Why Your Nonprofit Organization Needs Dynamics CRM

A nonprofit is a type of organization that works on a social cause rather than profits. They have limited budgets, and their goals often vary from that of commercial businesses.

To achieve them, they need to follow the footprints of profit-making businesses. Like them, they need to engage with people who will invest in their business for the long term. They could be clients, members, donors, etc.

If we talk about commercial businesses, they use intuitive, data-driven technologies like Dynamics CRM Portal to engage with customers. Even nonprofits can use Dynamics 365 customer portal to retain customers/donors. After all, businesses thrive from repeat customers more than new customers.

With Dynamics 365, nonprofits can balance out their in-house operations and external communication. They can carry out their work effectively while delivering excellent service and building healthy relationships with everyone involved.

From managing volunteers, donors, and clients to tracking donations, Dynamics CRM can help boost productivity and achieve their goals. To know more, keep reading!

This article covers all the reasons why you – a nonprofit organization must bring in a Dynamics CRM.

1. A Unified System

Running a nonprofit means handling charitable events, managing volunteers, tracking donations, and carrying out endless work, that too with work and data scattered across different platforms. It can be difficult to work efficiently if you don’t know about the operations and activities going around.

For example, you have a meeting with a client and also have to train volunteers for a particular work. You may mess up with the time or may not make up for one or the other task.

But, if you have a calendar to remind you of the meetings, you would know about your scheduled tasks and won’t allow the same time to another. Dynamics 365 Customer Portal has features that manage all the activities in one place. From contacts to meetings and reminders, it handles it all.

In fact, it syncs with the CRM, which means any change in the CRM or portal would automatically reflect on other platforms. Besides, every department can work on one platform and help maintain transparency in their work processes.

It would guarantee that no one misses out on anything. Also, it would help you manage your teams so that you can focus on attaining organizational goals. Up to that, it is compatible with all the Microsoft products. You can easily sync it with Microsoft Outlook and other systems.

2. Donation Tracking

By using Dynamics Customer Portal, you can streamline all the donations that your organization receives.

You can manage and track donations along with donor and campaign details. Everything from donation history, recurring donations, a list of campaigns and events, funds invested in particular campaigns/events, pledge accounts are accessible in one window.

The solution integrates with different ERP solutions, and transactional data can automatically sync with other systems. It also provides a receipt management module to provide donors with a donation receipt. The module also helps you track your donations inflow.

3. Donor & Member Management

 In order to perform effectively, nonprofits need to know where the contributions come in from. For this, they need to understand the donor’s behavior and where they’ve pledged.

Dynamics provide detailed information of the donor’s past donations and pledges to identify the missions or campaigns they might be willing to donate. It would provide you with a comprehensive view of the engagement that will further help you identify the campaigns that are effective and the ones that need more work. You can spot issues and resolve them.

As for member management, it provides details such as past relationships, subscriptions, invoices, or so. In addition to these, it has separate login windows where donors and members can manage their details, subscription, and even donate directly.

4. Volunteer Management

Volunteers are the backbone of nonprofits. They invest their time and efforts to bring a change. Hence, knowing their availability to ensure that their time and efforts are utilized properly is essential for non-profits.

Dynamics 365 can help you maintain and support your volunteers with timesheets, task scheduling, and profile management. For instance, they can share their time availability, and by using it, you can plan their tasks. The profile details can ensure that you assign the right volunteers to the right projects.

You can also integrate tools that help compliance the rules and regulations that volunteers need to follow. For example, in-time and out-time, working hours, etc. With the portal, volunteers can manage their volunteer tasks and other activities assigned to them. They can also update their profile details.

5. Fundraising Campaign & Event Management

Nonprofits organize campaigns and events to create awareness of the cause and attract donors. The campaigns are the strategy to raise funds. And Dynamics CRM can help you create a lasting impression by setting up registrations, assigning tasks, and managing activities and coverage.

The modules also allow you to provide donation forms, set real-time goal achievement targets, and more. You can create a group of donors to target for a campaign and engage with them.

If you are organizing events, you can manage registrations and even sync with Dynamics 365’s event management module that helps plan events. Everything from booking to managing sponsors and tracking attendees can be handled from one window.

6. Social Media Management

Social media is the digital platform to be vocal. It helps businesses – profit and nonprofit to create a huge customer base via engagement. Therefore, the solution enables you to share the campaigns and events on social media to generate more traction.

Dynamics 365 Customer Portal is flexible and also allows integrating social media management plugins. You can add plugins to derive insights into social media traction and analyze campaigns, impressions, and more.

7. Customization

No two nonprofits are the same. Similarly, not all customer portals are the same. The features vary according to the industry and the requirements.

Some nonprofits may only need portals to help board members manage their tasks. Others may need to build a community or so. Therefore, it is wise to go for a Dynamics CRM Customer Portal. The solution is flexible and allows customization according to your needs.

From fields to the dashboard, every portal user can customize it accordingly. If a donor doesn’t want to view their donation history on the dashboard, they can custom-hide it. Each and every individual using the portal can set their space according to their feel and look.

8. KnowledgeBase

Along with awareness, you need to build credibility and authenticity. It is possible only when you constantly share your work with the world.

It can be anything – campaign news, updates about the upcoming events, new laws and guidelines, blogs, articles, or press releases. Dynamics provide you with a knowledge base that your volunteers, members, donors, and others can access. The best thing is that along with articles, you can provide documents and guides to help volunteers and staff.

However, make sure that you update your work activities regularly. Fresh content will help attract donors too.

9. Dashboard & Reporting

In addition to all the modules, Dynamics 365 Customer Portal provides you a smart dashboard to analyze all the activities. You can view details such as – ongoing campaigns, funds raised, volunteers, customer activities, active donations, campaign updates, etc.

You can even view the details in graphical form and download it as pdf. Most importantly, you can access and view the organization’s insights from anywhere, anytime.

10. Automated Fund Transfer

 Transferring funds in cash can be risky, and the bank process can take time. Or sometimes, your customers might be planning to donate frequently. In that case, they mustn’t have to go through the ” add transaction details” process every time. It would be better if they can transfer funds with one click or, best if it is automatic.

So, Dynamics lets you enable automatic fund transfer for your customers when they choose their preferred payment gateway. It means your customers will be free of the transaction process.

At the scheduled time and date, the funds will automatically transfer to the nonprofit’s account. The automatic fund transfer is like Netflix’s subscription. It renews every month automatically. (wink)

11. Live Chat

It may happen that your donor has a specific query or might want to learn something. They may be looking for options to contact you. However, emails and phones may not look like the perfect option. Therein comes Dynamics to reduce the communication gap.

It provides a live chat feature using which customers/donors can directly chat with the staff without waiting for long. They can get their issues solved instantly.

12. Additional Features

Dynamics 365 Customer Portal provides secure login, unique profile creation, and calendar features to streamline nonprofits operations.

The secure login means giving separate access to volunteers, donors, and others based on their roles. With unique profiles, every portal user can track and manage their tasks and activities. And calendar features can help everyone to stay up-to-date with their tasks, meetings, and other schedules.

Conclusion

Dynamics CRM Customer Portal provides a holistic customer experience. It helps deliver exceptional service, productivity, and better donor relationships. It can make a significant impact on the nonprofit workflow.