We are a small nonprofit new to Hubspot. We moved from Aplos as our CRM to Hubspot as our CRM. We are trying to figure out the best way to configure Hubspot for our nonprofit needs. We have a few questions in that regard:
How do we send end-of-year substantiation letters to all our donors?
Should we send a marketing email that would pull names and would add up the value of deals (donations) for the year for each person?
Or, is there another way that is better?
How do we best manage the process for receiving and recording donations? We want to set up a donation page (on our website) and we want to be able to receive donations (one-time and recurring) by credit card or ACH.
One option would be to use Hubspot's internal payment system. The big advantages for this approach are that we would not have to pay any fees beyond what Stripe charges and that any donations made via Hubspot payment would be seamlessly entered into the Hubspot CRM. A downside to this approach is that I have heard from two sources that if we use Hubspot payments we would need to get a developer to do a custom build-out for us to receive recurring donations on our donation page.
Another option is to use a third party donation platform, such as FundraiseUp or GiveButter or DonorBox. Those can make nice donor pages, but they all come with additional fees and I'm told that the automatic transfer of data from the third part to our Hubspot CRM would likely require clean and maintenance on our part.
Third option: We are transferring to QuickBooks for our accounting system. Could we accept donations via QuickBooks and would those seamlessly transfer into Hubspot?
Hi @KyraL and welcome to the HubSpot Community! I have an affinity to nonprofits, as an active volunteer and board member of several.
First, I want to acknolwedge a couple of folks who lead the way in HubSpot for nonprofits. These two, and their solutions partner (agency), may be a great resource for you. Mandy Thompson and Karen Senette of Digital Reach Online Solutions help nonprofits navigate everything you're asking.
Now for your questions. My 2¢ is this:
End of year email could certainly be a marketing email, but that would require these contacts be marked as "marketing contacts." Depending on your hub tier and billing situation, this may be perfectly fine. It may also mean going over your monthly allotment, and that's not ideal. So it's a discussion.
Your other option is to use HubSpot's transactional emails. This also requires a specific hub and tier (Marketing Hub Professional and above) but could be an option.
For donations, I'm a big fan of the simplest solution. That's likely HubSpot payments as you pointed out. However, I've had nonprofit clients who do use the third party apps they're already using, and pushing the data into HubSpot via an integration or a solutiojn like Zapier. So it depends on your situation, but I'd definitly consider HubSpot Payments as a first option.
I hope that's helpful!
Did my answer help? Please "mark as a solution" to help others find answers. Plus I really appreciate it!
Following the great suggestions already added here by Dan and Stew:
As you mentioned Quickbooks, HubSpot has been beefing up the integration between Commerce Hub and Quickbooks. What would have been very difficult before using HubSpot Invoices + QB, can now be synced with QB.
Hi @KyraL and Happy New Year! Just caught up with your post. I manage a family foundation using Hubspot and Dynamics365, and work pro-bono with other non-profits in the '$2mil and under' category.
Before you jump to a solution, have answers for questions like:
how big a universe of donors do I have today? Is it stable, growing organically, or do I have a strategy that gets me bigger faster?
mix of donors, between one-off and recurring? Pledged giving? DAF funding?
how much traffic on my website today, and what do I know about them -- friends & family? volunteer universe? partners? new to the organization? how do I expect that to grow?
re donations to the website: if you're not doing it today, what is a realistic forecast of transaction volume? are you planning a donations page primarily as a convenience for current donors, or do you expect to attract new donors as part of their journey with you?
My two cents: year-end letters are a nice-to-do for donors who make recurring donations (and not via a DAF). The one-time donors presumably get a receipt when they make a donation. If the recurring donations are related to a pledge, that's another kind of letter. For these reasons and more, you DO need to create roll-up fields that track totals. For sending the letters, as @danmoyle suggested, you can email them as marketing contacts, or investigate the transactional add-on. But your donors are almost certainly contacts that should receive newsletters, annual appeals, etc so you want them to be marketing contacts. My hunch is your volume is not large enough to justify the additional add-on.
Yes, the third-party apps for donation management do eat into your proceeds -- and/but offer benefits ranging from decent-looking landing pages to annual letters. Do you need all the bells-and-whistles? Many don't integrate with Hubspot directly. And they can drive you crazy trying to make them look good. But I know several larger non-profits that use Classy even though they could bring in-house spend less elsewhere -- and they use it to manage big gala events. Hubspot Stripe (last I looked) really isn't set up to manage recurring gifts, track against pledges, etc. So consider where you want to spend your time & development dollars for what is a reasonable forecast of on-line donations.
Hi @KyraL and welcome to the HubSpot Community! I have an affinity to nonprofits, as an active volunteer and board member of several.
First, I want to acknolwedge a couple of folks who lead the way in HubSpot for nonprofits. These two, and their solutions partner (agency), may be a great resource for you. Mandy Thompson and Karen Senette of Digital Reach Online Solutions help nonprofits navigate everything you're asking.
Now for your questions. My 2¢ is this:
End of year email could certainly be a marketing email, but that would require these contacts be marked as "marketing contacts." Depending on your hub tier and billing situation, this may be perfectly fine. It may also mean going over your monthly allotment, and that's not ideal. So it's a discussion.
Your other option is to use HubSpot's transactional emails. This also requires a specific hub and tier (Marketing Hub Professional and above) but could be an option.
For donations, I'm a big fan of the simplest solution. That's likely HubSpot payments as you pointed out. However, I've had nonprofit clients who do use the third party apps they're already using, and pushing the data into HubSpot via an integration or a solutiojn like Zapier. So it depends on your situation, but I'd definitly consider HubSpot Payments as a first option.
I hope that's helpful!
Did my answer help? Please "mark as a solution" to help others find answers. Plus I really appreciate it!
Hi @KyraL! Welcome to the Community-- happy to have you here 😊
I am glad you have been able to explore so many options for achieving your goals with HubSpot. You might benefit from consulting with a HubSpot partner!
I'd also like to invite a couple of subject-matter experts to this thread! Hey, @danmoyle, @HubDoPete, or @johnelmer do y'all have any best practices or solutions for @KyraL? Thanks!
Best,
Kennedy
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