Technology can transform charities by streamlining processes, connecting with donors and ultimately driving your organisation’s impact. However, not all charities are fully utilising technology to its full potential. In fact, many are making common errors that not only squander time and money but also prevent them from meeting their targets. The good news? Fortunately, the majority of these tech disasters can be rectified using the proper charity CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool.
What seven tech errors your UK charity could be making—and how a CRM can help save the day.
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Embarrassed by Spreadsheet Madness: Worse Than It’s Worth
For many charity workers, spreadsheets are the preferred tool due to their affordability, accessibility, and ease of use for small projects. But when you need to scale, or deal with complicated data such as donor lists, event registrations and volunteer schedules, spreadsheets quickly transform from a resource to a bottleneck.
This is what spreadsheets tend to do poorly:
Error-Prone Data:
When you do data entry by hand, you are doomed. If you delete one donation and get it the wrong way, you’ll completely screw up your donor list or spend hours searching for the issue. Duplicate information can even enter, so it’s impossible to really get a true sense of your number of followers.
Time-Consuming Updates:
Manually updating spreadsheets consumes precious time—time that could be spent on interacting with donors or running campaigns. And when you’re collaborating on multiple spreadsheets, the chances of confusion increase with every passing second.
Limited Collaboration:
If you’re going to share spreadsheets with a team, things can get messy if you have more than one person updating them. Version control is a headache, and you’re always at risk of someone accidentally erasing data.
No Big-Picture Insights:
Excel spreadsheets are great for archiving raw data, but they’re not equipped with the kind of dynamic analytics or reports you need to make decisions. Keeping up with donor statistics, campaign success rates, or volunteer engagement means manually updating and doing math every time, which is not exactly efficient.
How a CRM Fixes It:
A charity CRM helps you bypass these hurdles by storing all of your information in a single safe place. CRMs eliminate duplicates — unlike spreadsheets — they also log in real time, so multiple people can work together. For example: Rather than synchronize donor records by hand, a CRM automatically maintains donations, communications history, and attendance.
Inbuilt reports enable you to create visual dashboards to display donor retention or fundraising or volunteer hours on a screen.
Role-based permissions mean only trusted employees can see data, ensuring your data stays private.
Essentially, a CRM replaces messy manual spreadsheets with a user-friendly tool that saves you time, eliminates mistakes, and gives you useful insights. How you ever lived without it will blow your mind.
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One-Size-Fits-All Donor Messaging
If you’re emailing your entire mailing list the same thing, you’re not taking full advantage of an incredible platform for getting to know your advocates. Donors want to feel valued and appreciated, not relegated to the bottom of a list.
How a CRM Can Solve It:
With a CRM, you can categorise your donors based on past giving, interests, and engagement levels. You can then personalise your messages to each group, like saying thank you to long-term donors with a note or asking attendees at an event to sign up for ongoing donations. A tailored message is far more likely to inspire interest and donations.
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Ignoring Gift Aid Opportunities
Gift Aid makes giving to UK charities very easy, providing 25p per £1 of a charity’s donations for the eligible taxpayer. And yet, unfortunately, most charities won’t give Gift Aid to any donation that they can get their hands on, simply because they aren’t in a position to monitor and collect it.
What a CRM Can Help:
The best UK charity CRMs are built to plug into Gift Aid software so you can easily follow up on your taxable donations and prepare HMRC claims. Some even automate the entire process, so that no donation goes unused. It’s money you can use for your cause without wasting a single effort.
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Disconnected Tools and Systems
Are you using one platform for email marketing, another for event management, and yet another for finances? Without these systems communicating with each other, you’re likely spending time manually moving data between them—and making mistakes along the way.
How CRM Can Save the Day:
A contemporary CRM functions as your organisation’s hub, working in concert with Mailchimp, Eventbrite, and charity accounting systems such as Xero. This allows your data to move seamlessly from one system to the next, so you don’t have to waste time or worry about getting things wrong. Donor records from an online fundraiser, for instance, will be synced to your accounting platform automatically to facilitate reconciliation.
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Away From Data Security and GDPR Compliance?
From donor credit card info to testimonials from the recipients, charities are inundated with sensitive information. Some charities, however, fail to address data security, which can put charities at risk. Even worse, they might not fully meet GDPR standards, resulting in heavy fines and eroded trust.
What a CRM Can Fix:
A charity CRM incorporates security features such as encryption, password protection, and audit trails. They enable you to meet GDPR standards by storing personal data safely, making it accessible only to authorised staff, and keeping a clear track of what data is used.
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Overcomplicating Volunteer Management
Volunteers are the core of many UK charities, but keeping them well managed is a huge headache. If you’re using spreadsheets, emails, and phone calls to coordinate shifts, availability and projects, it’s all too easy to get lost in the details.
Here’s where traditional volunteer management falls short:
Scattered Information:
Volunteer information, such as availability, roles, and contact details, are all distributed between multiple folders or inboxes. This makes it difficult to get a clear sense of who’s doing what and when.
Communication Bottlenecks:
Coordination via emails or team chats can lead to lost messages, delays, and stress. We can also easily forget to note vital information, such as what volunteers have signed up for an event or received the training required.
Difficulty Matching Skills to Roles:
Volunteers have so many different talents and interests that, without centralisation, it’s hard to place them in the places where they could have the biggest impact. It can leave underutilised talent or volunteers feeling detached from your cause.
How a CRM Fixes It:
A charity CRM helps you organise, track, and manage your volunteers in an effective manner by streamlining every step. Here’s how:
Centralised Volunteer Profiles: Hold all volunteer information in one place, including contact information, expertise, passions, openness, and previous participation. This lets you quickly discover the right person for the job.
Scheduling and Shift Management: Most CRMs have built-in shift management features that allow you to set shifts, monitor attendance, and generate automatic reminders. Volunteers can even sign in to see their schedule or update their availability, saving you time with emails.
Task Matching: Some CRMs let you assign volunteers based on expertise or certification, which makes it simple to fill positions based on expertise. You might, for instance, make sure to have first-aid-certified volunteers on hand for events, or assign graphic design to a volunteer who is creative.
Volunteer Recognition: The secret to retention is to acknowledge and reward volunteers. CRMs can recognize milestones such as hours worked or events attended, so you can tailor thank-you notes or even include them in a volunteer spotlight.
Improved Communication: A CRM allows you to segment your volunteers and notify them in certain ways, whether it is an update for the whole group or a reminder for volunteers on specific events. Automated email and SMS reminders ensure that no one forgets any important information.
Through reducing the admin burden of volunteers, CRM saves time as well as improves the volunteer experience. Organised, well-informed, and appreciated volunteers are much more likely to remain loyal to your charity, resulting in a better and more cohesive group.
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Running Blind Without Insights
If you don’t understand crucial metrics like retention rates, campaign performance, or event ROI, your charity won’t be able to compete effectively. Without data, you can’t tell what’s working and what’s not, and where to direct your resources.
How a CRM Can Fix It:
A CRM provides you with reports and analytics that can enable you to visualise how your charity is doing. Do you want to know which fundraising events generated the most contributions? Or which donors are most likely to switch to recurring giving? You can easily access these through your CRM, facilitating data-driven decision-making.
How To Steer Clear Of These Technology Scrambles.
The first step to addressing these recurring issues is admitting that your current systems aren’t optimal. It’s scary to make a change, but the returns on your CRM are worth the effort. By automating, consolidating data, and delivering actionable insights, CRM will give you more time to get back to what matters: changing lives.
Choosing the Right CRM for Your Cause.
Before selecting the right charity CRM for your organisation, look at these features:
- Compatible with Gift Aid Software and fundraising platforms.
- Integration with charity accounting systems such as Xero.
- High-quality data protection and GDPR compliance tools.
- Easy-to-use reporting and analytics features.
- Variations based on your preferences.
Conclusion
Technology shouldn’t make your charity’s job more difficult; it should make it easier. If you’ve committed one of these seven tech woes, don’t freak out; it’s not uncommon. You’ll be able to automate your workflow, maximise donor engagement, and recover lost time and effort from technology woes by using the right CRM. So, embrace the opportunity to transform your workflow with a CRM. Your donors, volunteers, and staff will appreciate it.
