Importance of Automation for Nonprofits: How GiveSmart Can Help

Nonprofit staff have too much on their plates. Event planning, programming cuts, staffing concerns— juggling numbers and data shouldn’t be an overwhelming portion.  

Mulling through manual processes and deciphering partial data from multiple sources is inefficient and inaccurate. It’s also a waste of time and money. Don’t leave funds on the table because you can’t garner actionable insights to best support your donor stewardship strategy or fundraiser improvements.  

Data Silos Create Problems

Having one source of truth for donor and transaction data is a key element to success. Yet, having ticketing in one place, auction in another system, and your paddle raise in another solution is not uncommon for nonprofits. It is also a risky practice.  

The manual effort it takes for someone to merge different reports and spreadsheets from your events is problematic. The more places your team has to pull data from and the more spreadsheet templates and manual manipulation required begets errors and inaccuracies. It is also a colossal waste of time.  

Your board, committees, team, and donors require a clean, accurate view of reporting, fundraising outcomes, and event results. Eliminating data silos by implementing automation builds trust with your stakeholders, leading to stronger, dependable support from them. 

Automation

Save Time

Cumbersome, manual processes eat up more time than you think, and they create an immense amount of frustration. Nearly nine in 10 employees report that they are burdened with mundane, repetitive tasks.²  

Many employees also share that they are wasting one to two days a week on data management and other repetitive tasks.³ Your organization hired qualified, smart development, events, and fundraising staff. Why are you allocating their time to manual work, double-checking that work, and fixing the likely human errors within that work? 

The less time you waste on error-prone, manual tasks, the more time your qualified fundraising staff can raise funds and steward donors, bringing in more revenue. Automating data flow and reporting is better for your team and donors.  

Saves Money

As automation typically involves consolidating tools, you’ll save money, too. Using fewer tools to accomplish your goals saves you on your bottom line. The automation you gain from consolidating technology and tools will enable your organization to better access actionable insights, setting your mission for long-term success. 

Automated data flows also give you more up-to-date information on your donors and fundraising progress to goal. Those current insights drive real-time donor stewardship and prospecting so that your campaigns and events can be as successful as they can be. 

Create Efficiency and Success with One Solution

Nonprofit professionals agree; they WANT a single solution that meets all of their needs. Consolidating all of your activities —creating events, hosting auctions, managing ticketing, launching peer-to-peer, sending text communications to supporters, sending donor thank you letters, and more—with one vendor makes contracting and payments easier for your organization. It also saves you money, while enabling your team to raise more.  

When evaluating tools, there are a few things you should look for in any potential vendor: 

• Do they have all of their tools in one system, or do you have to contract with third-party vendors to accomplish your goals? A tool that offers single sign-on allows you to log in once and remember one password.  
• Do they upcharge you to do more? Flexibility on tools available means being able to make your fundraising campaign stand out with unique aspects, like adding an auction to a peer-to-peer campaign.  
• How does your fundraising and donor data sync with your CRM? Seeing data in your donor management system automatically updated daily means you can thank them quicker, improving your donor retention rate.  
• Are there limits on how many fundraising events and campaigns you can host? Unlimited access to fundraising campaigns and events of all kinds offers your organization the opportunity to do more and grow. 

Having automated, streamlined processes and tools that work together is critical to managing donor and transaction information effectively, freeing up staff time to act on insights from fundraisers and events. 

GiveSmart is committed to removing data silos and automating processes to save nonprofits time, money, and headaches.

Connect with a GiveSmart expert today. 

_¹ Momentive Software. “Adapting for Your Donors: Insights into the State of Fundraising and Technology.” 2022. https://www.givesmart.com/resource/2022-fundraising-research-study/  

² Inc, CAKE. com. (2017, September 1). How much time do we actually spend on recurring tasks?. Clockify. https://clockify.me/time-spent-on-recurring-tasks  

³ How much time are you wasting on manual, repetitive tasks?. Smartsheet. (n.d.). https://www.smartsheet.com/content-center/product-news/automation/workers-waste-quarter-work-week-manual-repetitive-tasks