How To Use HubSpot for Fundraising

These days, fundraising is more than galas and neighborhood car washes. Technology has revolutionized how for-profit and nonprofit organizations are able to engage with supporters, and one popular tool has become indispensable to nonprofits: HubSpot.

While HubSpot is renowned for its comprehensive marketing, sales, and service software suite, using HubSpot for fundraising is an excellent option for nonprofits who need to engage with donors and meet fundraising goals.

If you’re still thinking—wait for a second—HubSpot is for marketing, not fundraising, then we’re going to be the first ones to stop you right there and tell you that it can be used for both.

HubSpot might have been built with marketing and sales in mind, but it’s an absolute game-changer for nonprofits. To illustrate this point, we’ve compiled a complete guide to HubSpot for fundraising to help you consider whether this tool is the right choice for your next fundraising initiative.

How Can HubSpot Be Used for Fundraising?

HubSpot was initially created to help companies with their inbound marketing. So, if you’re thinking that it’s not a tool to help your fundraising—that might have been correct—over 15 years ago!

Today, its capabilities go well beyond standard CRM functions, and many of the features that are used for “traditional” marketing can be seamlessly adapted for fundraising purposes. Just like businesses that use HubSpot to market their products and services, nonprofits can flip these same tactics on their head and use them for fundraising, too.

“The key to better fundraising and better marketing lies in the data, and HubSpot offers a CRM that ties together your fundraising, marketing, communications, and other tools so that you can leverage that data for incredible personalization and automation,” says Andi Graham, CEO at Big Sea.

Nonprofits can use pipelines and tracking metrics to enhance their fundraising efforts and also lean on some of the more popular HubSpot features to help with:

• Lead generation
• Creating donor personas
• Managing donor data
• Marketing campaigns

Generating Leads: HubSpot’s marketing tools can help attract and grow the donor pipeline by optimizing digital presence. From nonprofit content marketing strategies to email marketing, HubSpot makes it easier to attract visitors to your site and convert them into potential fundraising leads. You can even use HubSpot’s lead scoring tool to get a jump start on evaluating which leads to invest your time in—which is invaluable when there is never enough time in the day.

Creating donor personas: Understanding donors is crucial. With HubSpot, you can segment your audience and create detailed donor personas, enhancing the personalization of your fundraising campaigns. By using contact properties, you can establish lists of your different personas based on criteria: what cause they donated to, what region they are in, etc.

Managing donor data: HubSpot’s CRM offers data management features that track every step your donor takes. From daily interactions to donor retention metrics, HubSpot is the one-stop spot for providing documented insights. You can even keep track of all communications with your donors by connecting your email account to HubSpot. Also, keeping your donor information in one place is a great way to manage and track all current and potential donors and the best place to set up a legacy donor program.

Marketing your nonprofit: Competition and budgets are tight for nonprofits out there, and many must prioritize their marketing budget. Combining a tool that can work for marketing and fundraising goals is a two-birds-with-one-stone situation. Using HubSpot, nonprofits can run campaigns to promote their core services and also fundraising initiatives.

With so many plates spinning at your nonprofit, it is challenging to manage and monitor all of your donors. HubSpot can handle the donor management while you focus on building true, authentic relationships with your donors, keeping them invested in your mission without missing a beat.

What HubSpot Tools Are Best for Fundraising?

HubSpot isn’t just a single program designed to solve one problem; it’s a collection of Hubs designed to address the different facets of your business. If one of your business needs is fundraising, then there are a few “Hubs” that can significantly impact your fundraising efforts. Let’s explore them in detail:

Marketing Hub

The Marketing Hub is the cornerstone for nonprofit fundraising. It provides a wide range of features to boost outreach and engagement through the following:

• Paid Media: Use HubSpot’s tools to manage and optimize your paid media campaigns. Whether using Google Ads or social media ads, HubSpot’s Ad Management capabilities help track performance and refine strategies to maximize ROI.
• Social media: Tired of logging into 3 different social accounts to share your holiday donation drive? HubSpot removes the overwhelming feeling of managing multiple social platforms by giving you a singular space to manage them all—or at least Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Build out your campaigns in the Marketing Hub to schedule posts, monitor interactions, and analyze engagement to strengthen your social media presence. You can easily build out and schedule weeks of content to your connected platforms all in one place.
• Lists (audiences): Segment your audience into targeted lists based on what’s important for your campaigns. You can focus on demographics or interests and then curate the list of donors and apply HubSpot’s lead scoring technique to help segment each list for granular tracking and personalized and effective communication.
• Building an email list: Grow your email list using landing pages and lead capture forms. Your fundraising email list is vital for reaching potential donors and engaging with current supporters. You can also easily create a list out of imported contacts when transitioning onto HubSpot so you don’t lose any key donors when getting setup.
• Prospecting and nurturing: Automate the lead nurturing process with personalized workflows and follow-ups. You don’t want your potential and actual donors to get lost in the funnel. This step ensures that they do not fall off and stay engaged and connected. Set up a workflow to reengage with donors who haven’t donated in a year to bring your cause back to their attention without having to lift another finger after it is set up.
• Complete donor lifecycle management: You want to provide your potential and actual donors with a smooth journey from beginning to end. Using HubSpot will track the entire lifecycle, providing feedback along the way. Limit manual management by using HubSpot’s automation tools to move donors into the proper lifecycle stage based upon their activity.

Sales Hub

The Sales Hub works seamlessly with the Marketing Hub, offering additional tools that streamline donor management and enhance relationship-building. The Sales Hub can help you in the following ways:

• Deal pipelines: Customize deal pipelines to track donations through all the funnel stages. The pipeline will start with the initial interest phase and end with the final contribution or legacy donations. Deal pipelines can help your business manage and forecast fundraising goals more effectively.
• Automated follow-ups: Like the Marketing Hub, the Sales Hub can help with automated follow-up emails and reminders to keep donors engaged and encourage recurring donations.
• Reporting and dashboards: HubSpot can be used for so many projects that a customizable dashboard is a must. These customizable dashboards can be used to monitor fundraising activities, track progress, and assess the effectiveness of different strategies. Set a campaign tag to all of your marketing collateral in HubSpot and you can monitor the performance of all of your efforts for that campaign with a custom report.

HubSpot’s customizable dashboards can be created to turn your fundraising data into actionable insights. You can create custom dashboards to display specific fundraising data or goals and create quick, unique reports. With these personalized reports, HubSpot can quickly drive decision-making and enable you to assess your campaigns’ effectiveness in real time.

Content Hub

Nonprofit content marketing strategies are often plagued by limited resources or tight budgets, making it challenging to produce high-quality content. However, using the Content Hub, you can build out relevant content and easily manage your website and brand. Some of the Content Hubs perks include:

• Website management: Create and maintain a professional, user-friendly website that can effectively communicate your fundraising mission and engage with potential donors.
• Landing pages: Design and optimize landing pages for specific campaigns or donation drives. These landing pages make it easy for visitors to take action on new or old fundraising campaigns.
• Content personalization: Deliver personalized content based on user behavior and preferences to enhance engagement and conversion rates.

“One of the most impressive things that HubSpot can do—and honestly what makes it worth the investment—is the personalization possible in your communications based on data in your CRM. For instance, we have an automated email welcome series set up for new donors, but that series changes based on what we know about the donor, whether their gift is one-time or recurring, if they’ve given in the past, or what the designation is. No other nonprofit marketing tools can get that personalized—and personalization is key to better fundraising and stewardship.”

 

-Andi Graham, Big Sea, CEO & Managing Partner

Reporting and Analytics

How can you determine if your fundraising efforts reach the right audience without proper reporting and analytics? The solution is to use HubSpot’s reporting and analytics tools. These data and analytics tools are crucial for assessing your fundraising performance and for making informed, data-driven decisions in the following ways:

• Campaign performance: Monitor the success of your fundraising campaigns with detailed reports on email open rates, click-through rates, and conversion metrics.
• Donor insights: Gain insights into donor behavior and preferences, enabling you to tailor your strategies and improve engagement.
• ROI tracking: Measure the return on investment for various fundraising activities and adjust your strategies to optimize results.

Integrations

HubSpot’s integrations with other tools can enhance HubSpot’s functionality and streamline your fundraising processes. Using HubSpot in conjunction with other third-party applications can keep your data in one location. Some of the options below are integrations that HubSpot fundraisers find helpful:

• Payment processors: Fundraisers need a platform that allows people to donate easily. While HubSpot isn’t a bank and can’t handle financial transactions directly, it can integrate with payment processors to manage transactions smoothly and securely.
• Donorbox or Gravyty: In HubSpot, you will have pipelines and lead generation on lock. However, there might be a time when you want to focus more on fundraising-specific apps like Donorbox or Gravyty to manage donations and donor information within HubSpot. Luckily, HubSpot can integrate with these third-party platforms with ease.
• Event management: If your fundraising event is in-person, integrate with event management tools like Cvent to handle registrations, track attendance, and effectively follow up with participants. This is perfect for nonprofits like museums or zoos that rely on in-person events and need additional help to track events.

Common Challenges of Using HubSpot for Fundraising

Nonprofits using HubSpot for fundraising may encounter several challenges despite its powerful tools. The platform’s extensive features can be complex and overwhelming for those unfamiliar with its interface. Proper training and support might be necessary to use all HubSpot tools efficiently.

While HubSpot offers a free version to use its platform, it is very limited. These limitations push users up to the first pricing tier, which can quickly become expensive for nonprofits with a limited budget. Unfortunately, many might get priced out.

Finally, if companies are using various third-party tools and want to integrate with HubSpot, technical expertise might be needed. Integrating HubSpot with other systems or platforms can present technical difficulties that require careful management and expertise.

Best Practices for Using HubSpot for Fundraising

If you have decided the best option is to use HubSpot for fundraising, there are ways to maximize its effectiveness. Follow some of these best practices as you work your way through the platform to get the most out of your services:

Customize your dashboard & CRM

When you begin, you should immediately tailor your HubSpot CRM to fit your nonprofit’s specific needs. This includes setting up specific properties and pipelines and personalized dashboards to manage all events and fundraising activities.

Leverage automation options

When correctly used, HubSpot automation tools can streamline your fundraising processes and improve efficiency. Automation can be set up for all sorts of things, like donor follow-ups to social media posts.

Always regularly review your data

The dashboard setup will help you, but it is only helpful if you check back up on your reports. Set up campaigns, continuously analyze your data, and adjust your strategies based on performance insights.

Invest in training

HubSpot might be complicated to set up and run, but it has robust user training modules. Ensure your team takes the time to go through the modules or hire a company that knows a little something about HubSpot for Nonprofits.

How Can an Agency Help My Nonprofit Use HubSpot for Fundraising?

HubSpot can be complex, but partnering with the right agency simplifies the process. A good HubSpot partner can take the guesswork out of implementing and running HubSpot, maximizing the platform’s full potential, and helping you achieve your fundraising goals. Hiring an agency can help your nonprofit with the following:

• Specialized knowledge and experience
• Training and ongoing support
• Customized strategy and execution

HubSpot for Nonprofits FAQs

What is HubSpot for Nonprofits?

HubSpot for Nonprofits is a suite of tools specifically tailored to nonprofit organizations. It is offered to nonprofits at a reduced price and includes features and functionalities that help manage fundraising, donor relationships, and marketing efforts.

How Much Does HubSpot Cost for Nonprofits?

HubSpot offers various pricing plans based on features, Hubs needed, and usage. Nonprofits can receive a discounted plan, but they need to meet the requirements to determine whether they are qualified, so contact HubSpot directly for details on nonprofit pricing options.

Trust Big Sea to Help Your Nonprofit Amplify Fundraising by Using HubSpot

Navigating the complexities of HubSpot for fundraising can be challenging, but your nonprofit can achieve remarkable results with the right support. Trust Big Sea to help your nonprofit leverage HubSpot to enhance fundraising efforts, streamline processes, and drive meaningful engagement with donors.

Contact us today to learn how we can help your organization harness HubSpot’s full potential and achieve your fundraising goals.