Managing donations is an important part of nonprofit fundraising. Your donation data will provide insights into donors' giving abilities as well as make handling finances and accounting easy for your organization. Choose from our list of top donation management software options and start elevating your nonprofit growth today!
Are you tired of spreadsheets that don’t work? it’s time for an upgrade to manage and track donations to your nonprofit!
This article will walk you through nine great donation management software choices – and the best part is, they’re all free.
Use this list to choose the best software to upgrade your nonprofit from the stone age of spreadsheets into the dazzling world of automated, easy-to-use, and effective donation management software.
Let’s go!
Donation management (also called donor management or donation tracking) is the process of organizing and tracking any and all donations that your organization receives.
Essentially, donation management software allows you to keep up with information that will help grow your nonprofit and improve your relationships with donors.
For example, Donorbox helps you securely and effectively collect, store, and manage donor and donation data. You can segment these records for better outreach success and pull necessary reports to keep track of your fundraising. You can also integrate with leading CRM tools to supercharge your donor management.
Keeping all donor and donation information stored in a secure, easy-to-access place is of vital importance to your nonprofit for a few reasons.
If your donors need reminders (and government-compliant tax receipts) about how much they’ve given, when they gave, and how much of their donation was tax-deductible, you need to be able to provide that information.
When you’re getting ready to reach out to donors to ask for repeat donations, it’s critical to know more about the last time they were solicited.
Understanding how much they gave in the past can also help you personalize your appeals with a suggested donation amount that makes sense for that donor. For example, if they gave $25 last time, you might ask for $35 next time – a subtle upgrade that’s still reasonable given their prior gift amount.
Also, segmenting your donors improves the personalization of your outreach. You can segment by giving amount, type of gift, campaign, and more to understand what your donors are interested in and how they prefer to give.
On Donorbox, you can easily apply filters to segment all donation and donor data. This helps you create donor groups for more effective solicitation.
Do most of your donors give online? Do they prefer to give at events?
If you can review the donation data you’ve gathered for trends, you can plan your next campaign with solid strategies in place.
Understanding giving preferences is a crucial part of preparing for your next campaign. Choose software that will help you add offline donations and donors so you can track this information in one place. With Donorbox, you’ll have all this information at hand whenever you need it!
Donorbox has comprehensive, easy-to-use tools to help you manage each step of the donation process.
With attractive, branded donation forms that pull in more donations for your organization to powerful donor and donation management tools, Donorbox helps you smash your loftiest fundraising goals.
Donorbox also integrates seamlessly with leading CRM tools such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Blackbaud RE NXT, and thousands of other apps through Zapier. These integrations ensure easy sync-up of the donor, donation, and campaign data between two platforms. Learn more about these integrations here.
Explore all Donorbox features on the website.
Sign up for free and start using all the features of Donorbox including donor and donation management. Donorbox has a platform fee of 1.75% in addition to payment processing fees. However, you can give donors the option to cover these fees so their entire donation goes toward your cause. Integrations have additional fees as all. Learn all about Donorbox pricing here.
Nonprofits, churches, PTAs, universities, charities, political and art-based organizations, and more.
Donorbox is suitable for any organization – of any size – and individuals looking to fundraise and manage donor data. The features are highly user-friendly for all!
Funraise offers a suite of donation management and fundraising tools to help you track important information.
Funraise offers a Light, Standard, and Premium plan. They don’t list the pricing for any of their plans; contact sales for more pricing information.
Nonprofits of any size looking to get a handle on their donation management.
Givebutter’s donation management tools come with several helpful perks and integrations. Like others on this list, this too is a fundraising tool with donation and donor management included for better fundraising efficiency.
Givebutter offers free fundraising as long as you enable their “tips” feature, which allows donors to tip Givebutter when they donate to your organization. If you disable this feature, you’ll be charged the following platform fees:
Small to medium nonprofits who are just starting out with donation management.
Snowball Fundraising provides strong analytical tools to help nonprofits reach their fundraising goals and manage donations.
They do have a free plan that includes processing fees of 2.9% + $0.30. But most of their advanced tools are available under their paid plans starting at $549/year.
Smaller nonprofits that want powerful online tools to track their fundraising progress.
We didn’t want to leave our churches out! Although many of the other software choices on this list would work great for churches, Tithe.ly offers tools crafted specifically for churches to streamline their tithing and donor information gathering.
Tithe.ly offers a free plan with transaction fees starting at 2.9% + $0.30 and the ability for donors to cover fees. Add-ons and advanced features require additional plans starting at $19/month.
Churches of any size that want to grow their church through valuable insights about their tithing.
GivingFuel provides solid tools to collect, organize, and export donations and donor information.
Their starter plan is available for free with a 2% transaction fee. Their advanced plans offer 3 months of free trial. After that, their plans start at $59/month.
Nonprofits of any size that need a simple tool to collect and organize donor information.
Anedot offers some basic donation management features to help you get the most out of accepting donations.
You can get started for free. Processing fees of 3%-3.3% + $0.30 will apply for card payments.
Smaller nonprofits looking for an upgrade from spreadsheets to a more basic donation management tool.
RallyUp provides solid fundraising tools and some great donation management options to personalize donor outreach.
You can get started with fundraising for free with a 0% platform fee with donor tipping. The free plan includes donor profiles. For more functionality, the Unlimited plan has a 7.5% platform fee and the Custom plan is priced based on volume.
Midsize nonprofits looking for some additional donation management functionality without breaking the bank.
Donately offers fundraising tools for any size nonprofit to manage donations with ease.
Their free plan comes with a 4% platform fee. The paid plans start at $15/month with a 3.5% platform fee.
Nonprofits that need basic donor and donation management to understand their donor data.
Bonus Resource: Watch this webinar to learn about using donor segmentation as a key strategy for creating personalized and enhanced donor engagement as well as launching more effective email campaigns.
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We’ve presented you with nine of the best free donation management software options currently on the market. These tools all have one important goal: to make your life as a nonprofit fundraiser easier.
No more grumbling over spreadsheets and old-school donation management! It’s time to move into the future with streamlined tools and fascinating data that can help you sharpen your fundraising strategy.
Learn more about managing donors and donations on our Nonprofit Blog. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the best Donorbox resources in your inbox every month!
Along with helping you manage your donations, Donorbox also boosts your fundraising with powerful features like Recurring Donations, Text-to-Give, Crowdfunding, Peer-to-Peer, QuickDonate™, Events, Memberships, and more. Sign up for free to get started now!
Lindsey spent years wearing many hats in the nonprofit world. Whether she was helping arts nonprofits with their messaging and content, planning a fundraising gala, writing an NEA grant proposal, or running a membership program with over 400 members, she learned how to navigate – and appreciate! – the fast-paced world of fundraising. Now, she loves sharing those hard-earned lessons with the Donorbox community.
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Lindsey Baker Bower