Donor Database Buyer’s Guide: Tips for Nonprofit Success

Donor database: FAQs

What is a donor database?

A donor database is software that nonprofit professionals use to gain insights into their supporters’ engagement histories, track key fundraising metrics, and measure success. 

Along with storing donors’ contact and demographic information, this technology helps build relationships with supporters by saving previous engagement data, such as past donations or attended events. This functionality allows nonprofits to build on past interactions and organically grow relationships.

What are the benefits of using a donor database?

Your nonprofit might already use a variety of tools to manage donor relationships. You may wonder, “What’s the advantage of investing in another software solution on top of our existing solutions?” A donor database offers the following benefits:

• Data centralization. Think about the multitude of interactions you have with your donors. From emails to events to personal phone calls, your donors can engage with your organization in multiple ways to familiarize themselves with your mission. Donor database software provides a central location where nonprofit staff members can find information regarding these interactions, from event attendance to phone conversation topics.
• The ability to personalize donor outreach. Using the information stored in your donor database, you can customize donor outreach materials with donors’ names, past interactions, and interests. For example, suppose you know that a supporter has previously attended many of your nonprofit’s events. In that case, you might send a personalized invitation to your next event. They’ll feel seen and acknowledged because you understand how much that particular supporter enjoys events.
• Reporting capabilities. Your donor database stores and generates reports on essential donor trends and patterns. This allows your nonprofit’s staff to examine which strategies are most effective and which aspects of your fundraising or marketing efforts need improvement. You can use this information to boost your fundraising and marketing return on investment (ROI) by focusing your efforts on the most engaged supporters and reaching out to them with targeted messages.

A donor database takes your nonprofit’s fundraising to the next level, ensuring you can sustainably manage and grow supporter relationships over time.

What features should you look for when researching donor databases?

Now that you know the advantages of a donor database, it’s time to choose the right solution for your nonprofit. There are three primary considerations when searching for a new donor database: basic, next-level, and tailored features unique to your organization.

Basic donor database features

Any effective donor database will contain a few essential features for helping your organization stay on target. To effectively keep donor data organized, manage reports, and enable data segmentation, you should look for a donor database with the following necessary features:

• Robust supporter profiles. Use robust profiles to manage information about your supporters, including their donation histories, volunteer hours, sponsorships, grants, and more. Leverage information in these profiles to build stronger supporter relationships and encourage continued engagement.
• Segmentation. According to research from Epsilon, 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences. Segmenting supporters based on information in each donor profile helps provide a more customized experience. For example, an animal shelter might have a segment of supporters who prefer dogs and another for those who like cats. They might use different marketing messages and imagery to appeal to each group. Bloomerang’s segmentation eBook can provide insight into innovative ways to segment your database if you’re just starting.
• Scalability. Your solution should have options to scale up or down depending on your nonprofit’s needs. This ensures you can continue using the same donor database as your nonprofit grows. You can easily request these upgrades to gain access to the additional records or functionality your nonprofit needs.

These are standard features that your organization will find in any quality donor database. If a donor database doesn’t have these features, steer clear. Chances are, you’ll grow out of the solution very quickly.

Next-level donor database features

In addition to these necessary features, your nonprofit should also keep an eye out for the unique features of each platform that help maintain long-lasting donor relationships. Here are a few additional features that will support your nonprofit’s goals:

• Giving potential. When it comes to requesting a donation, your donor database should keep track of potential major gift opportunities. When your donor database harnesses the data from a trusted prospect research provider, you can effectively illustrate a prospective donor’s giving capacity and propensity to donate to causes like yours. For example, Bloomerang offers a generosity score feature that uses publicly available wealth data to identify potential major donors and donors who are likely to increase their giving amounts.
• Engagement meter. An engagement meter provides a quick, at-a-glance view of each supporter’s engagement level. This shows how often they interact with your organization, allowing you to re-engage supporters at risk of lapsing. On the other hand, you can reach highly engaged supporters for additional or higher contributions.
• Email marketing. Designing emails directly in your donor database makes it easy to use the segments you’ve created to their fullest extent. Draft and design your email based on targeted group interests, then send it directly to the desired list of constituents.
• Goal progression. Look for a solution that offers the flexibility to set success metrics that are meaningful to your community and its goals. Be sure you can track your fiscal YTD progress, which is your nonprofit’s progress toward exceeding last year’s fundraising and engagement goals.

Platforms like Bloomerang offer these built-in special features, so you can easily leverage them to identify new fundraising opportunities and reach supporters with personalized messages. Bloomerang even allows you to track volunteer and member engagement using the same system, consolidating all need-to-know supporter information in one place.

Tailored donor database features

Because every nonprofit is different, there may be some tools that you’d benefit from, while other organizations won’t see the same positive results.

To determine the unique list of features that will benefit your specific organization, follow these steps:

1. Take inventory of your current software. Are you currently taking full advantage of your existing investments? What features of your current software solutions do you like the most?
2. Identify the functionality that is missing from your current software strategy. What are your pain points or gaps?
3. Decide what features will fill the holes in your current strategy. Write them down and ask about them during demos.

Identifying your nonprofit’s most essential features will help keep you organized and focused as you develop lists of potential solutions and narrow them down.

How to find the right donor database

There are many nonprofit donor databases out there, all claiming to be the best. How can you decide which is best for your organization? Research.

You’ll need to conduct a lot of research about your organization’s needs and the various systems available to decide which one is the right choice. Here are the research steps we suggest:

1. Divide potential features you’d like to see in your new donor database into “needs” and “wants” lists. Your needs should be the must-haves in a donor database. As you conduct research, if a potential solution doesn’t have some of the “needs” on your list, you can immediately eliminate it from the prospective solutions.
2. Start compiling a list of top options. You don’t need to be too specific about the solutions you list. It’s simply a starting point for your research. Search the web and check referral pages to get a sense of the tools on the market.
3. Eliminate any donor database that doesn’t have everything on your “needs” list of features. Parse through your major list of databases to develop a shorter list of potential solutions that include all of the features you need. Now, you’ll have many solutions that could work for your organization.
4. Compare these solutions with your nonprofit’s budget. Remove any solutions that are drastically over your budget. A solution you can’t afford (or won’t be able to afford in the future) will only decrease your overall ROI. We’ll dive into the budgeting process more deeply in the next section.
5. Compare software features for the remaining solutions with your organization’s “wants” list. Identify the solutions that meet your “needs” and most of your “wants.” After eliminating those without many of your “wants,” you’ll have a concise list of possible solutions.
6. Schedule demos for your shortlist options. Before joining these demos, create a list of questions to ask the team of software experts. Be sure to ask these questions in every demo and reach out after the demo if more questions arise.
7. Choose your solution! After you’ve had demos of each software (potentially more than one for your favorites), you should be ready to pick the software that is best for your nonprofit.

Choosing a donor database does take a lot of time and research. However, that time is well worth spending up front because the right solution will serve your nonprofit effectively for years.

Top donor database solutions to consider

To help kick-start your donor database research, we’ve compiled a list of seven top solutions to consider:

1. Bloomerang

Overview: Bloomerang’s donor database offers all of the features nonprofits need in their day-to-day activities and additional special features to level up their fundraising. The software solution’s design is rooted in the technical expertise of world-renowned fundraising consultants and practitioners.

Top features: Bloomerang was explicitly developed to improve donor retention and relationship-building strategies for nonprofits.

Bloomerang’s unique features include:

• Comprehensive donor profiles designed to track all supporter interactions. You can track engagement using a timeline to get a visual representation of your supporters’ involvement. Measure email open and click-through rates, volunteer hours, donations, and more. Then, Bloomerang will develop an engagement score for each supporter to help you identify your most engaged donors to cultivate strong relationships.
• A wealth screening tool. In partnership with DonorSearch, Bloomerang offers a comprehensive wealth screening tool to identify prospective major donors and sort donors into groups based on giving capacity. This allows you to make the most of the giving opportunities present in your current supporter base.
• A communications audit tool. This tool counts the number of times you use the word “you” versus first-person “I” or “we” language. You want to use “you” at least twice as frequently for effective communication. You can also measure the reading level of these messages to make sure your content is accessible to your target audience.
• Training and support through Bloomerang Learning. This resource offers additional training, tips, and tricks whenever you need them. Training videos will help you take advantage of the advanced features provided as part of Bloomerang’s donor database. This tool is in addition to free email and chat support from the Bloomerang team.

Bloomerang’s expert knowledge of and passion for the nonprofit space mean their donor database software is superior to the average solution.

Plus, Bloomerang’s donor database integrates seamlessly with its fundraising platform. That means users who leverage both the donor database and online fundraising tools can easily capture all donor data from their digital donation page, automatically add it to new or existing donor profiles, and use the data to further personalize their supporter outreach.

Pricing: Bloomerang starts at $125 monthly and scales incrementally based on needs.

2. Salesforce

Overview: Salesforce is a popular CRM option for nonprofit and for-profit organizations alike. You can build out this extremely customizable solution with various apps and integrations to provide the additional functionality your organization needs in a complete Salesforce ecosystem.

While this solution is often well-suited for large organizations, smaller nonprofits might consider starting with different software for their first donor database. Salesforce can be expensive to customize, usually requiring a consultant or tech expert to help create the perfect solution. Once you build it, it offers everything a nonprofit needs for success, but configuring it requires a higher up-front cost that smaller organizations find difficult to afford.

Top features: This nonprofit software is notable for its generative and predictive AI, robust impact measurement, and large support community.

Pricing: Pricing for the Nonprofit Cloud package is $60 per user per month.

3. Charity Engine

Overview: CharityEngine is an “all-in-one solution” for donor management. Its mission is to provide all the tools nonprofits need for success so that organizations don’t have to worry about purchasing multiple software solutions for each activity.

Top features: In addition to a donor database, CharityEngine offers online donation pages, peer-to-peer fundraising, email marketing, a website builder, advocacy software, and more.

Pricing: CharityEngine offers multiple plans based on your nonprofit’s size and needs, but you’ll have to speak to their sales team to get a specific quote.

4. Neon CRM

Overview: Neon CRM is a cloud-based donor database that is part of the Neon suite of tools.

Top features: This solution enables nonprofits to manage donors, members, and fundraising campaigns. The solution’s fundraising tools make it simple to track relevant fundraising KPIs and make strategic adjustments as needed. Neon also has specialized tech consultants on hand to get your nonprofit set up with their solution.

Pricing: Neon’s pricing starts at $99 per month.

5. Little Green Light

Overview: Little Green Light offers donor management software that allows users to manage donors, volunteers, and members from one platform.

Top features: Their donor database tools include constituent profiles, goal-tracking for activities like major gift asks and grant proposals, and customizable reports.

Pricing: Little Green Light offers a 30-day free trial for new users who want to test the platform and determine whether it’s right for them.

6. Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT

Overview: Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT is a donor management platform that prioritizes high ROI for its users.

Top features: Raiser’s Edge NXT offers AI-powered suggested donation amounts, end-to-end gift management, and prospective donor insights to unveil hidden fundraising potential within your donor group.

Pricing: Request a quote on the Blackbaud website.

7. DonorPerfect

Overview: DonorPerfect’s donor database helps nonprofit professionals save time, raise more, and connect with their supporters on a deeper level.

Top features: Their software is a fundraising hub for multiple campaign types, including annual appeals, crowdfunding, monthly giving, and more. The DonorPerfect platform is also customizable, so nonprofits can display the data and reports that are most relevant to their strategies.

Pricing: Request pricing on the DonorPerfect website.

How to budget for your donor database

Nonprofit budgeting is a necessary but sometimes complex step of the software buying process. Organizations often struggle to create a concrete budget because of the highly variable nature of donations, grants, and similar funding.

Let’s take a closer look at some budgeting considerations before you invest in your new platform.

Free donor database software

The challenges associated with budgeting can make it incredibly tempting to look into a “free” donor database. The temptation of free donor database solutions can be especially significant for nonprofits just getting started.

However, there are some pros and cons to consider before test-driving a solution that is advertised as free:

• Pros: The significant advantage of a free donor database solution is that it provides a trial version for your organization to use the tools without the risk of losing money. You can start at the free level of a scalable solution to see how you like it. However, you probably won’t stay at this free level due to limited features and capabilities. Check out the next payment tier and work that into your budget, as you’ll likely need to scale up relatively quickly.
• Cons: Donor database software that advertises itself as free frequently needs extensive customization, which can require outside help. Downgrading to Excel sheets or other “free” solutions may lack security, features, accessibility, and support.

When it comes to software, always think of free options as trials. You’ll still need to incorporate any costs associated with scaling up the solution into your final budget.

Steps to develop a donor database budget

The first thing your organization will need to do is determine its current financial situation. You can do this by analyzing its balance sheet. Ensure it’s financially stable before deciding to make a long-term investment like that for donor database software.

After determining your nonprofit’s current financial standing, you should find the actual cost of a new software solution. The true cost of the solution will include all of the following:

• The monthly or annual fee for software access
• Any implementation costs
• Training costs for your staff members
• Consultation costs
• Installation costs for solutions hosted on-premise rather than cloud-based

Once you’ve determined your solution’s actual costs, you can work them into your nonprofit’s annual budget.

Tips to make the most of your donor database

After investing in a donor database system, you want to do everything possible to make the most of the system and achieve a high ROI. We’ve compiled a list of top tips to ensure you’re using your donor database software to the fullest extent possible: