How to Use HubSpot for Fundraising

Fundraising today demands more than galas and neighborhood car washes. It requires the right technology behind the scenes. As donor expectations rise and giving becomes more digital, nonprofits are increasingly looking for platforms that can help them personalize outreach and turn engagement into sustained support.

One popular tool has become indispensable to nonprofits: HubSpot. While it’s best known as a marketing and CRM platform, HubSpot has quietly become a powerful fundraising tool for nonprofits that want to manage donor relationships more strategically, streamline campaigns, and connect fundraising efforts to real data.

HubSpot was originally built with marketing and sales in mind. But when configured with fundraising in mind, it can support everything from donor segmentation and automated stewardship to campaign tracking and reporting.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll break down how nonprofits are using HubSpot for fundraising, what it does well, and how to decide whether it’s the right platform to support your next campaign.

 

How Can HubSpot Be Used for Fundraising?

HubSpot was initially created to help companies with their inbound marketing. But today, its capabilities go well beyond standard CRM functions, and many of the HubSpot features used for “traditional” marketing can be seamlessly adapted for fundraising. 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.”
– Andi Graham, CEO at Big Sea.

Nonprofits can use pipelines and tracking metrics to enhance their fundraising efforts. Some of HubSpot’s most popular features can help nonprofits with:

• Donor engagement
• Supporter acquisition and prospect development
• Donor persona creation
• Audience segmentation
• Management of donor data

Let’s talk about how.

Donor Engagement

HubSpot lets you connect every interaction into a single, cohesive donor experience. You can track how supporters interact with emails, events, and campaigns, then use those insights to personalize outreach and stewardship over time. When integrated with online donation forms, HubSpot automatically captures giving data, making it easier to acknowledge gifts promptly, follow up with meaningful updates, and maintain consistent communication.

Supporter Acquisition and Prospect Development

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’s never enough time in the day.

Donor Persona Creation

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 create lists of your personas based on criteria such as the cause they donated to, where they’re located, etc.

Management of Donor Data

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

Audience Segmentation

Once you’ve organized your supporter data in one centralized CRM, you can use marketing automation to group contacts based on behaviors, interests, giving history, and engagement across campaigns. This allows teams to tailor messages for first-time donors, recurring supporters, volunteers, or event attendees—without managing multiple disconnected tools. As new supporters come in, HubSpot’s automated onboarding workflows can immediately place them into the right segments and trigger timely, relevant follow-up, helping you build stronger relationships from the very first interaction.

What HubSpot Tools Are Best for Fundraising?

HubSpot isn’t just a single program designed to solve one problem. It’s organized into “Hubs,” each designed to handle a specific part of your nonprofit’s strategy for attracting, engaging, and retaining supporters. This structure makes it easier for nonprofits new to HubSpot to choose only what they need while still building a scalable, data-driven fundraising system. Together, they can support the full donor journey from first touch to long-term stewardship. 

Marketing Hub for Donor Engagement and Audience Segmentation

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 three different social accounts to share your holiday donation drive? HubSpot gives 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 and schedule weeks of content for your connected platforms in one place.

Lists (Audiences): Segment your audience into targeted lists based on what matters most for your campaigns. You can focus on demographics or interests, then curate the donor list and apply HubSpot’s lead scoring to segment each list for granular tracking and personalized, effective communication.

Building an Email List: Grow your email list with 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 set up.

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 re-engage donors who haven’t donated in a year, bringing your cause back to their attention without having to lift another finger once it is set up.

Complete Donor Lifecycle Management: Provide your potential and actual donors with a smooth journey from start to finish. Using HubSpot will track the entire lifecycle and provide feedback along the way. Limit manual management by using HubSpot’s automation tools to move donors into the proper lifecycle stage based on their activity.

Sales Hub for Fundraising Pipelines and Follow-Up Automation

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 on all 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 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 for SEO and Website Management

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 effectively communicates your fundraising mission and engages 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 both new and existing 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 for Campaign Optimization

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 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 for Payment Processing and Event Management

HubSpot’s integrations with other tools can enhance HubSpot’s functionality and streamline your fundraising processes. Using HubSpot alongside 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 makes donating easy. 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 may be times 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 tracking them.

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 into the first pricing tier, which can quickly become expensive for nonprofits with limited budgets. 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’ve 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 and CRM

When you begin, tailor your HubSpot CRM to your nonprofit’s specific needs. This includes setting up specific properties and pipelines, as well as 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.

Regularly Review Your Data

The dashboard setup will help you, but it only does so if you check 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

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.

HubSpot for Nonprofits FAQs

What Is HubSpot for Nonprofits?

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

How Can Nonprofits Access Discounted Pricing for HubSpot?

HubSpot offers various pricing plans based on features, the number of Hubs needed, and usage. Nonprofits can access discounted pricing through HubSpot for Nonprofits, a program that offers significant discounts on select HubSpot products for eligible organizations. Qualified nonprofits can receive reduced pricing on core Hubs. To get started, contact HubSpot directly to verify your 501(c)(3) status, then choose the tools and tiers that best fit your fundraising goals and internal capacity.

What Makes HubSpot a Flexible Tool for Nonprofits?

HubSpot is a flexible platform for nonprofit fundraising teams because it brings together multiple everyday tools into a single, connected system, reducing the need to juggle separate platforms. Fundraisers can use built-in templates for emails and campaigns, meeting scheduling to coordinate donor conversations, and volunteer management workflows to support engagement beyond giving. With native integration options for tools like WordPress and Salesforce, HubSpot adapts to existing systems and use cases, making it easier for nonprofits to scale fundraising efforts without adding unnecessary complexity.