Using Your CRM as the Heart of Your Donor Engagement Strategy

Speaker 1 0:09
Hello everybody, my name is Sean McClellan, and I am a senior DonorPerfect training specialist. Welcome to my colleague Danielle’s session, using your CRM as the heart of your donor engagement strategy. Let me take a moment to introduce Danielle Magruder, a client Read More

Speaker 1 0:09
Hello everybody, my name is Sean McClellan, and I am a senior DonorPerfect training specialist. Welcome to my colleague Danielle’s session, using your CRM as the heart of your donor engagement strategy. Let me take a moment to introduce Danielle Magruder, a client account manager at DonorPerfect, who partners with nonprofit organizations to strengthen fundraising strategy through the thoughtful use of CRM technology. With a background in nonprofit fundraising, managing complex data across multiple entities, she brings a practical client-first perspective to her work. Danielle blends relationship management with strategic consulting, helping organizations grow sustainably by leveraging their data tools and donor insights more effectively. Prior to joining our sales team, she served as our support team lead, giving her a strong foundation in problem solving and client success. She is passionate about helping nonprofits invest confidently in solutions that support their mission and drive meaningful impact. A few quick housekeeping items: please submit your questions in the Q and A tab, so that way we can address them during the session if we have time. And then, as a reminder to everybody, all sessions are being recorded and will be available on the DonorPerfect website after the conference. Danielle, take it away.

Speaker 2 1:28
Hello, everybody. My name is Danielle McGruder, and I am so excited to spend a little time with you today. As Sean mentioned, I’m an account manager here at DonorPerfect, so hopefully my face is familiar for a few of you, as a little background, I started my career in the nonprofit sector, working for a wonderful art house film organization called Renew Theaters. Any big film lovers here today? Let’s have some fun in the chat and start. If you can share your favorite film, maybe I see some some things kicking off already. Personally, do Jurassic Park fan favorite for mine. Also, I’m a bit of a dork, so I love Independence Day, and you’ll steal Magnolias. That’s a great one, Princess Bride. Oh, so fun. All right, so a little bit, a bit about the theater. Our mission was to keep our small community theaters alive and thriving. We ran four nonprofit theaters under one umbrella, each serving a different community. That means four end of year campaigns, four membership drives, four boards to report to each month. That was fun. Throughout today’s presentation, I’ll be drawing on my experience at the county theater as a real world example of how good data can strengthen stewardship, storytelling, and fundraising strategy, so the county launched in 1938 and it’s had its heyday for the next several decades. The rise of mega movie complexes changed the film industry, and it was almost closed entirely in the early 90s. The town was worried it would be boarded up and forever, or maybe turned into some kind of gym. So, after much effort in 1992 a group of film lovers came together and made it a nonprofit supported by community members. So, when we use donor to be clear, we use DonorPerfect as our CRM. So, I mean it when I say I started my career in your shoes. It was in this role that I really learned the valuable impact of a helpful and informative CRM. Today we will be talking about using your CRM as the heart of your donor engagement strategy. We will evaluate how your DonorPerfect or your CRM system can be leveraged to capture, analyze, and use your donor data with intent. At the heart of it, with good data, you can understand your donors and their motivations for giving better, and you can leverage that information to put the right message to the right person at the right time. So, step one: capturing data. So, when I started using DonorPerfect, I entered donations and donor data into the system manually as quickly and accurately as possible. We were a check-heavy organization, so I got very good at entering checks, since we had four theaters to account for. We needed all of the details to ensure the gift information went into the correct donor record for the correct theater. We would code the donations very intentionally, so that when we went to report the information, we knew exactly what donation went where. Was it a membership payment or a straight donation, or maybe it was purchasing a gift membership, or maybe it was an honor or memory of someone. I updated donor details, made notes for context, and worked to capture all of the details. If you’re the go-to person for data entry in your CRM or in DonorPerfect, go ahead and give yourself a shout out, because that’s really a true calling. You see, our executive director have been, and still is to this day, with the theater since its nonprofit launch in 1992 By the time I joined the team, we already had 20 plus years of donor data collected. Frankly, our executive director is a lawyer by trade, and I think his attention to detail really bled into our data. Collection. One of the biggest things DonorPerfect accommodated for us was online giving. In the chat, let me know if you’re using our forms and which ones. How are you using them? We use them for memberships a ton, as well as end of year giving. I’d love to see a few examples. Yep, data entry people are so underrated. Give Cloud, big shout out to Give Cloud, I love to see it. All right, I don’t know about you, but since our donor base was giving, was used to giving via checks, we had to start training our donors to give online.

Speaker 2 5:30
We knew it would save our team time and hopefully make it easier long term for donors to give and renew their memberships. The online form streamlined our processes and data. If a donor gave in the form, not only would it bring the information into DonorPerfect automatically, but it would help us match it to the right donor. Plus, forms could be coded proactively on the back end. We would assign a theater to each form, which meant even if the donor didn’t tell us who they were supporting, we would know automatically from the form itself, less error, more details. We started tracking solicitation codes, so we knew which donation page they clicked on. Was it from our website, or was it something we shared in an email? For example, if a donor clicked donate in an email highlighting the summer film series, then the gift was coded to show that film series resonated for the donor. As QR codes became popular. We would share it in our quarterly mailer. If they scanned the spring 2018 newsletter to make a donation, then we knew they were engaged with our newsletter and the information it shared, ultimately encouraging them to donate. Every interaction told us something, and we tried to capture it all. A donation towards a specific fund told us where their heart lived. A membership towards a.. I’m sorry, a membership gift from a mother to a daughter would tell us that supporting the theater was a family affair. It also helped us make connections between family members and relationships. The number of volunteer hours would tell us that they were able to give their time, but perhaps not as much financially, and if you found a donor that was doing both, well, you like us, you really like us. Your website, donation pages, newsletters, they can all be organized intentionally to capture detailed information for future use. Who here is using QR codes? How are you using them? Because I love working them in around a facility. They should be on the doors, they should be stickers on a mailer. I’ve seen people put them on their cars. Anyone else using QR codes pretty intentionally, we put QR codes as well. Thank you, Melissa. Letters, postcards, I love a good postcard with a QR code, super simple. So one of my favorite ways to capture information beyond QR codes and online forms is also via Constant Contact. It’s a powerful email marketing tool that is integrated with DonorPerfect, sharing information bi-directionally. It is a key tool we leverage for our theaters. Now, we at DonorPerfect know that communicating with your donors proactively and informing them of the impact of their gift is too important to each organization’s mission to not have. We’ve made a point to include a Constant Contact account with every current plan. Side note, my inner account manager wants to say, if you’re paying for Constant Contact separately and you’re a member or a client of DonorPerfect, please reach out to your account manager, because they can help with that, so the messages you send via Constant Contact can specifically include a link to donate articles about your mission, updates about your projects, and all in all, keep your community informed. One of the great benefits is that DonorPerfect and Constant Contact will talk to each other, so they have a healthy integration. When a new donor is added to DonorPerfect, and their email is shared. You can use the integration to automatically push their contact information into the email marketing tool. Plus, each time you send an email campaign in Constant Contact, the donor record gets a note that they were sent something. That way, the next time you speak with them, you can ask, ‘Hey, what did you think of our newsletter, or did you get to hear about this film series, you already know they did, but it’s a good conversation starter. Plus, hot tip: if you’re looking to really get into the details, you can create an online form specifically for each email you send. Code the donation form to match with the content in the email, that way when they click donate, you know exactly what email motivated the donation, because the gift is set up to tell you all right. In case it’s helpful, some use cases for messaging.

Speaker 2 9:27
So, at the theaters, we would use our Constant Contact to send customized updates for each theater to our constituents. This includes donors, members, film lovers. It would include information about film releases, special film series, special speakers, we would send an email to members first for early access. This was especially important for the Hollywood summer night series. Tickets would sell out quick every year, so it was important to share the announcement far and wide. It’s a fun benefit to being a theater supporter. We also use the tool to really highlight the community outcomes we. Achieved as a nonprofit, of course, showing wonderful film is certainly the goal, but so is community engagement, offering education classes, and being a third space for film lovers by sharing pictures, stories, and impact with our constituents. It reminded them that their support is valuable and keeps things like the Saturday matinee family film series, alive and well. This specific series brings in families to build memories and launch the next generation of film-loving enthusiasts. The pictures from events like that, as well as a Monty Python fest, are great visual reminders to our donors that their support matters. It is so much more than personal access to films; it is ensuring it remains accessible to our community, and a picture is worth 1000 words. So, Constant Contact made it possible to share. I like to be clear on this front: Constant Contact is not solely for asking for a donation; it is how you tell your story and share your mission. Don’t get me wrong, including a link to give is always appropriate, but make sure your donors are stewarded as well. If the only time your donors hear from you is when you are asking for money, then they won’t feel as connected to your mission, and they certainly won’t feel like part of the community. Tools like Constant Contact partnered with DonorPerfect make outbound stewardship easier and more enjoyable. By now, you know I love my examples. So, here’s another one in DonorPerfect, specifically code maintenance, capturing good data also means organizing it and setting it up for success from the start. Code maintenance helps you keep track of the minutia. I may only be speaking to my fellow fellow data nerds, but the more intentional you are with how you organize your data, the better off you are long term. The key is setting up a system at the start and implementing it for years to come consistently. Gift codes, donor codes, activity codes can all be organized in a way that they are easy to update, easy to understand, and will be reportable for future use. It can unlock some pretty serious potential in your CRM. At the theater, we had a system in place to code each solicitation codes consistently, so whether I was looking at the shorthand or its full name, I knew exactly what I was looking at. SPR 25 and SPR 26 well, they all mean spring newsletter from that year. If a gift was one, it has one of those solicitation codes, then I know the gift came in response to one of our spring newsletters. I can even use my reporting tools to compare year over year giving. Was one better or more successful at raising money than the other? If they all had the same code, it would be harder to do. Same goes for our annual Hollywood Awards night, because we coded campaigns, solicitations, subsolicitations intentionally. we could compare year over year information. I could see the ticket sale growth, donation growth, sponsorship growth, all comparing year over year. Big shout out to my friend and former colleague, Lauren, for tackling that specific project like a pro. And last, but certainly not least, capturing good data today means you have good data for years to come. The notes you enter, the campaign information you preserve, all of that becomes part of your organization’s institutional memory. That means long after staff changes, long after campaigns end, your CRM preserves our story, and future fundraisers will rely on it for donor stewardship. That is why, when I work with new clients or clients that are starting to really be strategic, I emphasize the importance of planning ahead, create systems that make it easy to track information, and place it in easy to find locations that will make sense for years to come. Now, step two: analyze data.

Speaker 2 13:35
I will say all day long that we did a great job capturing the information, but as we prepared the county theater’s first major capital campaign, we realized we weren’t fully maximizing the potential of the data we had in previous years. We would create donor lists for public acknowledgments and reports to show how much was raised each year, especially for board reporting, but we weren’t in the weeds. As we planned for the theater expansion, it forced us to really look at our data. Do we have enough donors to meet the need, and will they give it a level that will help us get to the goal of this massive expansion campaign? By the way, don’t get me started on the value of our wealth screening tool, Donor Search, because that is a whole other presentation. Since we had captured detailed information for so many years, we leaned into the DonorPerfect system and its tools for more detailed insights. Some of those insights included how many donors had given every year for 10 plus years, how many were new in the last year, how many live in the borough versus come from out of town, or maybe how many give each year to our annual campaign, but others give to memberships. Who gives to both? My favorite, how many of our donors are major donors? And by the way, how do we define a major donor? We were finally extracting the details for more strategic outreach. We use the already available reports via DonorPerfect to get started, and the more confident we became, the more we leaned into the features. We started using the e. Report builder to create custom reports for our board. We could save them for future use, so that even if our development director went on vacation, one of us could run it with the same settings to have consistent reports to share. Eventually, we set it up to run automatically on the fifth of every month using a dynamic filter that updated each month. It would send to our office manager directly, that way she could print it for that week’s board meeting. My coworker became a calculated fields whiz, creating customized fields to share on the donor on the main donor page. It would automatically sum a donor’s giving for membership and a separate field for donations. That way, we could see at a glance how they prefer to give. Since the data was extracted precisely for each donor, we were also able to run reports that showed how much was raised in each pipeline, membership versus donation for special event funds. If you have a favorite calculated field, if you’re in the weeds like I am, if you have a favorite, I’d love to see it in the chat. We also used our screen designer to move the fields into helpful locations for easy access, and one of my favorites we leveraged, called Smart Actions, was a key automation, like an automatic pop-up. When you open a donor record for someone that has a special note on their record, the pop-up might notify if they’re a sponsor or a major donor. That way, we approach the conversation with context of who and how they have supported us. A truly memorable one is a notice that read, “Do not contact executive director only. That certainly helped us avoid crossing wires unexpectedly. With all of these insights, we started to see our story in the data. Ultimately, the data told us that we had broad and consistent support from our donors who loved the theater. Many of our original donors from 1992 continued to give annually and often spent time on our board. More surprisingly, we had hundreds of donors that flew under the radar, giving modestly every year, but consistently for 10 plus years. If that is not intent and heart, I don’t know what is, we also realized that beyond our annual fundraising campaign and membership efforts, we had never truly asked for major donations routinely, perhaps of our board, but not of our long-standing donors and members, and certainly not as part of a specific strategy. This was going to be new territory. As we planned for next steps we knew we needed to tap into this potential like we never had before. Clearly, our donors have a longstanding love for our community theater, but now it was time to ask properly for their support.

Speaker 2 17:31
A good CRM will help you do just that. The data shares your donor story and their heart for your mission, so let’s use it to know what to do next, we at DonorPerfect like to call that a donor journey. We wanted to highlight each individual donor’s key role as part of our community and success. We wanted to make sure they could see themselves in our history and in our future. We started calling our long-term donors founding members. We even added the title to their printed membership cards. We sent targeted messaging. Remember our segmented Constant Contact lists. We would send a specific email or letter that was customized to match their relationship with us. Your first gift was in 1992 and saved the county theater. Your donation today will strengthen the theater for decades to come. The data showed decades of generosity, and we finally connected it to present fundraising communications. We also took steps to adjust how we interacted with donors. For example, when a donor made a major donation, we used a DonorPerfect system to automatically update our executive director. That way, he knew to call immediately to say thank you. In fact, he started ringing a big bell every time it happened, so the rest of our team could be just as excited when a new donor gave for the first time. We could create a custom list specifically for sending personalized thank yous and welcome notes for those raising their eyebrows. We have a specific field on the gift screen that will automatically identify if a gift is the first one in a donor’s record, that makes it easier to identify, easier for filtering. We also added them automatically to our email marketing list. We called it a new donor list, so they received updates on the impact of their donation. We all know how important it is to make the first time donor feel special and ultimately turn into a recurring donor. These extra touches can have a powerful impact on long-term support. Side note, a great example. You know, I love my examples. A feature I love in DonorPerfect is flags, specifically flagging a donor for future campaigns. So, take me, for example, when I donate to my alma mater, I routinely give to the women’s basketball program. That’s not random, that speaks to exactly where my heart lives. They probably have a note somewhere on my file that I’m a former player, so a flag would be perfect for that. So, when the next scholarship initiative or women’s basketball fundraising campaign launches, I am sure I’m already at the top of their outbound list. Go Cats! Features like automated reporting, contact management, integrated email marketing strategies, they. Support customized action plans for each type of donor. These systems are fundamental in any CRM. I see the basketball hoop, Katie, and I love it. All right, it’s where your CRM becomes operationally powerful. It is action in real time for true donor stewardship. So, again, following our story with the County Theater and our new approach to the donor journey. We implemented a very intentional communication plan. The goal being to get the right message to the right person at the right time for our major donors and founding members. It meant a personal invitation to meet with our executive director to share the specifics of our project, its impact on the future of our theater, and how important it is to us that they be involved in the process. Not only did we ask them for a significant donation to lead the charge, but we found creative ways to include them in the fundraising process. Two of our generous board members stepped forward and created matching gift opportunities to build excitement around the project. All of our board members received specific training on how to ask for a major donation, as I’m sure you all know, it can be intimidating to ask another person for a donation. So, practice is key. We asked them to be key leaders and ambassadors to share the project and raise funds. Next, we ran a report to see our long-term donors, those that hadn’t quite qualified as major, but by normal standards, but who had given consistently for 10 plus years for a project like this expansion campaign, we would need their support, and we knew they would need to consider giving in ways we had never asked for before.

Speaker 2 21:32
We took the list and placed it in front of our team and board, and asked them to look through those names to find their neighbors, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, so we could strategize our approach. We matched each donor with a board member and one of our leadership team. We pulled our knowledge together, their previous giving to the theater, their engagement with our services, how often did they come, and frankly, their giving to other organizations to build an appropriate profile for the donor. This is meant to guide what type of donation would be appropriate to ask for? We knew the confidence that they, we knew with confidence that they love our theater, they have a heart for film. But now we needed to match that to the ask. We announced the project more widely and invited this targeted group to meet with us individually for feedback. What’s that saying? Ask for money, get advice, ask for advice, get money twice. For starters, when the invitations for individual meetings went out, for many of our donors, that was already a first. We had never approached a solicitation or asked so directly, evidence that big things were afoot. The expansion itself was not a surprise, but they didn’t have the details. This was a chance for us to show behind the curtain and invite them to be participants. Our intention to make them feel seen, heard, and included in the process. This wasn’t acting, by the way. This was real. We wanted to make sure that the direction we were going aligned with the hopes for our future. By the way, highly popular item: first floor bathrooms. They saw our expansion renderings first, and a detailed breakdown of what this project would mean to the theater’s future. DonorPerfect’s historical data helped us tell the story of our growth from a community launched nonprofit to a community landmark, and since our executive director saved everything, we were able to help, able to share meaningful impact data. How many films had we screened since launching as a nonprofit. How many tickets had been sold? How many special events had been held? How many film speakers had been hosted? We told our story, and we made sure donors could see themselves in it. Lastly, we took the leap and asked them to consider a major donation to our capital campaign. Of course, we had done our homework, we knew who had given generously to other deserving community organizations, and we invited them to consider making a similar investment in the county. For others, we asked for a larger pledge commitment paid out over five years, something we had never accommodated before, but something that made sense for a larger campaign gift. And because our ambassadors were already on board, they could share their own stories of why they gave, how they made that decision, and why the project was personal and important for them to wrap up this story. After intentional stewardship with our leadership, founding members, longstanding donors, we launched the public phase of the capital campaign, and we opened the ask to our active donors, members, and local community members. We shared the progress we had made so far, and invited them to join the effort to meet our multi million dollar campaign goal. Again, we were shocked and in awe of the support that followed, including generosity from some donors that still hadn’t fully, that we still hadn’t fully known about. And you bet your bottom dollar we added notes to their record. In fact, as we went down, as I went down memory lane, preparing for today, I spoke with my friend Lauren, and she shared that now, years later, after completing the capital campaign, their development office has received several unexpected and tremendously generous gifts from donors that still fly under the radar. Quote, this is from Lauren Nonini: You never know who can be a potential major donor. Her this stewardship strategy was driven by our historical data, and the donor perfect systems we had in place helped us be intentional every step of the way. Long term, it also created a roadmap for future fundraising strategies, so we could maintain these deepened relationships for years to come. All in all, it was an absolute masterclass in strategic fund development, and I was truly privileged to be a part of it.

Speaker 2 25:25
As a recap, DonorPerfect, or the CRM of your choice, can and should be a powerful tool in your toolkit. It will capture information strategically, provide helpful tools for analysis, and become a key part of your donor engagement strategy. Thank you all so much for your time today. I hope you leave encouraged to think differently about your donor data and how your CRM can be a strong tool for successful fundraising, not just as administrative work, but as one of the most important stewardship tools your organization has. If you’re new to DonorPerfect and you haven’t learned about us yet, we’d love to hear from you. Go ahead and type demo into the chat, and our team will kind of identify that and get back to you. And, of course, if you’re already a member of DonorPerfect, and you’re part one of our clients here, go ahead and type tools, and our account managers, or one of our team, will get back to you to kind of share some of the features that I’ve talked about today. There are a ton. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. Oh yeah, I see a bunch of typing in the, in the chat

Speaker 1 26:24
chats. I’m fine,

Speaker 2 26:26
yay! I love it. I love a good chat, guys. Keep it coming. Thank

Speaker 1 26:29
you, Danielle, for the presentation. And thank you, everybody, for attending her session. Please hop over to one of the next two sessions, beginning in a few minutes. On stage one, we have Kevin Miller from Click to Gift, a 25 minute nonprofit website audit that drives results, or you can check out Josh Bloomfield on stage two with Pave the Way for Supporters: how to optimize your online donation form with Give Cloud. We’ll see you all in a few.

Speaker 2 26:58
Bye, everybody. Thank you. Bye.

Speaker 3 27:13
Are you spending too much time trying to keep up with your marketing? We know you’re focused on your mission, but the reality is finding the time and the expertise to create effective campaigns can feel impossible. You’ve got programs to run and simply don’t have enough time in the day for endless emails and social posts. What if you could build a complete multi-channel marketing campaign in a matter of minutes, not days? Meet Constant Contact’s AI-powered campaign building. We’ve harnessed decades of proven digital marketing strategy and put it into an automated, easy to use tool. This isn’t just about sending email, it’s about creating a cohesive plan that actually works. It’s simple: tell the AI your goal. Do you need to drive donations, promote a volunteer drive, grow your membership, have an event? The AI instantly analyzes your objective and builds a whole campaign for you. It suggests the right tactics, a donation email, a non-donor follow-up, a social media post, all timed perfectly. It even creates the content for you. You get AI-generated marketing copy, compelling headlines, and clear calls to action, giving you a running start every time. Stop guessing and start leading. You’re always in control. The AI creates the blueprint, but you can easily edit the content and even add more emails or more channels to the campaign as you need. In fact, you can use those fantastic donor perfect fundraising emails to supplement the campaign that the AI built for you. This strategic plan increases the engagement and drives results. Spend less time building campaigns and more time focused on your essential mission. Ready to save time and build an effective campaign with minimal effort. Constant Contact and DonorPerfect are powering your purpose.