[GUEST POST] Peer-to-Peer Software and CRM Integration: The Cheat-Sheet
Author – Jeff Gordy
Jeff Gordy is the Co-Founder and CEO of Z2 Systems, Inc., the makers of NeonCRM for nonprofits. Jeff has been working with his team for the last 12 years on building the optimal fundraising, CRM database, and marketing solution for nonprofits. Before starting the company, Jeff worked for the Kidney Cancer Association and knew that nonprofits needed better software solutions to help with their many challenges.
There’s now a piece of technology out there to address nearly every nonprofit effort. That means that there are an increasing number of places for collecting constituent data, and integrating your fundraising platforms with your nonprofit constituent relationship management (CRM) system is only becoming more and more important.
Integration provides many benefits; it can help better inform your efforts, simplify data management, and reduce room for error. Ideally, your nonprofit should integrate every channel that receives data with your CRM system (including your website!).
In this article, we’ll focus specifically on why integrating your peer-to-peer fundraising software with your CRM system can help your peer-to-peer campaigns run more smoothly and successfully. Here are the integration benefits we’ll cover:
- Integration makes data collection more manageable.
- Integration helps you better target your post-campaign stewardship.
And if you need a little help getting started with peer-to-peer, make sure to check out Cathexis’ article on the four things you should know before launching your campaign.
- Integration makes data collection more manageable.
One of the biggest benefits of peer-to-peer fundraising is that it can give nonprofits’ donor acquisition a serious boost. Since your fundraisers are reaching out to their families, friends, and other peers for you, there’s a natural element of trust that can make new donors feel more comfortable giving to your organization.
That being the case, during your peer-to-peer campaign, it’s more than likely that your organization will be receiving a flood of new donor data. You need a way to efficiently collect this data and create profiles for the new donors you acquire, so you can start stewarding them into long term givers right from the outset!
Integration is that way.
By integrating your peer-to-peer software with your nonprofit CRM system, all of the data you receive from your peer-to-peer campaign will automatically be recorded in your donor profiles. You won’t have to worry about manually inputting data, so you can focus instead on doing everything in your power to make your peer-to-peer campaign a success.
Takeaway: Integrating your nonprofit CRM system and peer-to-peer software automates data collection, enabling you to efficiently capture all of the new data you receive without manual labor.
- Integration helps you better target your post-campaign stewardship.
One of the biggest benefits of using nonprofit CRM software is the 360º view of your supporters it affords. Since this type of software centralizes all donor data, sources can communicate with each other to provide you with a deeper understanding of your donors. By having a more complete picture of your donors, you can better inform your fundraising and stewardship and tailor your strategies to appeal to each donor on an individual level. When your communications are relevant and personalized, you’ll have more success with building a loyal donor base that gives again and again!
Furthermore, nonprofit CRM systems help you take it a step further and put this personalized approach into practice. Their powerful list segmentation features allow you to split your donors into different groups based on any relevant data field you have included in the platform to make managing multiple outreach strategies easier.
Segmenting your list can also be helpful for your peer-to-peer campaign. Since your donors are fundraising for you, you won’t be able to target your appeals. However, you will be able to craft more effective stewardship strategies that you can implement after the fact to retain more of the new donors you’ve acquired.
For example, you can segment your donors by which communication channels they prefer and by new donors vs. recurring givers to ensure your follow-ups are relevant and compelling. However, for list segmentation to work, you’ll need all of your donor data listed in your nonprofit CRM and for that data to link back up to your peer-to-peer software. And as we discussed in the previous point, the easiest way to collect data is through integrating your nonprofit CRM and peer-to-peer fundraising software.
Takeaway: When you integrate your peer-to-peer fundraising software and nonprofit CRM, you can use the data you collect from your P2P efforts to inform your follow-up stewardship strategies and make them more successful.
These are just a couple of the many benefits of CRM integration, but hopefully you can see why it’s so crucial to peer-to-peer (and any fundraising!) success.
To learn more about nonprofit CRMs, check out this guide from Neon.
Awesome Post, very helpful – Keep it up!