A CRM for Donor Management:
Optimizing the FUndraising Workflow
“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
Vision: A fundraising workflow optimized to improve communication with and cultivation of major donors
Audience: Executive director of a non-profit serving the Americas
Responsibilities: Needs Analysis, Research, Proposal, Design, Development, Evaluation
Tools Used: Monday.com
KPI: A 20% increase in donor giving
Problem
The current system to manage the fundraising workflow does not allow the Executive Director to document communication, track where donors are in the cultivation process or provide information about the giving history and habits of major donors.
Solution
A set of connected Monday.com boards and dashboard that allow the ED to manage communication in a streamlined workflow while maintaining easy access to pertinent donor information.
My Process
Needs Analysis
Via multiple conversations with the ED and independent research, I identified the following deliverables for the project:
A workflow that had built-in donor cultivation steps
Easy access to donors’ past giving habits and interests
Notifications that kept task owners on track with donor communication
A system for documenting all donor communication
Research
To familiarize myself with Monday.com and its features, I created a personal task list to manage project deadlines and dependencies, creating a Gantt chart. I added a timer to help keep track of effort spent on each project and to gather data for future projects. Next, I conducted research on Monday.com’s CRM templates and determined that their Fundraising CRM for Non-Profits would be a good fit.
Personal Task Workflow (Click image to view larger version)
Gantt Chart of Personal Tasks (Click image to view larger version)
Design & Development
To make the case for this design, I created a mock-up with donation data from major donors to a ‘Donations’ board. Below is a replica of the structure using dummy data.
Replica of Donations Board Using Dummy Data (Click image to view larger version)
Mirroring & Relationships
Replica of Donors Board Using Dummy Data
(Click image to view larger version)
I then mirrored and condensed donation data to roll-up to a ‘Donors’ board. Here, individual donors can be viewed along with their total donations, average donation and contact info. In addition, I created a relationship with the ‘Donations’ board so that information about individual donations (what fund, how much, etc.) was easily accessible. Potential donors (donors who had not donated yet) were grouped separately from active donors (donors who already had a giving history with the organization).
Replica of Task Board Using Dummy Data
(Click image to view larger version)
Fundraising workflow
Finally, I created a customized ‘Task’ board with the goal of providing the Executive Director with a clean, easy to use workflow that allowed them to track, document and monitor donor communications. Some of the features of this board were customized status labels, automated notifications of deadlines and an ‘Emails and Activities’ widget that allowed the owner to track and document communication between the owner and the individual donor. Additionally, a relationship between the ‘Task’ board and the ‘Donor’ board allowed the viewer to easily access donor information and their associated donations. A ‘nice to have’ feature that was requested by the executive director was a way to track donor interests in order to target fundraising communication and campaigns. Therefore, I added a hashtag column that could be used to highlight donors’ interest in specific initiatives or even connections between donors.
Tracking Communication
One of the challenges I faced while building this workflow was ensuring easy access to source data and donor giving histories while keeping the ‘Task’ board clean and clear. Based on the needs outlined at the beginning of the project, I knew that tracking communication and quick access to donor data were priorities. Leveraging the relationship column, the video to the right walks you through the solution I came up with. It demonstrates how communication with donors can be logged, updated and tracked simply by opening the task. In addition, the ‘Information’ widget allows viewers to easily access donor/donation information simply by clicking on the donor relationship tab.
Dashboards: Data At a Glance
To make the most of Monday.com and its features, I wanted to build a dashboard that would provide the Executive Director with a broad overview of major donor cultivation with relevant statistics and graphical representations of donation data.