The Pitfalls of Non-Integrated Data

Back in 2011, our founder, Jeremy, was helping an international relief organization with their digital outreach efforts. Right about this time a huge hurricane hit Haiti and the organization needed to HURRY to rally their supporters and send aide. This organization was designed to quickly provide relief, but they didn’t have one list of all their supporters to send a message asking for help. Turns out, they needed help too!

You see this organization used lots of lots of online tools to raise money and engage their supporters, but there was not one central list they could access quickly. The donor database had a list of donors, but not all the emails. The email marketing system had a list of people who had signed up for a newsletter, but it didn’t say if they attended any events. Their Eventbrite account had a list of people who played in their golf tournament, but it didn’t synch with anything else. They had 10 different lists of supporters, but they couldn’t pull them together quickly to send out a request for help… And they were literally trying to help save lives!

What if this happened to your nonprofit? Would you be able to organize all your data in all it’s places and quickly send out a message in an emergency?

What if you needed to segment your list of contacts to customize the request first. How long would that take?

Your organization may not face life and death emergencies but there is no doubt that you are constantly trying to gain support for an important cause. Tired of your current system? Here are 5 things to think about when choosing a new donor management software:

1. Is the software easy to use?
2. Can you quickly create reports to get the data you need?
3. Are you able to track all your data (donations, events, emails, etc) in one spot?
4. Do they provide the training and support you need without a hefty price tag?
5. Does it have fundraising tools to help you grow?