Why you need to integrate payments with your CRM

Peter van der Meij
February 6, 2023

Integrating payments in your CRM is a great way to streamline your fundraising processes and improve the customer experience. It offers organisations the possibility to gain a better understanding of their donors, enhance the accuracy of their data, and save time and resources by automating repetitive tasks.

Your CRM is the main system of record of donor, customer, and volunteer information for your organisation, but it can do so much more. Aside from storing information about who your donors are, what their status is and keeping track of communication, it can also store payment information. So not only seeing how much your supporters donated but also measuring your progress, setting or adjusting new goals, and having this information readily available for every department in your organisation. 

From gaining a better understanding of your donors to saving time and resources, payments in CRM can have a massive impact on your organization’s success. So, let’s take a look 👇

Getting access to in-depth donor insight

In-depth donor insight gives organisations a detailed understanding of the behaviour, preferences, and patterns of their donors. This includes information about their donation history, demographics, communication preferences, and more.

Gaining this insight allows you to better understand your donors and tailor your fundraising efforts to their specific needs and preferences. By understanding how much donors are willing to give based on their historical data, generation, etc., you can make more informed decisions about how to best engage with them and increase the likelihood of successful donations.

With a CRM system with payments integration(such as Salesforce and FinDock), you should be able to easily track and analyze donor data (such as donation histories) and use this information to personalize your communication and connect with them in a more meaningful way. Additionally, by integrating your payment system with your CRM, you can automate the donation process, making it easier for donors to give and providing you with more accurate and up-to-date donor data.

image of a FinDock x Salesforce dashboard showing why payment integrations are important for a CRM

Improving data quality across the organisation

According to recent Salesforce research, 75% of nonprofits use data to design more programs and campaigns, with 58% using it to forecast income and 73% using it to make decisions. This highlights the importance of data in the nonprofit sector and how it can be used to drive organisational success.

46% of nonprofits report that having accurate data made available to all facilitates remote and onsite collaboration between team members. With the certainty that everybody is looking at the same data and the knowledge that information is accurate and recent facilitates communication for 45% of nonprofits. This also lowers the need to be in the same physical location all the time, encouraging 33% of nonprofits to move towards a more online or remote working model in the next 12 months.

This highlights the importance of timely & accurate data in the nonprofit sector and how it can be used to drive organizational success. By using CRM payment data to design more programs and campaigns, forecast income, make decisions, work and collaborate remotely, communicate with teams, and move more to an online or remote working model, nonprofits can improve their effectiveness and efficiency across the entire organisation.

Saving time and resources through automations

Automations are powerful tools that can help nonprofit organizations save time and resources by reducing manual work and enabling employees to focus on what matters most. By automating repetitive tasks, such as data entry and scheduling, employees can spend more time on high-value tasks – relationship building and program development. This leads to happier, more engaged, and more productive employees who are better equipped to serve the communities they support.

Recent research shows that Salesforce technology increases nonprofit employee engagement by 25% on average, including communication and collaboration. This is because you can automate many manual processes that can be time-consuming and frustrating for employees, such as data entry and reporting. 

FinDock streamlines donor experiences by enabling personalized journeys and automated thank-you emails based on custom flows, reducing human errors and manual workload. 

At the same time, payments from multiple sources can be automatically reconciled, missed payments recovered, and direct debit runs automated for increased efficiency.

image of flow setup with FinDock in Salesforce

By integrating payments with a CRM system, nonprofits can automate the donation process, making it easier for donors to give and providing more accurate and up-to-date donor data. Using in-depth donor insight enables nonprofits to better understand their donors and tailor their fundraising efforts to their specific needs and preferences. 

Additionally, utilizing data can improve your organisation’s overall effectiveness and efficiency by allowing you to design more programs and campaigns, forecast income, make decisions, work and collaborate remotely and move more to an online or remote working model. 

Want to know more about what your CRM can do with payment integrations? Then get in touch!