Aligning Fundraising and Finance for Greater Mission Impact

In the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Trends Report, nonprofit leaders said economic uncertainty, inflation, and competition for funding were their top three external challenges.

Consequently, it is more important than ever to boost donor engagement, create efficiencies in the fundraising process, and gain clear visibility into fundraising within the context of your organization’s overall financial health.

Online nonprofit fundraising software should play a prominent role in your technology stack.

In the same report, nonprofit leaders acknowledged a ‘lack of process automation and organization efficiency’ and ‘manual, time-consuming reporting’ as top internal challenges, in spite of the fact that 85% of organizations use accounting software and 64% use nonprofit CRM software. So, what gives?

For the best results, nonprofits need both fundraising and accounting software, however, not just any solutions will do.

For maximum impact, both solutions should be cloud-based and designed expressly for nonprofits in order to provide real-time reporting, easier data sharing, and support cross-departmental collaboration.

In this article, we are pleased to introduce a new online nonprofit fundraising solution resulting from the collaboration of two leading nonprofit technology innovators—Sage and DonorPerfect.

We will also review how having a cohesive fundraising and financial management system can help your organization drive new levels of efficiency, visibility, collaboration, and impact.

Introducing Sage Intacct Fundraising powered by DonorPerfect

Sage Intacct Fundraising powered by DonorPerfect brings the best of fundraising and finance together. It empowers nonprofit leaders to leverage the operational synergies of the number one cloud fundraising solution and the number one nonprofit cloud accounting system.

With Sage Intacct Fundraising, nonprofit teams can:

• Spend more time focused on donors and less on data and reporting
• Trust the accuracy and completeness of your financial insight 
• Break down silos and align around common goals
• Quickly measure, report on, and optimize performance 
• Maximize your impact by raising 25% or more funding in your first year

Let’s dig deeper into the benefits delivered through the combination of Sage Intacct nonprofit accounting solution and Sage Intacct Fundraising.

Improve efficiency in processing gifts

At most nonprofits, the process for receiving gifts from donors includes too much manual data entry where mistakes can be made, and the process slows down. The process often looks like this:

• Step 1: The fundraiser receives a gift from a donor.
• Step 2: The gift is entered into the CRM system.
• Step 3: The check is copied, copies are filed, and reports are printed for finance.
• Step 4: Finance receives reports, then manually rekeys the data into the accounting system, breaking the audit trail.
• Step 5: Finance deposits funds.
• Step 6: Finance reconciles bank account information with the fundraising system, and it takes extra time to ensure check numbers, dollar amounts, and dates all match.
• Step 7: Finance team falls behind and potentially files the report to the board late.
• Step 8: Meanwhile, development begins to get external calls about how money is being spent.

Many parts of this process can be streamlined with better automation and integration. Connected systems are less painful to use and easier to reconcile.

When data flows across systems, fewer errors are made, and the finance team’s time is saved for more strategic tasks. Best of all, information gets shared for stronger collaboration between finance and development.

Sage Intacct Fundraising automates fundraising workflows from in-house payment processing to automatic assignments and staff alerts based on donor activities. This efficient gift process includes donation forms that automatically input data and workflows that initiate communications with donors.

Gain the visibility to unleash greater outcomes

By combining Contributions data from Sage Intacct Fundraising with Fundraising Expense data from Sage Intacct, you get a real-time view of Fundraising ROI. You can easily bring fundraising insights and financial results together in configurable, role-based dashboards and pre-built reports.

Over 70 fundraising reports and hundreds of accounting reports provide the information you need to make smart, data-driven decisions for your mission. Plus, advanced segmentation capabilities enable decision-makers to dive deeper into reports that break down donations by giving level, campaign type, or any criteria you set.

Cultivate donor relationships and increase engagement

Develop more impactful—and ultimately successful—fundraising campaigns with the donor engagement tools within Sage Intacct Fundraising.

Features like advanced donor segmentation capabilities and personalized communication help improve donor engagement and increase donor retention rates.

Analyze who supports your organization and why they give, so you can communicate more effectively with each donor.

Create personalized messages (including thank-you notes) and regular impact and program updates to keep donors involved and aware.

Intuitive, no-code email management with list segmentation enables you to create targeted outreach campaigns designed to maximize giving from different types of donors.

Boost your fundraising efforts and maximize impact

Engagement tracking features will help you understand exactly which communications land, and which miss the mark, so you can strengthen your fundraising messages and tactics over time.

Once you dial in your fundraising campaigns, you will be able to predict how much money each campaign will bring in with greater accuracy.

These insights will help you allocate the right amount of budget to fundraising efforts, so you can expand funding and drive mission impact to the next level.

Meanwhile, Sage Intacct financial management supports fund accounting, enabling nonprofits to accurately track and report on restricted funds designated for specific purposes.

Outcome metrics tracked by Sage Intacct help you demonstrate the impact your organization makes with each dollar of funding, helping you tell your mission story with clarity and accountability.

All of this helps ensure donors remain engaged with your mission and ensures continuity of funding.

Final thoughts

How much could your organization accelerate mission impact with additional funding?

With connected, cloud-based nonprofit fundraising software and financial management software, organizations can increase efficiency and reduce time to insights.  empowering executives to react more quickly and make more informed decisions.

By streamlining fundraising workflows, Sage Intacct Fundraising helps nonprofits leverage automation to cultivate donor relationships and improve donor engagement and retention.

It helps nonprofit professionals make rapid, smart decisions, based on up-to-date fundraising data and a deeper understanding of donor segments.

It also enables better refinement of donor messaging and campaigns, helping nonprofits achieve higher fundraising potential, and ultimately, expand their impact.

Visit our website to find out more about what Sage Intacct Fundraising powered by DonorPerfect can do for your organization’s fundraising efficiency, collaboration, and impact.