How many fundraising platforms does your nonprofit really need?

Online fundraising platforms are crucial to your success as a nonprofit. So how many do you really need?

We get it – fundraising is tough. Not only is it difficult to capture your donors attention, but it can be equally difficult managing multiple fundraising platforms at the same time.

As an organization grows, many find themselves adding new tools instead of replacing them. Until one day, your fundraising portfolio seems larger than necessary. And then, you’re wondering who is managing all of this technology and how much time is it taking away from your primary passion — your cause.

As our team thinks deeply about what nonprofits need to work efficiently, at times we’re still left wondering: How many fundraising platforms does your nonprofit really need?

Let’s start simple. First, let’s review fundraising platform basics. Then we’ll dive into how finding one centralized platform to manage multiple functions can help your organization stay focused on its cause.

Table of Contents

  1. What is a Fundraising Platform?
  2. Accepting Credit Cards and Cryptocurrency
  3. Creating Multiple Donation Forms
  4. Using Funds and Designations
  5. Adding Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Campaigns
  6. Managing Your Donor Database
  7. Growing Nonprofits with Marketing and Analytics
  8. How many fundraising platforms do you need?

What is a fundraising platform?

Basically, a fundraising platform is what you use to run any fundraiser. It’s the system that allows you to accept donations, create multiple forms for various campaigns, manage donor information, and run reports.

As you know, an online fundraising platform is necessary for any nonprofit. Additionally, over the last few years, online fundraising has become more than a simple form to collect credit card numbers. An online fundraising platform has become the central place where donors interact with your nonprofit. Providing a robust suite of options can keep donors engaged for longer.

Let’s break down each of the key functions of what a fundraising platform should facilitate:

  1. Accept Credit Cards and Cryptocurrencies
  2. Add Multiple Donation Forms
  3. Manage Your Donor Database
  4. Use Campaigns, Funds, and Designations
  5. Host Peer-to-Peer Campaigns
  6. View Reports and Analytics

Given all of these functionalities, it’s possible that your nonprofit is using multiple online fundraising platforms. Let’s take a closer look at each of these tools and how they can be combined into one fundraising platform, rather than pieced together with multiple.

Accepting Credit Cards and Cryptocurrencies

Though you may remember a time when you primarily accepted payments in person or even (gasp) through the mail, online giving is now the norm. Fundraising forms use payment gateways to accept credit card donations. Even five years ago, you needed a merchant account with a bank to do this. Thankfully, accepting online donations now is a lot simpler.

GiveWP has over 15 payment gateways because we believe this is an essential component to any nonprofit organization. We continue to dedicate resources to developing integrations with payment gateways. For example, we’ve recently added support so GiveWP users are able to accept cryptocurrency donations!

The GiveWP payment gateway API is also easily accessible for developers to develop their own payment gateways with platforms we haven’t connected with yet.

With our new crypto donation payment gateway, your organization can accept cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, Dogecoin, and more. We’ve decided to add support for this feature as a new survey shows that a combination of millennial interest in supporting charities and investing in cryptocurrency has caused a rise in crypto donations to nonprofits.

No matter what kind of currency you plan to use to raise money, make sure your fundraising platform supports your preferred currencies and payment methods.

Creating Multiple Donation Forms

Most nonprofits have more than one online fundraising campaign. You might have a long-standing campaign for general purposes, and smaller, time-specific campaigns for various needs. For example, a youth camp may have various campaigns for building and maintenance costs, special projects, and a scholarship to fund a camper.

Each GiveWP free donation form is customizable to fit your cause.

As a nonprofit, you’ll need control over how many donation forms you can create. Not all fundraising platforms allow a ton of flexibility in that area. And not all fundraising platforms are created equally. When exploring fundraising platforms, a nonprofit can’t assume one platform will have all the features of another. Thankfully, with GiveWP, you can create as many donation forms as you like!

Additionally, the Per Form Gateway add-on allows you to customize which payment types are tied to which forms. The Per Form Gateway is a premium Add-on (included in all pricing plans) to allow your nonprofit to have full control on each donation form for how you’d like to accept payments.

For example, you don’t have to turn on or allow cryptocurrencies for every donation form if you don’t want to. You can create a donation form specifically for crypto donations instead. The choice is yours.

When you’re shopping for an online fundraising platform, make sure you can use the forms in the way you need to. Check their limitations, settings options, and available customizations.

Using Funds and Designations

Since you’re likely to have several campaigns running at once, you also may want to give donors an option to designate where they’d like their funds to go as well. For example, if your organization has local chapters, you could add different fund designations for each chapter. Not all fundraising platforms have this feature.

The GiveWP Donation Funds and Designations add-on allows you to create as many funds as you need. With “admin’s choice,” the funds designation happens after the donation, where money is funneled into a fund of your choosing. With “donor’s choice” enabled, donors choose a fund from a drop-down menu. This is just another way to give donors a sense of control and satisfaction over where their money is going.

Using funds in this way helps with reporting, too. So you can clearly see where your donors have made the most impact. It’s important to ensure you have this feature in your chosen fundraising platform.

Adding Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Campaigns

Peer-to-peer fundraising is an exceptional tool to increase your revenue long-term. It lets teams form to raise funds on behalf of your organization.

This is one place where fundraisers sometimes rely on a second (or third) fundraising platform. There are a variety of peer-to-peer fundraising websites available, but that means you have to add another platform to your strategy.

For example, Facebook is a largely popular platform to use for peer-to-peer fundraising. However, it’s usually best to keep these campaigns on your central platform as well.

With the GiveWP peer-to-peer add-on, you can add peer-to-peer fundraising directly into your existing fundraising platform.

The recent donations list shows the people who gave recently, followed by a display of top teams with a search field to look for other teams.

One benefit of using a fundraising platform with peer-to-peer is that it adds an element of gamification. Fundraising progress is displayed as goal bars for individuals, teams, and total raised. Top donors can be displayed, invoking a sense of competition. Team captains can also customize the color, image, name, and goal of the fundraiser without needing any other additional tools.

So, make sure your fundraising platform includes a robust peer-to-peer tool.

Managing Your Donor Database

Donor management is a key component to any fundraising platform. You should be able to understand who is giving to your campaigns and how often. A donor database allows you to dig deeper and create more meaningful donor relationships.

At a minimum, your donor database should be able to:

  • Know who your donors are and how to contact them
  • View how many donations each of your donors have made and
  • See their complete giving history

This information allows you to pinpoint donors to honor for their contributions, as well as find those who may need a bit of encouragement.

GiveWP’s Donor Database does all this, and more. Our donor database helps you understand donor habits with reports and customs filters, creates donation profiles with contact information and donation history, provides a donor wall to publicly thank your supporters, and allows donors to manage their own profiles.

Growing Nonprofits with Marketing and Analytics

As stated earlier, a growing organization typically brings on several new tools and programs to support its growth. This is especially true for marketing efforts, like blog posts and emails. How else can donors donate if they don’t know about your new project or need?

Marketing your nonprofit is essential to bring in new donors and maintain donor relationships. And, for proper marketing strategy, you need detailed analytics. How do your donors give? Where do they come from?

Make sure your chosen fundraising platform not only includes detailed fundraising reports, but also provides connections to the additional marketing tools you need to communicate with your donors.

How many fundraising platforms do you need?

Although nonprofits may have many demands, we think the answer to this question is simple: You only need one online fundraising platform.

GiveWP was built to be a centralized platform that takes care of all your fundraising needs. We want your donation page to be “more than a button.” It’s ideal for everyone who needs to accept donations online, whether you want to set up a donation page or build multiple online fundraising forms.

Everyone can download and install the free GiveWP donation plugin today. You can also take GiveWP add-ons for a spin with our demo. Try it out today and see how you can perform all the above functions in one rich, supported fundraising platform!

You can save money by strategically choosing your fundraising tools. What’s stopping you from replacing your mixed bag of fundraising tools with GiveWP?

Amplify your fundraising with a GiveWP Plan

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