As a small or new charity, you will need a place to store valuable contact information on your donors and potential donors. Larger organisations can spend thousands or even tens of thousands of pounds/dollars for databases that store, organise and retrieve thousands or even millions of contacts. Obviously when you are small, you neither need nor can afford such things. But what options are there for small organisations?
Paper – When I began as a fundraiser decades ago (don't even ask), there was a saying about your rolodex being golden. Back then you actually had a big round wheel or file box of business cards and contacts sitting on the corner of your desk. When you are just starting out, this might work alright for awhile; but once you have more than a few dozen contacts I recommend transferring all that information into one of the other options we will discuss. for more information visit https://www.infoodle.com/blog/charity-crm/
Email files – If you primarily use email as the means of contacting donors, then a well organised email contact book may be all you need. I admit I use this of my community garden club, since there are only a dozen or so members. There will be room, of course, for other contact information such as phone numbers and physical addresses. The difficulty with this option lies in data transfer once you have outgrown it. If an export option is featured, they can still be slow, inaccurate and troublesome.
Excel Spreadsheets – I have worked for an organization with income of almost a million pounds that still used spreadsheets for its donors. Worse yet, they had different spreadsheets for different types of donors. It was a total nightmare. If you are going to use spreadsheets, use ONE spreadsheet. Then either includes a column to indicate what income stream they belong to (corporate, trust or individual) or you can create different sheets within it for the different types of donors.
Outlook – Makes an excellent option for storing your contact information as it interfaces well with both email and Word for printing. I have organised an event from an Outlook database with over ten thousand contacts. It was surprisingly easy. This programme is usually bundled with other programs you will use such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but can be bought alone as well.
Access – If you have the computer skills or a volunteer that does, it can be customized to fit your organization. In fact, a majority of the 'official' databases for charities are actually still based upon this program, just customized. Just make sure you have the skills and knowledge to get extract and use the information you need...so get trained if you need to.
On-line databases – There are several on-line contact management systems that are rather affordable; between twenty and one-hundred pounds/dollars per month. They also offer the advantage of remote access and safety of data should something happen to your offices. I have used these and recommended them to small charities for which I consulted.
'Official' databases – There are dozens of options in the US and UK for charity specific databases. The official name is usually CRM systems: customer relationship management. A web search of the term will yield several options for you to consider, if you have both the need and the money. Generally speaking you can expect to invest several thousand pounds/dollars initially plus annual fees in the hundreds. So these are usually most appropriate for medium and large charities with thousands of contacts and money to purchase them. One of my jobs in the organization I complained used the spreadsheet was to research and pick a CRM system. It is a big decision.