How to Simplify Donation Monitoring for Your Nonprofit

Seeing funds pouring in for your cause is a good thing. But it gets challenging when you get donations from several channels. For instance, you might be getting donations from your website. And you might also get funds from in-person fundraising events. Your nonprofit has to track and record every single penny that you receive. And this becomes a bit tricky if you’re receiving funds from everywhere.

This calls for a need to simplify donation monitoring for your nonprofit. That way, you can keep a clean record of all your finances.

How Are Donations Accounted for?

Some nonprofits will manually record all the donations they receive in a spreadsheet. This makes sense for smaller nonprofits. But larger organizations have donations coming in from several channels. As such, they will need a more comprehensive bookkeeping solution.

Nonprofits also account for their donations through online donation platforms and donor apps. Givelify is a great option for this.

How Do You Record a Non-Monetary Donation?

Nonprofits often receive in-kind donations, too. This can be in the form of tangible property and even personal services. For instance, a law firm may provide pro bono legal services to your organization. Or a hospital may donate medical supplies to support your cause.

This type of non-monetary donation can be a little more complex to record. After all, there’s no direct financial transaction. But you still need to include them in your financial records. You can do this by determining the value of the donation and then use that in your record.

For example, you could determine how much a donated laptop might cost in the open market. With professional services, you need to track the hours donated to your organization. You can then calculate how much those hours cost in the industry.

Donation Monitoring Made Easy

Check out these four tips to simplify your nonprofit donation monitoring process:

Tip #1: Have a Dedicated Place to Track Everything

When you have donations coming in from all places, you need to record everything in one place. Scattered data can be difficult to access and track. So make sure you have a secure location to track all your donation information in one place.

Nonprofit donation platforms like Givelify are a great option. It comes with built-in donation management features to simplify tracking. This helps you track every single donation that comes in through your website. Plus, it also tracks the funds coming in from your social media and donor app. So you have one dedicated place to track different donation channels.

Tip #2: Integrate Your Donations with Your Financial Records

One of the main goals of monitoring your donations is so you can keep your books balanced. Simplify this process by using donation platforms. These platforms will easily integrate with your bookkeeping or financial management software.

Platforms like Givelify will let you generate comprehensive donation reports. You can then import these reports to your financial management software. Or maybe you’re keeping track of everything using a dedicated donation management platform. You can still import the reports from Givelify to streamline the monitoring process.

This is an excellent option if you’re also receiving funds from offline channels. For instance, you may get donations from in-person fundraising events. You may also receive funds from checkout charity campaigns. You can integrate all these offline donation records with your Givelify donations. This allows you to keep track of everything in one place.

Tip #3: Sort Your Donations by Campaign

If you’re a growing nonprofit or a large organization, chances are, you won’t be focusing on only one campaign at a time. For instance, you may have an organization dedicated to helping homeless veterans. So you’ll have an ongoing donation campaign for the cause. But due to a recent hurricane, you might also set up a new campaign for disaster relief.

In this case, make sure you allow your donors to choose which causes they want to support. This will make it easier to track how much funds are going to which campaigns. Givelify will let you set up custom fundraising campaigns. And your donors can choose exactly where they want their money to go. You can then keep track of all the funds coming into a specific campaign.

Tip #4: Assign Staff for Donation Tracking

Technology is critical to simplify your nonprofit donation tracking. But at some point, you’re going to need a human touch. You need human staff that’s dedicated to tracking and managing your donation records.

This team will review the records in your donation management system. And they will ensure that everything is in order. They will make sure that your records are up-to-date and in the right places. You also need them to integrate donation reports from a variety of channels. They will then need to align these reports with your financial records.

That way, you can avoid mistakes and inconsistencies in your books. And if you fix them now, you can prevent them from turning into major discrepancies down the line.

How Do You Measure Fundraising Performance?

Monitoring your donations is one thing; measuring your fundraising performance is another. When you track your donations, you only get an idea of the funds coming in. And you might even be able to compare those numbers against your campaign goals. But it shouldn’t just stop at that.

To get a full view of your fundraising performance, you also need to consider how much you spent on the campaign. Plus, several other key performance indicators (KPIs) come into play. Here are a few important KPIs to track:

• Cost Per Dollar Raised – How much did you have to spend for every dollar you raised? This factors in how much you spent to promote and execute your fundraising campaign. And it helps you understand how successful the campaign was in that context. If you raised $10,000, that’s impressive. But not as much if you’d spent $7,000 to get the campaign running.
• Average Gift Size – On average, how much did one donor give to your cause? This helps you understand how successful you were with cultivating donors. You can get an idea of how invested they are in your cause.
• Conversion Rate – How many people converted through certain channels and marketing efforts? This helps you understand the impact of each fundraising channel and marketing tactic.

Organizing Your Fundraising Efforts

Streamlining your donation monitoring will help you keep your fundraising efforts organized. You can use a donation platform like Givelify to track and manage your donations in one place.

Sign up for Givelify and get set up for simple monitoring of your donations in under 5 minutes.