 today we're talking about choosing the right CRM for your website, fundraising, and marketing. That's a lot that's going to be covered today. So I hope you got your paper and pen. Even if you don't, we are going to send you the video replay. So my name is Aretha Simons. I'm the webinar producer here. I'm going to go to the next slide and I'm going to show you how you can engage today. As I said, we're going to send you the video replay and the slides so you can get some more insights because I know many of you already said you're not using CRM or you may be using one, but not really using it at all. So I'm sure you're going to get a lot of tips today. If you learned something cool, go ahead and share it on all your social media and tag us at TechSoup. If you need the closed caption, go ahead and tap on the CC button at the bottom of your screen. And we would love to answer your questions at the end of this presentation. So put your questions in the Q&A section. I know a lot of people are going to be putting them in the chat, so we'll grab those out of the chat as well. And finally, before I turn it over to TAT Network, I want to tell you about Quad. I don't know how many of you, a member of Quad, if you are, go ahead and put it in the chat, say, I am, it's me. But with Quad, you can do so much more together. And when we say together, you have a peer-to-peer community, lots of exclusive events, and so much more in Quad. I'm going to put the link in the chat in just a moment. And hopefully I'll be seeing you on the other side of Quad. But I'm going to turn this over to some wonderful team members at TAT Network. Candice, I'm going to lead off with you. You guys have a great webinar. All right. Thanks, Sarita. Thanks everyone for joining us today. I'm Candice Munt. We're going to do some quick introductions because we're going to have a fun panel discussion. It's not just going to be me talking at you today. We're going to chat through some questions as we go. So I'm going to be your host today. I'm one of our senior account managers over here at TAP. And Jason. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jason Spangler. I'm our director of business development here at TAP Network. Some of you might have had the luxury to work with me, depending. I work with a lot of TechSoup members to help that are interested in our nonprofit, or nonprofit, in our digital marketing agency to help them identify ways that they could utilize our services to scale their operation. Hi, I'm Janelle. I'm the director of marketing operations here at TAP Network. I have about 10 years of CRM experience across all the different kinds of industries and client types. I oversee our nonprofit services and our education through our partnership with TechSoup. And I also oversee our CRM services and offerings. And as a panelist today, I will be really bringing in the experience of working with more of the mid to large sized nonprofits. Hey, everybody. My name is Zach Payton. I am the HubSpot Solutions Manager. I work with everybody else here at TAP Network. Like it says in my job title, work a lot with HubSpot as a CRM. So implementing this for smaller nonprofits, mid-sized nonprofits is not just implementing it, but helping with the migration process from whether they have a smaller CRM in the past, or no CRM in the past. So I'm kind of working from that beginning to end process with HubSpot as a CRM for nonprofits. All right. Thanks, everyone. And as mentioned, we're all really excited to start working with you today to go over these CRMs. So a quick overview of what we're going to be talking about. I'll do a little introduction of TAP Network just so you know who we are a little more about what we do. We're going to go into what a CRM is, and then we're going to compare a CRM to DMS. I saw a few people are strictly using DMS's in the comments. So we're excited to compare for you all. And then we'll dig into our eight-step system for choosing the right CRM for your organization. We'll talk a little more about our recommended CRM platform and then dig into the next steps. All right. So who is TAP? So we are a full-service digital agency, and we've been working with TechSoup for over eight years now. So over these years, we've provided lots of marketing thought leadership and expertise, not just to TechSoup but also to thousands of their members. And so we're excited to get on board today. And with that, we're a full-service digital marketing agency. So what that means is from branding to logo, web development, CRM implementation, ongoing support such as SEO, your ads, your social media, any strategy around that. We're a full-service digital marketing agency that specializes in these services that are designed specifically to help nonprofits grow. So what is a CRM, a constituent relationship management system? It's a full funnel tool that helps you grow your organization. So it includes a few things. It's the tools, the technologies, processes, and strategies that are going to help your organization manage, improve, and deploy all your interactions. That's regardless of the audience type. It's a single source where you store constituent records and then ultimately use those records to communicate with people and drive engagement further. And ultimately, it's a data-driven technology that can be leveraged to send mass communications, automate recurring processes, and track the success of your current campaigns. Whereas a DMS, it's a donation management system. It centralizes donor-specific interactions. It uses data targeted for targeted communication and relationship building with your existing donors and sponsors. It tracks your online fundraising campaign success and donor contributions and enhances fundraising efforts by optimizing donor engagement and contribution tracking. That's kind of a lot up front. So let's compare the two. So in comparing a CRM to DMS, there's a few key callouts that we want to make to show the differences. So ultimately, since we can see all the different touch points in a CRM, you can start interacting and engaging with your audience before they're ready to convert. So what that means is in a DMS system, you can only focus on the transaction after they've converted. The donation management system is just going to show this person donated, whereas the CRM is going to meet a person where they are in their life cycle and then focus on growing a person and converting them into a donor. So earlier, we kind of touched on CRM supporting a full funnel approach to growing support for your organization, regardless of what you do or what your mission is. This funnel here helps you visualize the four main points of nurture that a CRM has in place that allows you to grow. So first, you want to make the visitor aware of the problem you solve. From there, the visitor should be encouraged to support the cause. Next, they're going to decide that the problem is best solved with your organization. And then finally, the end goal is that they become donor, volunteer, or any other type of supporter that you're looking to achieve. So for example of that, so if we were to take a food pantry, let's take this full funnel approach and apply it to that organization. So the very first thing that they want to do is educate the visitor that's coming on the community that you serve, that the community you serve faces an insecurity in food. From there, the visitor can sign up for a newsletter, see the offerings you have, and then they're going to realize the impact you have, see the value you bring to solving food insecurity in the community. And then ultimately, they're going to donate or convert because they trust you to provide the community with the resources that they need. Whereas a DMS, which is solely transactional based. So the only point of the funnel that the DMS is positioned to support is the bottom. And so we all know that most people need to build trust over time before they're ready to convert. But with a DMS, all you can see is that final step in the funnel. And then manage the people who have converted, which is why we recommend the CRM versus the DMS. And this is just a call out. It's important to note that a platform is not a true CRM unless it encompasses more touch points than just the people that already exist in your system. So a side note being right now, if you search CRM for non-profit, you're actually going to start getting a lot of targeted ads for DMSes that are positioning themselves as CRMs. So a significant flag is that a true CRM should work with all your different touch points, whether it's social media, your emailing campaigns, event management, and not just solely focused on your volunteers and donors. And so now we're going to throw on a couple panel questions here. So Zach, what would you say are the biggest considerations non-profits should keep in mind when deciding between a DMS and a CRM? So like Candace said, just in these previous past slides, a donation management system is specifically designed to handle the financial transaction and track those donations. The CRM, on the other hand, is more broad and focuses on building and maintaining those relationships with your contacts. So to continue off that, DMS will typically at most have a thank you email feature, but that's about it. If your donation system is connected with a proper CRM, you'll be able to have automated emails, marketing campaigns, you can track interactions and their engagement history to tailor communication efforts, enhancing those donor relationships, ultimately turning those contacts into donors or volunteers or supporters of your non-profit. Additionally, a DMS may lack flexibility for customization. A CRM will typically offer more customization options, making it more adaptable to the evolving needs of the organization. So and this can be crucial as your non-profit expands its activities beyond simple, just simple donation processing. Thanks Zach. So now we're going to pop up, Aretha is going to pop up a quick poll on our screen here. I know she asked initially about CRMs that your organizations are using, but we would love you to fill out this poll on what is your organization currently using? Are you using a DMS, a CRM? Are you using both a DMS and a CRM or neither? I'm not sure that poll populated right, Aretha. Again? Yeah. It's a zoom thing. Maybe at some point. Yeah, maybe at some point we can get it to pop up during the presentation or you can just chime in over in the chat section. Sure, thanks. Thank you. Okay, question for you, Jason. What challenges do you see non-profit organizations facing that cause them to consider moving to CRM for the very first time? That's a good question, Candace. I mean, while non-profits grow at varying rates, causing a wide range of challenges, the most common issue I hear from most executive directors is that they've simply outgrown kind of their piece, mule, or patchwork system. And they're really looking for something that can help them effectively scale their operation into the future, kind of that next step. So this is typically a result of multiple factors, but some ones that probably resonate with our audience today are like fragmented data. I mean, non-profits typically, you know, have all this data scattered across multiple spreadsheets, email lists, databases, and that can make it extremely difficult to get a comprehensive view of your donors, your volunteers, and your program participants, which ultimately hinders your communication and your efforts, your engagement efforts. Some other ones are like manual processes, because we all rely on people, because we can get volunteering for free. So we typically create multiple manual processes, and that really creates an inability to scale there. They're not only time consuming, but they're also prone to errors and inconsistencies. And then both of those pieces, if you kind of use them together, they ultimately result in a lack of personalization. And I think that's one of those really big metrics that matters, because then you're not able to really tailor your messaging for your volunteers or specifically for donors, because donors don't want to hear about volunteering. They have money, not time, and vice versa. And your program participants, they're not there to donate, they need your services. So it's vital that you get the proper messaging in front of the proper target audience. And I'd say the last piece really is integration challenges. The whole thing is, yes, you need to create an entire platform that ultimately allows your operation to be successful. And if we're piece building things together, a lot of those things won't get linked. And so it makes it very hard to benchmark not only our success, but also our failures, so that we can learn and adjust. Yeah, definitely. That's great insight. And then Janelle, what challenges do you see nonprofit organizations facing that cause them considering to a new CRM when they already have an existing one in place? Yeah, so what Jason said, it's very similar, kind of like the themes throughout with data has been a biggest issue that we see. But a lot of times when we're working with nonprofits, they have existing CRMs, they're just not meeting their needs for one reason or another. We have really three top three challenges that would lead someone to consider a new CRM. The biggest one is that it's too technical. So if we think about this in terms of barrier of entry, we like to build these systems around like, who is the least technical person on your team who needs to be able to use this and making sure that you build a system that will allow them to enter in that information, right? So if you have a board member who's maybe not so technically, you know, up to speed, but they're the ones leading outreach for large sponsors. How do we set up systems that will allow all that information to automatically update in your CRM without needing to really like train them? A lot of times what we see is that you have someone on your team who has worked with CRMs in the past. They see it as a great solution for your organization. They get you built up on the CRM and then for one reason or another, they leave the organization and with them goes all the knowledge of how this thing works. And then organizations are left with this big expensive system that no one really knows what to do with. So that's really been our biggest kind of hurdle that we're looking to get over. Another big challenge we see is that it's not comprehensive enough or it has a limited ability to integrate with systems. So like to Jason's point, you're not seeing a full view of your data. So it might be working really, really well for donor management or volunteer management, but you're missing kind of everything that happens within that funnel that we showed. And the last thing is that it's not customizable enough. So a lot of these CRMs, they're built to be used out of the box, which means day one, you sign up, you get in there and their systems are already ready to use. And that's great if your nonprofit functions exactly the way that tool is built. But as we see, no two nonprofits are the same. You have unique needs, unique use cases. So having a CRM with the flexibility to build according to your systems will allow you to kind of keep with the same CRM for longer. That's great. Yeah, that's exactly it. And I'm seeing a lot of comments come through as you chat. People agree and we need simplicity. We need to make sure that it's easy for users to use as well. So as we all know, when choosing a CRM, there's so many options to choose from. And we know it's very overwhelming. And so what we wanted to do is actually take a step back and detail out an eight step process for you as an organization to consider when you're when you're choosing which CRM is right for you. And ultimately, when you look at the CRM that you're choosing, you want to consider it as a long term solution, not a short term fix. So you want to make sure you're choosing the right one as you're making a multiple month commitment. And you want to make sure that you get the CRM set up the right way that meets your needs the best that is easy to use works for all your users. And these steps are going to help ensure that you do that. So before I get started, because these eight steps, there's going to be a lot of content there. We actually created a nice eight step downloadable guide that you're going to be able to access after this presentation. And this is going to go over all the steps that we cover, as well as add in additional questions to ask yourself when you're at each point in the process. And the eight steps we're going to cover are going to help guide you through the decision making process. And I'm going to hand it over to Zach here to go over steps that one in two, and then I'll take it over from there. Awesome. Thanks, Candace. So the first step is going to be to conduct an evaluation of your nonprofit's needs. So this can be done by performing a gap analysis. So what a gap analysis is, is it involves the comparison of actual performance with the potential or the desired performance. So for any goals or issues that you need to tackle, you'll want to note the current state, you want to identify the gaps and then outline the desired future state for key aspects related to the situation at hand. So it's really like goal planning. With the first gap in the table here, you can see that there may be potential friction in the donation process on the website, which can lead to abandonment and ultimately those donations not coming through. So a solution to a complex donation process could be to implement a simpler donation process, perhaps a one click donation process connected to something like Apple Pay or PayPal, or other systems like that that can provide more of a seamless experience for your website visitors for your donors. Another example could be you're struggling to maintain these lasting relationships with your donors. If you identify that you have nothing but a simple thank you email going out to your donors, you may want to develop more of a strategy that can include personalized messaging updates on the impact that your nonprofit is having in the community, and then even continuing involvement opportunities for these donors. So that's step one. Step two in the step in the step process is to map your nonprofit's tech stack and data flow. So creating visual visualization of your nonprofit's tech stack and data flow is super valuable to visualize and understand all the different technologies and processes involved that are going to be relevant to your CRM. So like as you can see here in the example, you have the website at the top with all the different branches that represent each source of content or information coming into the website. So for example, the contact us form will connect will collect that initial contact information, which will then lead which can lead to the sending of educational emails, newsletters, and then to triggering workflows based on different segments that you've defined within your audience. It's like we were speaking on before, or like Jason was saying, a donor versus a volunteer versus somebody who's being impacted by your nonprofit, they're not going to want to see all the same information, right? So the CRM will handle that distribution of information. They'll detect who these people are, if it's a potential donor, if you've identified them as a potential volunteer, lead them through the process on your website in the proper method there. So as another example, a donation page on your website. So this can take care of transactions, it can trigger, then trigger a thank you email, which can then communicate essential information to your audience, leading to current and future cash flow opportunities for your nonprofit. And again, all this can be set up and connected to a CRM. All right, thanks Zach. And Jenelle and Jason, I have a panel question for you. What gaps do you most commonly see in nonprofit text stacks? I think a lot of it, I'll go first, Jenelle, if you don't mind. I think a lot of it comes down to integration challenges. And those are kind of, can be the result of lack of long-term planning. I think you should really be intentional with the integrations that you choose and spending a little bit more time to ensure that it's something that can evolve with your team. Maybe not for the, you know, to the end of the like of life, but something that can evolve at least over the next five years with you is far cheaper, even if it does require a little bit more upfront cost because you're not going to have to go back and rebuild the wheel. Many clients look at tools separately instead of as an entire ecosystem or platform. And so I think that's really important to recognize the key integrations you need to be able to accurately track people from that awareness stage, all the way down to people getting involved. Because that is ultimately how you are going to change and make and evolve your mission to be more successful. What are your thoughts? Definitely what Jason is saying. That's what we see, you know, nonprofits, you're all doing the right things. We're just missing the context of how that's working together to really drive your growth and drive your end goal. So what we end up with is a very like qualitative analysis of what's working instead of quantitative and the data to back it up. So if I'm working with a new nonprofit and I ask how are people finding you? How are they getting engaged? If you run fundraising, you might tell me that, oh, well, everyone finds us during GivingTuesday. So if we led with just that, we might spend ad dollars and put all this work into a GivingTuesday end of year giving campaign. But what we're missing is what happened all the months ahead of that. And if you have a CRM and you're able to see the people who gave on GivingTuesday actually joined our email list eight months, 12 months ahead of time, and we nurture them throughout the year so that when it was time to give for the end of year, they already knew who we were, then we know if we put ad dollars behind a GivingTuesday campaign, you're not going to see what you expect to get out of it. So if we have the data in place to know what that whole life cycle looks like, you're going to be able to spend more of your time and resources on the right things. A lot of nonprofits we work with, it's volunteer run or your executive director is wearing 10 different hats and you're not marketing communication people and what you do is you see other nonprofits who are doing things and those seem to be working well. So you feel very overwhelmed of like, oh, I need this, I need to start a TikTok account, I need to have a membership portal, but you really just need to see what is working and what's really those few things that we can do really well to grow and feel a little less overwhelmed knowing that you have the data to support the things that you should be focusing on. That's perfect. Okay, and then if we build on the insights that are gained from mapping your current tech stack and your data flow that we saw in step two, the next crucial phase is going to be identifying the essential features your nonprofit requires in the new CRM. So as you assess these essential features, consider categorizing them into two separate lists. So look at your must haves and your nice to haves. So the must have list should encompass critical functionalities that are non-negotiable for your operations. Additionally, know any essential features in your current system that need to be maintained in the new CRM if you're moving things over. This is going to ensure that you address any current challenges as well as anticipates future needs there. And some examples of need to have and nice to have questions that you can look at. I'm not going to dig into all of these because there's a lot here, but if you look at contact management, questions you can ask yourself are, does the CRM have robust tools for managing donor and supporter information? Does it have customizable fields to capture specific data relevant to your nonprofit? Or if we look at donation tracking, some questions you'll want to consider is, what seamless immigration do we need with fundraising tools, detailed tracking of donations, pledges, recurring contributions, etc. or communication tools? You want to seek a solid email marketing integration for a targeted outreach. And another thing to look for is automated communication workflows for donor engagement so you don't feel like you're constantly in there having to manually update things within your CRM. You know, and to go further, we can get into integration capabilities. User friendly interface, we like to highlight this because that's the thing is we want to make sure that whatever platform you choose is the easiest for the most users across the entirety of your organization. And other elements to consider are reporting and analytics, grants and proposal management, training and support, task and event management, you've got your social media and integration, volunteer management, member management, mobile accessibility, AI and automation. So as you can see, there's a lot of things to consider. And now that you're armed with the full understanding of your organization's requirement, you also have a clear outline of the essential features, you can move forward to step four, and that's to create a list of potential CRMs. This is going to lay the groundwork for a strategic decision making process, ultimately bringing you one step closer to implementing the CRM solution that's going to maximize your impact. And so during this phase, things that we like to call out is that you should delve into user reviews, look into recommendations to gain insights into real world world experiences that other nonprofits have had when using any sort of CRM. It's also important to look at vendor reputations to ensure that the selected CRM, that the providers are aligning with your nonprofit values and commitment to success. So as you see, we have five that are listed here. These are the ones that we have seen nonprofits use most commonly, but as you all know, there's definitely a lot more to choose from. So you just want to make sure that you're doing extensive research when determining which one to go with in the end. During step five, you're going to focus on the accessibility, assessing the usability of the potential CRM solutions for the nonprofit. So there's a few key aspects to consider when determining usability. The first is going to be user friendliness, and I know we've talked on this a couple of times, but it is a significant issue that a lot of nonprofits run into. Right now you're going to evaluate the intuitiveness and the accessibility for staff members with varying levels of technical expertise. And with that too, let's look at the ease of setup. How quickly and seamlessly can the CRM you selected implement your nonprofit operations? A streamlined setup is going to contribute to faster onboarding and obviously the swift realization of the benefits there. You want to make sure that you've evaluated the integration capabilities. So determining how well the CRM can harmonize with your existing technology infrastructure, you want to verify its capability, compatibility with other tools and systems crucial to your daily operations. And then what are the training resources? You want to make sure that you're assessing the availability of training materials, the workshops they provide, or any kind of additional support they have to empower your team in harnessing the CRM's full potential. I know up front at the beginning of the call, there are a lot of people that say we have XYZ CRM, but we're not using it because it's too complicated. It's too time consuming. Those are things that you want to consider when selecting your CRM going forward. And then additionally, what's your access to technical support? This one gets overlooked a lot in the upfront process, but it's important to evaluate what the responsiveness is and the availability of customer support is from the CRM that you're going to select. You want to know that you're going to get timely assistance, as that's obviously going to be critical in addressing any issues or questions that arise during implementation, or even day-to-day use. Step six, determine your platform budget. So this involves taking the financial planning process to evaluate the startup costs, timeline considerations, as well as the ongoing expenses that are involved in maintaining the CRM going forward. So by aligning your budget considerations with the specific financial aspects of implementing and maintaining the CRM, you ensure a clear financial roadmap for your nonprofit's digital transformation. This step's going to facilitate a cost-effective and sustainable approach to leveraging the chosen CRM for maximum impact. And now that you have a budget in mind, you're going to want to identify potential solutions or implementations partners that you can work with. Recognizing the value of partners to guide your nonprofit through the CRM adoption is essential. What you're going to want to do is identify consultants who already understand nonprofit's challenges, they've developed solutions to anticipate these challenges, and these consultants are going to, with the experience in nonprofit organizations, are going to be able to help you with your CRM implementation to assure and ensure it seamlessly aligned with your mission and goals. There's a couple things to consider when identifying a consultant or company that specializes in these different platforms. So what they're going to do is they're going to help you identify which platform is best suited for your individual needs. They've already done some of that upfront research and they can help you tie whatever your needs are to existing CRMs. They're going to bring in-depth knowledge of the selected CRM solutions. This ensures a smoother and more effective implementation overall. Ensuring your long-term success by providing valuable insights into best practices, they'll help you optimize your workflows and offer continued support for as your nonprofit evolves and grows within the CRM. And then ultimately a big call out here is that when you choose a solution's partner to help you implement and work with your CRM, you're avoiding lapses in work or loss of access to key platforms or processes if one single employee leaves the organization or moves to a different department. This also ensures a resource for new employees to be up to speed on technical operations. We help work with those new employees to get them trained. And then step eight, free trials and demos. And the reason we call this out is that these opportunities allow you to test the system based on features, usability, integration capability, interface, and data security before you sign on to using the CRM. So the key call out here is remember, you're not just trying out a CRM. It's not as simple as that what you're doing is assessing a potential long-term partner for your nonprofit. So you want to utilize this period to evaluate whether the partnership aligns with your goal of enhancing donor relationships as well as fostering growth. And by approaching this trial period with a nonprofit perspective, you can ensure that the CRM aligns with your organization's requirements. And this then ultimately sets the stage for a successful and impactful partnership down the line. And then you're working with, if you're working with an implementation partner, they also might be able to offer customized demo portals that match your use case. All right, I have a question for everyone on the panel now. What are your top tips for nonprofits starting this journey? I'll go first here. First tip, I would say, I got two things here. First tip I would say is clearly define your audience and your objectives. So ask yourself, who is your target audience? Are you trying to attract donors? Are you trying to attract volunteers? Are you trying to attract people who are going to be using your nonprofit? And what contact information do you really need to collect from these people to ultimately reach your goals? The second thing I would say is select a CRM that truly fits your nonprofit's needs, not just what's convenient. So like we were speaking on before, there's so many different CRMs out there that are offering sort of an out-of-the-box approach or they say that they're super customizable and easily adaptable. Do the research, select a CRM that truly fits your nonprofit's needs, look at other organizations that are similar to yours, what are they using, and invest in what you need. You don't want to go super overkill, but also don't cheap out. These systems are in place to make your life easier and to help your nonprofit grow and grow with your nonprofit. Definitely. I think, as Candace mentioned, that this should really be thought of as a long-term partnership and not a short-term solution. So while it can be really tempting to go with kind of the out-of-the-box solution, focus on something that will allow you to build systems and not just build tools that you're checking off your list of, I need something to manage my emails. I need something to have my list. That's where you really end up with this cobbled together system of, all of a sudden we have 10 different platforms when we could do this and maybe one or two. And really focus on ones that have the most growth opportunities. You'll see a lot of CRMs out there that have different tiers where you can sign up for, starting with free. Have something that has the tools that you might not need right now, but you could grow into in six months in a year so that you're not needing to go through this selection process every couple years as you continue to grow. There have been none. So it's interesting. I think I'm going to get more broad to this question. I think recognizing when you have a problem that you can solve with people versus one that should be solved with software or automation is key. Because, look, you have a ton of volunteers at your disposal, but there's certain things that will never be done correctly if you don't have a central hub or tool that can create a standardized process to Jenelle's point. And so while some of these pieces you might be able to throw people at and throw people at, you're never going to scale your operations. So try to prioritize the ones that would make the biggest impact when it comes to the tool on the tooling side. And then take those first initiatives first and you can, in the short run, throw people at the others and slowly build and grow. So ideally, the solution would have the ability to add on similar to HubSpot, add on different hubs where you can grow into the software or make adjustments so that you are prioritizing your budget. Yeah, I think those are all great tips. So all of that being said, there's a lot of CRMs out there. Ultimately, we do have one that we always recommend. We use it ourselves. As Aretha mentioned, TechSync uses it. We've also built this for over 50 nonprofits. And it, ultimately, it always works well regardless of the size of the organization that you're in. And what we're always trying to find is the balance between the ease of use and then having the data as well as the power to actually act on all that data and reporting that's in there. The CRM that follows into that sweet spot always for us is HubSpot. And what it is, it's an all-in-one communication, fundraising, and customer service platform. And this helps organizations grow better. It provides you with a full suite of tools that can help your nonprofit increase support throughout the entire funnel of the marketing journey. And then with HubSpot, you can manage your entire constituent journey from one place. So what this is going to allow you to do is create and distribute content, you can manage your social media presence, you can automate your donation process, and then ultimately, you can track your performance. And wow, look at all these platforms. We like HubSpot because regardless of what your nonprofit uses, it can integrate with it. It can also ensure that you have one single source of truth. And the reason we like it is that it's the most applicable across all these systems to make sure that you can act on the data that you're collecting across all these platforms seamlessly. And it's going to help you ensure that you grow your organization with ease. So it's an all-in-one solution. It's budget friendly. It's user friendly. It integrates well. The automation ultimately allows you to scale. There's reporting across all systems and it has the right training and support there for you. And the reason it's our most recommended CRM is because it has the tools for all the different teams and functions within nonprofits. And then ultimately, you can customize those tools to work for you best. It's also incredibly easy to use. It allows you to collaborate with teammates. You get context into all the ways someone is interacting with you. It ensures you understand where people are coming from and how they're engaging with your organization. And then another very big perk is that you can set up custom segments according to what you know about a person. So how they've engaged with you in the past. Other demographic information about those people. Behavioral data points that basically what you're getting at is this allows you to deliver the right person, the right message at the right time. And this on to the pricing. Everyone's favorite subject. It varies a lot depending on the platform, the number of users, the amount of data, and the functionality. So we did still want to include a just a little snippet of what HubSpot pricing can look like. But there's important callouts here. One is that it has great variation depending on your users and your data points. But then also what's nice about HubSpot is that they offer a nonprofit discount. So you actually get 40% off for professional level and above HubSpot platforms. And it can always seem like a jump to pay for that professional level. But the tools and support available in Pro actually unlock a lot of hours of weekly admin time with the automation that they have built in at that level. All right, Jason, how much do you think a nonprofit should spend the budget for a CRM platform in there in the ultimate implementation? I hate giving this answer, but I ultimately think it varies greatly based on their core needs. I think Janelle made it made a good point earlier as well, and it was Zach as well, that prioritizing your biggest needs upfront and ensuring that the solution you select meets those is priority number one. Because you have to ensure that you can be successful at the blocking and tackling, for example, before you can focus on doing complex plays. But it really comes down to also hopefully that same choice will have the option to evolve and grow with. Because ultimately, just like when we talk to people about websites, we don't have to completely rebuild the wheel every time. We would love to slowly transition you because it's a lot less, it's a lot more cost effective. And forget the cost, your people don't have to learn a new tool, which we already talked about how tedious it can be to transition, even if just someone leaves that head all the knowledge, let alone try to teach every one of your volunteers a new tool every year or two. It's just asking too much. I agree. And it looks like we have a lot of questions, so I'll hand this over. So any questions, the answer is yes, there's a lot of questions. So let's start digging into those. All right, so I'm going to start going through the Q&A. Lots of great stuff in here. We have one question for small and newer non-profits with limited budgets. Would you recommend starting with CRM templates found in applications like Monday.com, Airtable, Asana and such? I think as you're just getting started out, that doesn't hurt if something has an out of the box template. But just like we're saying, you'll kind of always hit that ceiling eventually. Especially if those templates you can't really take and edit. So something like HubSpot where there CRM is free. It's free for everyone all the time. That's the place where you can keep track of who's who and who's in your system. The things you're paying for is the tools that you can use where you can, as you grow, now we can add on email marketing, can add on landing pages. We can add on automations to start making this kind of run in the background without us having to manage it. So it's good to kind of start on systems like that that give you the opportunity to grow over time. Just to continue off that too, I think that one important thing, whether it be in the non-profit industry or any industry for that matter, is look at what tools similar non-profits are using to yours. So if you're non-profit focused on, if you're a food bank for example, look at what other food banks in different communities are using for their CRM tools. Obviously, with ThruTechSoup, there's the great quad program which you're able to communicate with other non-profits, see what they're using, maybe shoot them a message, see, hey, I know you're similar to my organization. What are you using? Has it been working well for you? Lots of different, I'm sure everybody has great networks out there too that are able to communicate with other non-profits and see what they're using. So there's a lot of questions around specific non-profits, specific CRMs. And as we see here, the reason why we provide this in a framework rather than a list of recommendations is, as someone mentioned, why are there so many CRMs to choose from? It's a competitive space. There are hundreds and hundreds of CRMs. There are hundreds of donation management systems branded as CRMs. So no two systems are really the same. So it's better to give that framework of understanding from all the options that are out there. And as we said, we recommend HubSpot because it has that growth capability and to everyone's point of what support is available. HubSpot is the absolute leader in education for non-profits, for CRM type of tools. They have a very comprehensive academy as everyone on the TAP team is aware. Super, super comprehensive. It's entirely free to everyone all the time where you can go through and you can learn very broad ideas, like how do I do the marketing to how do I specifically set up a donation pipeline or how do I set up landing pages? And they also have some great resources. So they have a whole FAQ where you're able to access, I'm stuck on this or I had this IT question and you can always go to them. They also have for the professional level and above, you can call them at any time, you can chat with them. And if you are looking for like a consultant or someone to help you set that up, TAP network, we do work directly with HubSpot so we can set up and manage and support you going forward. But outside of us, there's a whole catalog of partners that HubSpot has and they focus on all different types of clients they specialize in nonprofits or e-commerce. So you can always find someone to help you along the way. I'm just going through here. Here's a good one. Zach, maybe you can take this. Can you add your own workflows and automate them in HubSpot? Yeah, absolutely. So for, say, for as an example, for managing that relationship with your past donors. So say somebody makes a donation on your website, you can have HubSpot detect that and then say two weeks, you can send them a thank you email a day later and then say a month later, you can send them add them to a workflow, send them a newsletter saying, hey, like this is thanks for the donation in the past, you donated on this day. This is the impact that those dollars have gone towards. So you can kind of automate any any process there, especially with the donor, like managing those relationships with your past donors with past volunteers, you can automate emails, automate marketing campaigns, anything like that. I want to jump in and answer one, Janelle. Linda was asking if, for us to clarify, if we're being paid to specifically market HubSpot and the answer is no. So our team has worked with many other CRMs. I know myself personally, I've worked with various, including Salesforce, Pardot, HubSpot, and we've found HubSpot to be the most advantageous for nonprofits and also because it's easy to learn. I can't tell you how many times I try to get in and learn a new CRM, especially Salesforce, and your use is so set up the way it was designed instead of being more standardized. So it's not like you just jump into Salesforce and learn the same one because it might be set up completely different versus HubSpot. A lot more of it is intentional and standardized, which makes it a lot easier for newbies to learn and kind of people that are experts to jump in and make quick additions or changes for you. So no, we highly support HubSpot and it has not proven us wrong yet. Yeah, another good point on that is we'll never recommend a tool that we haven't used thoroughly and understand the pros and cons of it. We use HubSpot internally, TechSoup uses HubSpot. We've set this up for dozens of nonprofits and really from the starter level to the enterprise level, there's always a solution that will work really well. Obviously, still do your research and all of that, but we found that it's the most versatile and covers the most different use cases that you can have in needing a CRM. Let's see. Particular platforms we would recommend for church organizations. So we have actually set up HubSpot for church organizations. We have two in progress right now. The reason that that works really well is because it's completely customizable. So even if you have to have very specific information around the types of information that's only specific to church. So what kind of interests do you have? Where is someone in their faith-based journey? All of those can be customizable data points that you can collect throughout your system. Zach, maybe you can answer this one, which CRM does the best job of segregation of a geographically dispersed nonprofit. And Candice, we can see your screen. That's Zach's screen, but yeah. For geographic disbursement. Again, I hate to call on HubSpot again, but what HubSpot does so well is segmentation of your contacts. So if you have a target market say in Washington state versus in Florida, you don't want to necessarily be marketing the exact same events or the exact same piece of information to that. To those contacts in Florida versus in Washington state, you can segment. You can have like a marketing campaign strictly for Washington state. Ensure that those Florida contacts aren't receiving that information. Similar with anything else like whether it's country-based, like I said, state-based. Yeah, anything like that is easily segmentable through HubSpot. So a couple good questions here on integration capabilities. So as we share that really scary graphic that had all of those different apps, HubSpot works with a ton of other platforms. So the one that was specifically called out is Eventbrite. It does work natively with Eventbrite, which means this is super easy to set up and you don't need someone who's like technical in getting this set up. HubSpot allows you to directly sign in to your other platforms like Eventbrite so that information will automatically just stream into your CRM. So kind of different than some of the other platforms. So we see like if you're using Salesforce or a constant contact, you might need something like Zapier, which is this like little third party system that carries data from one place and then brings it over to your CRM. Unlike those, HubSpot works natively, so you're not having that potential breakage as you have something kind of carrying back and forth. In terms of integrating with your website, that's a great question. It integrates with all websites. It works really, really well with anyone on WordPress. It's just another plugin that you add and then you'll be able to track and see who visits what pages, what buttons are they clicking on, what forms are they filling out, so really getting a better understanding of how people are using your website. And if you're not on WordPress, then they give you this little tracking code that you can add to all your pages and that'll give you that same information. They also have a CMS built in, so you can build your entire website on HubSpot, but it really just depends on what your use case is. We typically do recommend using WordPress over the HubSpot CMS system. Lots of questions coming in here. I'll try to get through as many as we can. This person, Ron Rose, I use GiveWP. Does it integrate with HubSpot or would HubSpot be a replacement? So that's a great question. It integrates with HubSpot. So we've integrated GiveWP with HubSpot. That's one of our integrations that we recommend, so that if you want to keep track of donor information, those can be brought over so you can have an active list of who donated. You can see how much they donated, when, and then have all that information in HubSpot so that you can send your thank you emails and follow-up information directly from HubSpot. Kayla asks, does HubSpot integrate with MailChimp as well? And that's a great question. While you can integrate it with MailChimp, HubSpot has a really comprehensive and robust emailing tool built in so that you're no longer having to kind of go between the two and you can send emails the same way as you would in MailChimp. It's a drag-and-drop builder. It's really easy to use and that way you can kind of start to eliminate some of those additional platforms that you have. It also integrates with QuickBooks so you can automate certain things like if you receive a donation or pledge to donate, you can automate that information to be sent to QuickBooks so that you can generate the invoice so there's some really, you know, in-depth capabilities that they have with QuickBooks. Jason, do you have anything that you want to call out? I, let's see, we have still 25 left to go through. I've been looking through and you've been answering a lot of the ones I was going to jump into. I do want to just straight-cap blues. You're asking a pretty complex question that's very dependent on what you're trying to integrate so that that question is not really relevant for this discussion just because you keep asking, that's why we're not answering it. Yeah, I would say maybe do some research into that. I've never seen like both of those needed so I would just do some more research and see specifically around what platform you're looking at and just make sure that that's something that is reputable and that it is standard to be collecting that kind of information. Let's see, so Susan asks, is there a platform that is a CMS and a DMS and a grant management system? If not, which grant management system integrates with HubSpot? So that's a great question. We've set up HubSpot to work for grant management. HubSpot has some really great tools built in for sales and donations so you can build a custom pipeline that allows you to track this grant is live. We've submitted our application or waiting approval. We've received this grant so you're able to track those steps and then collaborate with your team internally to kind of see all those things that need to happen throughout the grant management process. And here's a question that I've seen a few of about HubSpot for churches. I know I've talked to many churches just with kind of being the point person on taking a lot of these nonprofit conversations and I have yet to find anyone that's found a really good solution for a church use case. I know you typically, there's another an acronym CHMS which is for church specific CRMs because you have a very different needs based on donations and stuff the way you do and I have not found a great use case. Have you implemented any for any churches that you know of? Yeah, we have two church clients right now that we're working through and it is just a matter of how you plan to use it and a lot of times it is being integrated with a more specific system so with a church you might have a video management system that has all of your recordings of services of all your services so that you can integrate something like HubSpot so that people kind of access to those or set like a membership portal that integrates. So there are definitely use cases for it. I know that there are kind of those out of the box systems that might work very well for churches. I just don't know of any in particular. I see another one DD asking, does it handle ticketing? Do you want to kind of address that one Janelle because I know there's a couple ways we do ticketing. Yeah so ticketing can mean a couple different things I just wanted to get clarification on that one. Is that ticketing for events or for like customer support tickets? Maybe answering the webinar chat? I mean we can use a use case like us so for example if you sign up for some of our retainer based services or subscription services where we can help you with websites and stuff we use HubSpot to manage the ticketing service so it is an on-demand service where you actually put in your requests and we answer it via a ticket. So in that regard yes it's very it does work with ticketing but I have a feeling you're probably leaning more towards events. Then yes there's a couple different ways to do this so if you have something already in existence like Eventbrite or if you have a plugin on your website then you can just integrate that information with HubSpot and you can do this even automated so you can send out an invitation for an event that runs maybe you send three different emails you can automatically take people off that list as they sign up. If they are free events then HubSpot has native forms that you can handle those registrations you can completely customize what you're asking of people and then register them that way. All right and we're just about at time so we will go through kind of how to connect with us if you have more questions. I'm sorry we didn't get through everything today some great questions in here but these links will be shared after the webinar but we have the ebook that we mentioned that breaks this eight step system down. There's also a link here to request a consultation with us so as a partner of TechSoup what you'll find on their website if you go to their services. Website services, digital marketing that is all tap network so if you go to that page and you fill out the form that'll be routed to us and we will get to you at Promise as soon as possible there's a little bit of a queue that forms after big events like this but we will get everyone in response and start following up if you need additional support or you're interested in a CRM like HubSpot we'll be sending out that email that has a link to that as well as the ebook and then the if you're looking at more of our CRM solutions there's going to be a web page that breaks down some of our poor offerings as well. Thank you all for joining us today. Thanks everyone.