A recent survey carried out by the team at Brightsource deals with supporter care programmes and what’s stopping charities getting closer to their donors. The findings reveal a widespread discrepancy across all sizes and types of charity between how fundraisers would like to nurture their supporter relationships and what happens in reality. The finger of blame for this discrepancy is being pointed firmly at inadequate technology.

Give as you Live™ also launched an insight report this week.  Their Digital Giving Review was unveiled at the Institute of Fundraising National Convention. The report explores the latest trends in digital fundraising and, interestingly, one of the insights from Brightsource’s survey wasn’t highlighted in the Digital Giving Report. In fact there seems to be something of a contradiction between the two!  66% of respondents to the Brightsource survey cited the limitations of their CRM systems as being the most significant barrier to creating a successful online/offline fundraising mix. In the Digital Giving Review ‘internal resources’ and ‘donor resistance’ were the primary stumbling blocks.  Although technology restrictions and data were mentioned by some charities, these “ranked very low”.

Clearly internal resource is stretched within many charities as disposable income continues to be tight and donor channel use is undergoing something of a behavioural shift. But it’s hard to see how these two challenges can be overcome without the introduction of new world CRM systems, which can cope with tracking multichannel behaviour. This will enable charities to send communications that are timely, relevant and delivered via a donor’s preferred channel.  It’s likely that any system that could do this would also save precious time for busy fundraisers!

Download your copy of the Brightsource report here.