Understanding your support base is one of the three foundations of a successful digital campaign. We talk about this strategy framework in a previous post.
The most effective fundraising is based on relationships. Understanding supporters is building relationships. It gives you insight into why they love your non-profit, what draws them in, and how to best rally and communicate with them.
So what tools are out there to help you understand your support base and capture that information? Here’s a run down of a few that we love:
Wufoo – Wufoo is the easiest to use survey tool out there. It quickly lets you create surveys and view reports. You can also have secure surveys that support payments too. There is a free plan that is more than enough to help you get started, and highly affordable pay plans that unlock useful features too.
MailChimp – MailChimp is an email newsletter sending tool. It allows you to easily design email newsletters through their design interface or you can code up one of your own. They also have a generous free plan that is more than enough to help you get started.
SalesForce or Highrise – These two are the best contact trackers that can help you keep track of donors and supporters. Highrise is light-weight, and will fit the needs of most organizations starting out. SalesForce is build for growth. Both of these two tools have free plans too.
There are lots of great tools out there, but the one thing we love about these three is that they all integrate together. For example, data that is collected from Wufoo can be automatically pushed into MailChimp and Highrise/SalesForce. It also works the other way around too — if you put in information into Highrise/SalesForce, that data can be found in your MailChimp email lists too.
These tools are free to get started with pay plans as you grow. For non-profits, it’s a risk-free to give these tools a shot.
