The pandemic signalled a shift in fundraising activities as charities were hard hit in 2020 and 84% reported a decrease in their income. Fundraising software is designed to facilitate organisations and bolster their efforts helping them to bounce back better. Charities and Not for Profit (NFP) organisations have been greatly impacted by the ramifications of Covid-19. It has brought forward challenges for many charities that may continue over the long term. Data from the latest PBE Charity Tracker survey shows that only 54% of respondents expect events fundraising to return to pre-pandemic levels before the end of 2021. Moreover, policy change such as the reduction of the aid commitment from 0.7% to 0.5% of GNI translates into a reduction of the ODA budget by £4bn. Consequently UK-based aid charities that operate overseas will face funding cuts and be negatively impacted.
Charities must be agile and accordingly increase their financial resilience and monitor income levels, this will be vital going forward. Our fundraising software, Cloud Engage, can help. It’s a flexible, scalable platform that operates as a smart business tool that will deliver easy management and reporting for fundraising campaigns. It can measurably enhance your fundraising results and delivers the latest in technical functionality without the need for a prohibitive, upfront financial investment. The challenges charities will predominantly face are retention, financial transparency and security. It’s vital that fundraising organisation find methods to transform one-off contributors into supporters that are retained and regularly donate. Financial transparency is critical, as supporters need to be able to clearly see how their donations are being spent. Without data protection processes in place, organisations can risk severe reputational damage.
There are three ways our fundraising software can help you: Engagement, Fund Transparency and Safety.
Engagement
To ensure donors stay committed and involved it’s imperative that you have a good understanding of motivations, effective communications, and the tools to maximise opportunities. Cloud Engage can help by streamlining your communications strategy, its workflows manage standard communications such as thank you letters and emails, renewals and reminders or event booking acknowledgements to sustain positive relationships. To ensure you’re able to continue fundraising remotely, you need tools to attract current and potential supporters. Through Cloud Engage you can develop an online shop from the back office. As we move forward and recover from the pandemic, there will be a shift towards traditional fundraising streams. Cloud Engage helps you manage these much more effectively. You can add a wider range of events like challenges, dinners or awards to aid funding streams such as major donor memberships and other committed giving schemes. Agnes Paton, the Fundraising and Communications Manager at Hansel states ‘We wanted to understand the behaviours and motivations of those who support us, and to use that information to make our communications more relevant, while remaining GDPR compliant’.
Fund Transparency
Donors want to know their gift is being used wisely and internal stakeholders want visibility of their hard work. Cloud Engage offers the financial tools needed for transparent recording and processing. Gift Aid declarations can be captured in Cloud Engage, and claims run as a batch process. An output file that can be submitted online to HMRC is automatically created via the portal. Our solution further integrates with AFD Bankfinder during the creation of direct debits. The sort code and account number combination are validated and required bank details are auto-populated to ensure certified payments. Agnes adds ‘We needed to take a one-stop-shop approach to our fundraising and to be able to reliably forecast, and report on, all activities.’
Safety
Our Cloud application helps ensure donor information is safer than ever before. All data is stored securely in our Tier 3, ISO 27001 accredited UK data centres, to offer you the peace of mind that comes from knowing confidential data remains protected. Avoid reputational damage as our solution meets PCI compliance regulations, ensuring you can accept, store, process and transmit cardholder’s payment data while preventing fraud and data breaches. GDPR compliance is guaranteed through storing personal data on the Data Protection tab as Opt-in or Opt-out, by contact channel preference and with both ‘obtained’ and ‘valid to’ dates.
If you would like to find out more about how Cloud Engage can support you, click this link.
