This guest article was written by the team at Nexus Marketing.
Have you ever listed out all the platforms and tools your nonprofit uses? It might be more than you think, and juggling too many can create complications for your team.
Perhaps you’re used to manually re-entering information from your event platform into your CRM, determining whether your donor database or fundraising software has a donor’s current address, or even digging through an old spreadsheet for information on a previous fundraising campaign’s performance. If these frustrations sound familiar, it might be time to consider integrating the different tools your organization uses.
Integrations, or connections that enable two different software systems to automatically share information, help you keep mission-critical information accurate and break down silos that leave important data stranded. These connections are especially helpful during your organization’s busiest times, like year-end giving season, as they enable you to spend less time in spreadsheets and provide a better donor experience.
In this guide, we’ll cover key considerations to help you decide which tools to connect and build an integrated tech ecosystem that your team can maintain.
Consider which systems to connect.
Every nonprofit’s tech setup is unique. Where one organization might use just a CRM and a couple of spreadsheets, another might work across several systems for your website, email, texting, advertising, events, reporting, accounting, and more. Despite these differences, the tools that nonprofits use generally fall into a few categories. Knowing how they connect can help you map out your integrations.
Nonprofit software solutions often cover the following functions:
CRM and donor management. These systems are where you keep records of donors, volunteers, and members, along with their giving history and your past conversations with them. Because many of your other tools create or draw on information about the same people, your CRM often sits at the center of your tech ecosystem, and connecting other systems to it gives your team a single, complete record for each supporter rather than several partial ones.
Fundraising and outreach. This category includes fundraising platforms, email marketing and SMS tools, event management systems, and more. When these tools connect to your CRM, each new donor, event guest, or email subscriber appears in your records without anyone having to type them in. You can also send messages that reflect what each person has already done with your organization.
Website and content management. Your website is often the first place supporters encounter your organization, whether they want to read about your programs, subscribe to your newsletter, or volunteer. Connecting your content management system (CMS) to your donation and contact forms sends all gifts and sign-ups to the right place. It also makes it easier to keep details such as event listings and program information up to date.
Finance, operations, and collaboration. This category pertains to your nonprofit’s internal operations, encompassing accounting software, payroll tools, grant tracking software, project management systems, and file-sharing tools. Connect these systems to your fundraising platforms to ensure your entire team works from the same information for budgeting and reporting.
Each of these categories holds data that informs the other categories. Taking time to consider how they work together before you buy or connect anything helps you see where information already flows smoothly and where your staff is filling in the gaps by hand. Or maybe there are gaps you’re not currently able to fill.
Determine where integrations are necessary.
It may be tempting to “Zap” every single one of your systems together, but not every platform needs to connect to another. Some integrations are well worth the effort, especially if your team enters the same donor details in multiple places every week or needs certain numbers to match across platforms. Other times, a connection between different platforms will not save your team time or improve accuracy, which means setup could be more trouble than it’s worth.
Integrations come with some trade-offs. Each connection you add is another moving part to maintain, and every system that shares data is another place where that information can be changed, copied, or exposed. A tool linked to five others takes more work to update, troubleshoot, and secure than one standalone system, so it serves you in the long run to be strategic about what you choose to integrate.
Before you build any connection, make sure you can explain why it is necessary and how it helps you do your job better. If your reason is "this saves our development team hours each week, so they can spend more time communicating with donors," well, that’s a great reason to integrate.
If you can’t quite tell what is necessary, a seasoned nonprofit technology consultant can help you distinguish between must-haves and nice-to-haves to build a tech plan that supports your organization’s goals.
Clean data and resolve issues before adding integrations.
Integrations move information from one system to another, which means any existing problems travel with your data. Before you connect anything, make sure each of your existing systems is working the way you want it to.
Begin by cleaning up your data. This process may include:
Merging duplicate records
Updating outdated contact details
Agreeing on how your team should enter information like addresses and gifts.
Additionally, confirm that the same fields mean the same thing across tools. For example, if your CRM defines a major donor as someone who gives at least $10,000 and your fundraising platform uses a different threshold, those two systems will send you mixed signals once you integrate them.
Next, review how each system is set up, and see if there are any that you can retire. From there, go into each platform to fix settings that cause recurring errors, and assign a knowledgeable team member to be the point person for that system.
Take a sustainable approach.
Integrating your technology only helps if it makes things easier for your organization. As you add integrations, you will need to consider how much change your staff can absorb at once and think ahead about how you'll keep each connection running a year or two from now.
Ways to keep your integrations manageable over time include:
Working in stages. Trying to launch several new integrations at once can overwhelm your team and make problems harder to track down. Instead, rank your options by how much each one would help your mission to build a timeline that gives your staff time to get comfortable with each change before the next one arrives. For example, you might connect your donation forms to your CRM first, then move on to your email platform once that connection is running smoothly.
Bringing in outside support. Consider your staff’s capacity for getting started with new integrations. If your proposed changes fall outside of your team members’ skill sets and would add too much work to their plates, a nonprofit technology consultant can help you figure out which integrations matter most. Many can also build and implement them for you, freeing your team to focus on core responsibilities.
Being proactive about maintenance. Decide who will look after each new integration, whether that is a team member or an outside professional. Determine how they’ll know if one stops working and what they’ll do when one of the connected systems receives an update.
When your team has time to adjust and a plan to manage upkeep, they can count on your new integrations to deliver accurate information and give them more time to build relationships with supporters.
From deciding what to integrate to keeping each connection up and running, a thoughtful approach to integrations gives your team accurate information and more time for your mission. To get started, list every tool your team uses and identify where you move information by hand—or where info isn’t flowing between systems but should be. This process will help you prioritize and identify the most impactful opportunities to connect your tech.
