The Power of Innovative Tech in an Evolving Fundraising Landscape

You may be expanding your supporter base to new generations of donors, pivoting to livestream fundraising, or trying to understand new payment options. Whatever the future of fundraising and engaging donors looks like for you, the essential question is how will you prepare for it now?

Today’s donors expect to be able to make payments using a method of their choice — whether that means using traditional cheques or payment slips, or using digital mobile payment methods. They also want to engage with the channel and experience they prefer. Nonprofits need to cater to these preferred experiences while also considering the payment options, processes, and regulations that exist in their local region.

We have seen how advancements in technology have made the payment experience simpler for the donor to engage, and for the nonprofit to process payments faster. For example, QR codes have resurfaced with great success due to the advancements and social adoption of mobile technology. At the same time, recent trends show a changing landscape in the banking and fintech sectors with significant innovation, like digital wallets, payment links, and open banking.

Over time, donor behaviours have changed from when individuals sent nonprofits a payment slip or cheque to support social causes, to nonprofits needing to provide an experience that makes individuals want to contribute via their preferred payment method for their local region. This changing behaviour has been further complicated for international nonprofits as they operate across borders, language barriers, and currencies. Ultimately, though, if you build the right experience, you will not only grow your donor base, but expand it.

One of the most recent examples of this has been Gaming for Good, where frictionless payment and streaming services have enabled a whole new generation of donors.

Many of these trends and opportunities in payments will come unexpectedly and, as such, many organisations are now seeking ways to be better prepared for future trends (and shocks) that have yet to come. Nonprofit Cloud has an extensive solution for Fundraising. As it is built on the Salesforce platform, it includes our ecosystem of integrated partner solutions and innovative apps that integrate easily with our solutions.

The largest benefit of this ecosystem is the power of choice and agility. Preferred payment methods for your existing donors might have shifted from payment slips and cheques to mobile payments — or they might not have yet. You might have increased your supporter base with a whole host of new donors that pay on mobile — or you might not have yet.

Either way, the Salesforce ecosystem offers you a solution that fits the needs of your community of supporters with partners that understand Nonprofit Cloud. The Salesforce AppExchange is a leading enterprise cloud marketplace with ready-to-install apps, solutions, and consultants that let you extend Nonprofit Cloud with proven apps localised for your region and access to experts that know your local challenges and how to overcome them.

All of these integrated fundraising technology providers are constantly innovating and providing options for offline or online, one-time or recurring payments, events, peer-to-peer fundraising, micro donations or crowdfunding, and more. Our partners are trusted providers that truly understand the needs of nonprofits and the local market requirements.

We also have payment partners (ISVs) specialized in the nonprofit sector — like FinDock and RaiseNow — across the globe.

In the last few years, your organisation may have shifted some processes from paper and spreadsheets to digital. Then the pandemic accelerated digitisation for many internal processes — but nowhere was that shift accelerated faster than in payments, where it was more than just a switch from paper to digital. It was a full transition to having payment technology embedded in every platform, making the process of an online payment much simpler for the donor.

This has led to a challenge many nonprofits still face today: managing multiple platforms, exporting data into different formats, reconciling nightmares between fundraising systems and payment service providers, and struggling with direct payment contracts or third-party payouts on different intervals.

Some nonprofits no longer deal with these challenges and have built their organisation to be more agile in adopting and testing new methods to grow their supporter base by trying new suppliers and services in the Salesforce ecosystem. Those organisations are already benefiting from the power of the ecosystem. Will your organisation be the next one?