VerdictÂ
Giveffects’s automated prospecting features make it one of the best fundraising software if you’d like to improve your donor prospecting to land high-quality donors. Nonetheless, you’ll find that its email marketing model falls short as it offers your charity limited emailing functions, so you’ll have to manually manage your email platform.Â
FAQ section
What is a fundraising software?Â
It refers to any tool that you can use to help raise money for your organization by centralizing donor information and improving communication.Â
Crucially, a fundraising software gives you essential fundraising features that help you increase your campaign’s awareness and build stronger relationships with your donors.Â
What are the benefits of fundraising software?Â
With a great solution, you can improve your prospecting process to identify high-value donors who can generate recurring funding for the long term.
Moreover, you can enhance your donation pages, among other elements of your fundraising processes, to help uplift user experiences and raise conversion rates.Â
How should I choose my fundraising software?Â
You should go for one that has integration options that allow you to sync it with your underlying nonprofit tools and services to help you hit the ground running.Â
Additionally, I recommend a software with rich web design templates that you can use to create a robust digital presence that could help you generate more donor prospects.Â
What are the key features of a great fundraising software?Â
It should have robust report and analytics features that can help you create a data-driven approach for more successful donor events.
Moreover, the best fundraising software should let you add an online store to your website so that you can reel in more funding through the sale of merchandise.
How much does a fundraising software cost?Â
Some solutions offer you a free version of their software which allows you to explore key features that can help you raise donations and retention.Â
Meanwhile, others may offer you custom pricing options to match the size of your operations better so that you get a tailor-fit solution that meets your goals.Â
Conclusion
Many non-profit organizations fail due to insufficient funding.
If your organization is unable to raise enough funding, naturally you’ll find it an uphill battle to keep your doors open.
So your organization’s risk of failure greatly increases if you’re unable to generate enough funding to keep your workflow sustainable.Â
As a matter of fact, 30% of NPOs fail according to Old Dominion University. The top reason for this was declining revenue resulting from receding donations.Â
By using the best fundraising software, you can secure more funding for your charity.Â
Overall, I recommend Continue To Give because it’s a holistic software with a very simple-to-use user interface. In addition, it also has many online giving channels that can help you collect more donations online for supporting your project.
With the right fundraising solution, you may be able to reach more donors and supporters to boost the performance of your campaigns & secure your long-term future.Â