Tip of the Week: Take another look at your donor management system

This week’s post comes to us from Laura Quinn at Idealware

Without an effective system to track donors and other constituents, you can spend too much time just trying to figure out who to contact and miss out on many fundraising opportunities. Most organizations have some kind of constituent database, but is it the right one?

Donor management systems need to be capable of supporting your current fundraising processes as well as those you’ll develop as your organization grows and adds new strategies. Maybe you’ve had doubts about your current system for a while, but were reluctant to change. Don’t be! Just because your organization has been using it for years doesn’t mean it’s right for you.

Switching to a new system can be a difficult choice. Often, you’ve come to know the weaknesses and quirks of your current system so well that the other systems seem shiny and full-featured in comparison. It can also be time-consuming, and sometimes costly, to evaluate new systems, to move data from one system to another, and to allow staff time to learn the new system. It’s not something to do on a whim, or in an effort to find a mythical “perfect system.”

So how do you know if you should switch, or stick with what you have? Ask yourself the following questions:

Are you tracking your donation data in Excel?
Are you tracking donations in FileMaker or Access, but don’t know how to modify them?
Has your current donor management system been discontinued by the vendor?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you definitely need a new system. But for the majority of organizations, the answer won’t be that clear.

Are you happy with your system, but want to make sure it’s the perfect one for you?
Do you want to make sure you’re staying on top of new technologies?

If you’re relatively happy, it almost certainly makes sense to stay with the system you have. A new donor management system is a big commitment. There’s no such thing as a perfect system—it’s usually a mistake to change systems in pursuit of something only slightly better than you have now.

If you answered no to most of the questions posed here, you likely have lingering doubts about your current system. Maybe you’re paying too much, or getting too little from it. Maybe it doesn’t effectively support the tasks you need to accomplish. You’re an excellent candidate for a new system.

Idealware created a workbook to help organizations make this decision by walking them through the process of determining what features they need, which ones they already have, and other factors like ease of use, the types of constituents they need to track, and more. It’s available free here.

Laura Quinn is the executive director of Idealware, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides thoroughly researched, impartial and accessible resources about software to help other nonprofits make smart software decisions.