Nonprofit Membership Donation Strategies That Work

Nonprofit membership management involves strategies and tools to recruit, track, engage, and retain members who support an organization’s mission. This includes managing sign-ups, dues, communications, event participation, and renewals, often using specialized software to automate tasks and personalize member experiences.

Key aspects include creating valuable membership programs with tiered benefits, building a strong community through engagement, and using data to improve retention and the overall program.

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The Show’s Main Transcript

[00:00:36.160] – Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 148. In this show, we’ll be talking about nonprofits, associations, and membership management. What are the choices out there? It isn’t very clear, folks. We’re going to try to give some common-sense info. If you’ve been asked to implement a management system for your nonprofit, your association, or someone in tech, we hope to offer you some great advice on this subject. I’ve got my co-host, Kurt, with me. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?

[00:01:24.960] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Ahnen, I’m the owner of an agency called Manana Nomas, and we work directly with the great team over at WP Tonic.

[00:01:34.320] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic. As I said, it should be a great show. But before we go into the meat and potatoes, we’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back. We’ve also got our last advert for our monthly advertiser, and Kirk will tell you a bit about them.

[00:02:00.000] – Kurt von Ahnen

Hey, thanks, Jonathan. Misterio LMS sponsors this episode, and here’s why we’ve been excited about working with them for the last month. Their free version is not a trial. It’s not limited. You get unlimited courses, unlimited lessons, unlimited students, and that’s forever, and there’s no credit card needed. So if you think about it, you can build your entire course business without paying a cent. Now, the drag-and-drop editor is there. There’s a quiz creator there, and student progress tracking. That’s all there is. Built-in payment processing with PayPal and Stripe. That’s all in the free version. Now, if you decide you want to use content drip, certificates, or other advanced features, you can always upgrade to the pro version. But honestly, I think most course creators can get started with the launch with the free version. To check out Misterio LMS, go to misterio. Com. That is M-A-S-T-E-R-I-Y-O. Com.

[00:02:55.420] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic. Let’s go straight to Kurt. Where do you want us to start? How would you start the conversation? What are your thoughts on it?

[00:03:06.980] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, today we’re talking about nonprofit membership donations and strategies that would work.

[00:03:13.740] – Jonathan Denwood

And using a membership, a CRM, and software choices. And also this applies to associations and other organizations.

[00:03:26.460] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. So when I’m meeting with these types of clients, right off the bat, the first open-ended question has to be, like, “How big is your current audience?” How big is your current network? How large a group? And then what channels are you currently using to curate this data? A lot of times, what I run into, Jonathan, and maybe you have too, is you’ll find out there’s three or four different people that have passed the baton over different positions in the board, and they’ve got like, I’m not even going to call them databases. It’s like, this is what’s in my Microsoft Outlook. This is what’s in my Gmail account, this is what’s in that. And they’re emailing people 25 members at a time. And then, so then you have to have a brass tax strategy meeting to go, how big is this list if we combine all this stuff? And then what is your appetite for managing it and having a real platform to graduate to, to uplevel that performance, to uplevel that presentation?

[00:04:28.600] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I I agree with you there. I think the other thing is, folks, there is no perfect CRM out there. It really depends on the organization, the size, the resources, what they want to do. We have an emphasis at WP Tonic on WordPress because a lot of organizations use WordPress, and they want their CRM to work with WordPress. Some of these systems provide their own website platform. In my experience, the ones that do aren’t that fantastic. But I’m always very… There’s a lot of platforms. There’s a lot of donation systems, but a donation system, and we’re going to be discussing some of the WordPress ones, they tend to be donation with some CRM functionality included. There are specialized CRMs, aimed at nonprofits associations. They have their strengths, but they also have their weaknesses because it really depends on how good their APIs are. I did some research on all the ones we’re going to be talking about. And one of them supposedly has a plugin that works with WordPress, but it hasn’t been updated for a number of years. And you find that a lot. And people think you can just custom design a plugin, which you have that ability with WordPress.

[00:06:26.270] – Jonathan Denwood

But if the third party, the SaaS CRM doesn’t have an open or a very good API, or you can’t use something like WP Fusion, you’re scuttled. You’re not a magician. So these are some of the things you got to know about. How would you respond to what I’ve just said?

[00:06:50.580] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, I have to agree with you. And the part that I wanted to really communicate to the listeners and viewers here today, especially if the title of it brought them, like they’re not used to me and us, is like, don’t beat yourself up if you find yourself in this position where you might have something on constant contact, something else on, what is that, act blue or something. And then they’ve got Mailchimp and Hubs, all these different… You might have this fragmented partial list on all these places and have no idea where to start. And that’s where having a professional like me or Jonathan can really help you bring that together. And then what Jonathan is describing is And it’s true. When I’m communicating with a new client, especially a nonprofit, I start to say to myself, All right, how can I consolidate their efforts into the simplest of tools? How can I reduce the friction for this user. So a lot of times it is putting the CRM directly into the WordPress-based website and giving them access to everything in one platform instead of having them split things up or try to figure out. Jonathan mentioned how good the API is.

[00:08:00.410] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, if you’ve got all these disconnected tools that you’re trying to stitch together on some spider web, that can get integrated and confusing pretty quickly for a lot of lay people.

[00:08:10.940] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, the financial side, organizations want to integrate it in one platform, and it’s totally understandable, but that has consequences because you’re really putting all your eggs in one hat. Now, key things you need to know about membership management. I think we were discussing beforehand that you’ve also noticed, because Kurt also works with Lifter LMS, that a lot of nonprofits and associations have been doing inquiries about community. And I’ve noticed this because it’s a great way of of increasing what is seen as the value. It enables the nonprofit to engage online with some of its key sponsors and its key supporters. And with sociologists, It just is seen as a way of offering more value, more engagement to the association membership. So what’s your views on this and what have you noticed, Kerr?

[00:09:30.140] – Kurt von Ahnen

The community aspect does come up a lot, Jonathan, but this is where we start to talk about, again, more strategies, right? So when we’re consulting, we’re asking questions, how big is your audience? That’s all those things. And then community comes up. But that’s when We have things like what’s in your notes, where we have to define what a membership tier is or come up with these strategies that we say not everybody gets access to the community. Maybe you get access to this part or this group within the community, or you get access to a profile page within the community. It’s hard because on one hand, you’re running the community and you want to be everything to everybody all the time. You want to reduce the friction and get as many people in communicating and interacting with you as possible because you feel like that’s going to drive your revenue, drive your givership. But in reality, we need to strategize things and section things out better and come at things with a more a stepping stone approach. And so that’s the communication I have with a lot of folks. It’s like, community is a great idea, but do you have the people?

[00:10:38.690] – Kurt von Ahnen

Do you have the energy? Will enough people interact with it? And then if you have a lot of people to interact with it, How are you going to manage and moderate that interaction?

[00:10:48.840] – Jonathan Denwood

In our notes, I’ve got the key things you need to know about membership management. Define your clear membership tiers, offer exclusive membership benefits, make sign up and renewal seamless, track and use member data wisely, celebrate milestones and achievements. They’re all about… Because you’re trying to build as a nonprofit, and to some extent, association, membership, recurring subscription, recurring donation, being part of a community as either a volunteer or somebody financially, or there’s a lot of overlap. What’s your own response to this initial list?

[00:11:37.440] – Kurt von Ahnen

The list is pretty good. The one that I think catches a lot of people out, and it’s almost like out of the eLearning space, is that celebrate the milestones and achievements. I’m in the great cycle challenge every year. I just did my eighth year, and every year I say, That’s it, I’m not going to do it anymore. And then every year they send out an email with, Hey, it’s your seventh year, it’s your eighth year, here’s your free T-shirt. Here’s your whatever. And next thing you know, you’re in again. So I already know that whether I say I’m going to do it or not, I’m going to do the ninth year next year. I think when you set these things up, and again, when you come at it with strategy and you say, what are the membership tiers? What do people get access to for different levels of membership? What are the benefits? How do we make sign up and renewal easy, seamless, reduce friction, right? And then the milestones and achievements. If you actually incorporate that into an actual plan and you execute that plan, Jonathan, your online association, your online nonprofit, is going to have a much higher degree of success.

[00:12:41.420] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s what I’m doing these things in a sustainable way. Methodical way is why you need a CRM when you get to a certain size. But it depends. There’s a lot of CRM solutions out there, some specifically designed for nonprofits and associations, others are SaaS-based broad solutions, and then WordPress has some offerings, which we’re going to be discussing in the second half. Type a nonprofit member Community memberships, we touched on that, subscription-based membership, volunteer membership, donor-based membership, corporate and institutional membership. My experience, a lot of medium nonprofits to larger ones, only the most smallest basics, they have to cater for all these type, or they should do. That’s another reason to have a CRM that can also integrate with the financial software that the organization’s using. What’s your thoughts about this?

[00:13:54.360] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, if you’re using your CRM effectively and you’re able to segment your list appropriately, whether it’s through segments or tags, you’re going to have a much better chance at this. So if I’m in a nonprofit and I’m catering to corporate institutional memberships, but I’ve also got individual smaller memberships or a volunteer team, I’m going to have a segment or a list that’s for volunteers. I’m going to have a segment that’s for independent donors, and I’m going to have a segment that is for corporate givers that typically give it a higher value. And so if I use those segments and I use those tags correctly in the CRM, and I can customize the messaging that goes to those separate segmented audiences, again, because you don’t want to send a message out that celebrates some great independent donation at $1,500 to a corporate base that’s playing at $10,000, $20,000 ranges because it confuses the messaging. So you don’t want to celebrate a small giving to a larger audience. And currently, you don’t want to send out a message to individual members, where you’re celebrating these corporate people donating $2,500, $3,000, $40,000, because then they get the feeling that their contribution isn’t good enough.

[00:15:17.040] – Kurt von Ahnen

And so a CRM is really intuitive because you’re able to customize the messaging based on the level.

[00:15:22.500] – Jonathan Denwood

It depends on the CRM. But I’m going to list the last one, benefits of membership software or CRM. This is the olifactor folk. These terms are very interchangeable, and this causes a load. There’s different types of CRM. There’s those that were very sales-orientated in their history. There’s others that are more digital marketing-orientated. There’s different flavors of CRM, and a lot of them, the ones that not specifically focus that Nonprofits Association, they offer add-on that give increased functionality to those particular two sectors, but they are dominated by their history. I hope that’s making sense. So benefits of the membership software, member tracking and segmentation, which you touched on, Kurt. Better member communication, you hope. Enhance fund rising opportunities, automated application payment and renewal, centralized data from smarter decisions. So this is this, and I’ve worked with a few medium and one particular large that’s been a customer of mine, a customer of WP Tonic for over seven years. And they had a lot of custom software built in-house around Microsoft technology, and it was around their subscription. They had full-time auditors and a small financial department as part of this. This became a big issue because they had all this custom design software in the Microsoft, and they were looking at a CRM that could do the financial, but could also combine the digital marketing, the email elements as well, have a much more and provide reports for the management of the association.

[00:17:50.140] – Jonathan Denwood

So there’s this area between financial guidance and knowing what’s going on and having the information about the subscriptions or the donations. There’s the part around digital marketing and reducing churn, increasing membership, increasing volunteers. And then there’s the actual reports how the system can display insights and data in a way that is reasonably easy to communicate to the management team. What’s your response what I’ve just outlined, Kurt?

[00:18:34.420] – Kurt von Ahnen

The connection to the financials is where you’ve lost me a little bit. Can you describe to me what… Because you said that a few times in the show, What are you talking about, the separation?

[00:18:47.580] – Jonathan Denwood

Yes, sorry. Well, I’m just basing on this client. Like I said, they had this Microsoft-coded solution that was done in-house when they had a couple of developers Microsoft developers, and it was clunky. They had been using it for five, six. I think they’re still using it. I think they’ve invested more money on the outside consultancy. The website is WordPress, and the actual courses, they’re using a third-party plugin, and they really didn’t look into it. It’s quite expensive and they find it restrictive, but I could never persuade them to move to WordPress, the actual learning management system, because then they were looking at a custom for the CRM side, which is the financial side. Deposits gives you financial reports. There’s CRMs that can handle that, and then there’s other CRMs that are really purely focused on At digital marketing. I haven’t placed it on the list that we’re going to discuss in the second half, but it just comes to mind. It’s active campaign. Active campaign is a fantastic SaaS digital marketing, email marketing platform, but it doesn’t offer insight. It’s not focused on sales reports or providing reports on how many subscribers or how many donors.

[00:20:35.740] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s not built for that, is it?

[00:20:37.680] – Kurt von Ahnen

No, no. Yeah, and so when you were describing that client situation, that’s the nightmare that I was talking about at the beginning of our episode today. And it’s like these people that use Eventbrite for their events and then try to think that the Eventbrite registrations aren’t counted as their CRM in some way. I mean, there’s just this disconnection between data and what to do with data at these organizations that that seems to run rampant. I think it really takes a single minded professional to come in and really just what are all of the moving pieces, and then how do we assemble these pieces into the most perfect puzzle possible? It’s never perfect, but how do we get to the closest to perfect as possible? It’s a big ask, especially with a team of people.

[00:21:28.380] – Jonathan Denwood

I think the thing is the median road, folks, all embracing… Because they were looking at Salesforce, and Salesforce has a specific platform aimed at nonprofits. But when they found out how much it would to hire consultancy and work out if they could ditch this purpose-made system, which dealt with their subscriptions. They backed off for understandable reasons because they got really priced for it. They’re still using, they got a really, which we maintain, really fantastic-looking WordPress website, but they got a iffy back-end system which has been improved, but doesn’t the reporting and the digital platform that will enable them to move forward. I’m bringing this up because I think there’s a lot of nonprofits, a lot of associations in that situation. What do you reckon?

[00:22:49.780] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, there’s a ton of people that they feel like they’re locked in or they feel like they can’t make a decision. I think that their finances get way by the time they start looking at how they spread themselves out.

[00:23:03.820] – Jonathan Denwood

I think there’s a middle road, folks. I think be wary, I’m just basing this on my experience, be wary of all embracing solutions unless you can hire expert and you got a relationship and you really understand the limitations and the benefits because it might be all embracing, but if you ever need to leave it, that’s going to be difficult. The other route is the Frankenstein route, where you just got this bitty-bitty hitchhog, I’m struggling for the term, hopefully, where it’s all separate bits that’s just been bolted together over the years. And I think you touched on that. I think that’s problematic as well. I think the middle road is not to rely on a total all-embracing solution, but minimize the amount of separate different software programs that you’re using to a more common sense level. Before we go to our break, How would you respond to that, Kurt?

[00:24:17.980] – Kurt von Ahnen

I’m in the same ballpark, Jonathan. I just feel sorry for these folks that get spread out, get lost on the mission. They get so tied up in the different tools and however things split up and watered down that they become ineffective. And the goal is to stay effective, interact with your membership, and drive and retain giving. And unfortunately, Technology was supposed to make things easier for us. As we’ve seen over the last few decades, it’s continually gotten more confusing. The more we can direct people in a clearer path, I think the happier they’re going to be.

[00:24:55.960] – Jonathan Denwood

This doesn’t apply just to nonprofits and association These scenarios apply to private industry, especially the larger ones in the IT industry. It’s notorious for medium to large changes of CRM not go well, actually don’t function correctly. I’ve known people that have been consulting and brought in at the last minute, and they have had to ditch whole systems problems because they just didn’t work as prescribed, which is disastrous and very expensive. I’m not just choosing to point this out just for nonprofits and associations. We’ve had a good first half. I think both me and Kirk are giving you some insights and things to think about. When we come back in the second half, we will be talking about some of the solutions out there. It should be a great second half We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Before we go into the second half, I want to point out we’ve got some great special offers from the sponsors of the show. They are much appreciated. Kinster, Rollback, and Lifter LMS. You get some great special offers from them, plus a created list of the best WordPress technology and services.

[00:26:30.000] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s a great resource. You can get this free resources by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals, wp-tonic. Com/deals. Plus, you get a special offer on a course that Kirek does that shows you how to build a WordPress membership website from beginning to end using the best and most modern WordPress technology. And you get that at a discount as well. What more could you ask for? So let’s delve in. So I see there’s three buckets here, Kurt. There’s CRM, specifically designed for nonprofits. Then there’s offerings that are not specifically designed. Their history wasn’t specifically designed for nonprofits, but they add functionality by add-ons or additional software or a offering to nonprofits. Then you got WordPress that doesn’t offer CRM up to some of the Pacifics and SaaS. It’s more marketing. There are some CRMs. We’re probably going to talk about… I didn’t add it to the list I gave to you, Kurt, but we’re probably going to discuss fluency CRM, but that’s a marketing, but you could adapt it. It, I think. But WordPress does have a solution that means you don’t have to use custom coding, and that’s WP Fusion. But we’re going to start off with a non-specialised, but a very popular solution.

[00:28:19.740] – Jonathan Denwood

We’re going to start with HubSpot for nonprofits. It does offer some benefits because there’s like WP Fusion, and there’s a lot of software out there in the WordPress space. If you’re running, that will integrate with HubSpot quite effectively. What’s your thoughts about HubSpot in general?

[00:28:44.210] – Kurt von Ahnen

I’ve tried HubSpot a couple of times, and I’ve done some integrations for clients with HubSpot. I have found a small percentage of people that use HubSpot that grow to love it over time, but it’s a small percentage. I find a lot of people get into it and then never really figure out how to optimize it and bail. It’s one of those that’s deceivingly simple-looking in its interface, but not simple in its use. I think that with its learning curve and its very strange marketing. I think it scares a lot of people off because it’s advertised as the free forever CRM, but you and I both know that it can become a very expensive tool once you scale.

[00:29:27.480] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, it depends on how you classify it. It’s expensive It’s impressive, isn’t it? Compared to one of the solutions that we’re going to be discussing on this list. But they do offer a free plan that’s not crippled, but it does have… There’s definitely a functionality that’s not offered in the free. It’s not as crippled as something like Zolo CRM, because that has got elements in its free program that should not have been crippled. So I’m going to be switching from Zolo CRM to HubSpot, but I’m going to use it for customer records and that in the new year, because I’ve been laggard about it, because I’ve just been concentrating on building the business up, and that’s had consequences. But yeah, because the professional, the one up from the free folk starts at 800, and then you got that starts at 3,600 a month. On these plans, you do get a 40% discount if you’re a nonprofit, and you can prove that you’re a nonprofit. I think what you said about it was quite insightful. When you start out with it, it does seem reasonably easy, but a lot, it gets complicated quite quick. But compared to some of the systems I’ve used, I used to…

[00:31:02.540] – Jonathan Denwood

They had a reputation for their sales department, really being high-pressured about signing people up in multiple year contracts, which I didn’t like. But it’s a good platform, and it does offer a lot of integration paths with WordPress, right? Yeah. Especially with WP Fusion. Next one, NeonCRM.

[00:31:32.260] – Kurt von Ahnen

Neoncrm.

[00:31:33.500] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. Do you know anything about this at all?

[00:31:38.940] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, I started to dive in a little bit more about what it did because I wasn’t familiar with it. And it does a lot of things. Like earlier in the show, you were like, be wary of these all-in-one platforms. And it has a lot of stuff going on. It does blogging, it does research reports, it does a website assessment, it has a membership hub, which I think is why we really focused on it.

[00:32:04.880] – Jonathan Denwood

There’s over 20 of these systems aimed at nonprofits. It’s like learning management systems. There must be over 20 to 30 quasar corporate learning management systems out there. We couldn’t even cover. I’ve just chosen the ones that came up on my radar and also got some history with them. And then I did a dive on it about about how it integrates, and I found blog posts. One blog post says, The sales team said, Yeah, it’s got fantastic integration with WordPress. It doesn’t. It’s plugin hasn’t been updated for a long time. It starts at $99 a month. The next one goes up to $209, and the final one, until you have to have enterprise, is empowered at $400 a month. So So the prices are cheaper, but I would be a bit wary of it, especially if you got a WordPress website, if you wanted to integrate with it.

[00:33:09.100] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, and we were talking earlier, and bear with me on this one, I saw that it had a membership hub and it had a fundraising event planner and had those kinds of things. But when I was looking at the list of integrations, it started listing all the other CRMs. It started listing the Mailchimp, the constant contact, all of those. Then I started looking, and I don’t really see that the tool is a CRM. It looks like it does everything for a nonprofit except a CRM.

[00:33:41.420] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, this is the tricky thing. It really depends on what you think of CRM. It’s like the term managed hosting, Kurt. It’s been abused and generalized. I’m not sure if that word exists. It should do, shouldn’t it? Generalized? I think it does. Generalized. I think that’s a word. But I’m using it It’s been managed WordPress hosting. It’s been abused and generalized so much. I think the same thing applies to CRM. The term is so generalized now that it’s lost its meaning.

[00:34:16.320] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. To me, it’s the difference. People might think that Lifter LMS is a CRM because it has membership tools and it stores all the students’ data and all that stuff. But realistically, You need a CRM in addition to Lifter LMS to run a really professional learning platform.

[00:34:34.790] – Jonathan Denwood

You need the digital marketing side where it’s actually reporting and functionality around memberships is pretty strong for the WordPress space. But like what you just pointed out with this SaaS, Neon CRM, that was what I laughed at it because… And also I read these blog posts of previous people that tried to integrate WordPress, and they didn’t have a fantastic experience. Be very wary of folks that won’t charge for a deep discovery when they’re dealing with something like this because they will bell out on you if it gets too difficult, where they find that it’s not easy integration. They will just disappear, folks, because they will start losing money quite rapidly, and they will just bell on you. I’ve had to take over jobs where where that organizations have hired somebody that knew somebody in the organization, and they thought it was going to be easy to integrate something like the CRM with their WordPress website, and it didn’t work out. And they were gone. They were ghosted. On to the next one, a totally different beast, and that’s Salesforce. Now, For Salesforce, they had a pack which was called NPSP, and they’re still updating that pack.

[00:36:09.220] – Jonathan Denwood

It would offer functionality that was specifically targeted at nonprofit. About a year ago, they’re still offering it, but they’re offering a different solution called their cloud, their nonprofit cloud, and it’s a totally different way of doing It’s a lot better, but it’s going to cost money to bring in somebody and change. It’s a completely different way of doing it. It’s a migration, and we all know what migration means. Now, that’s why I said about HubSpot, and you said it was My experience in being a consultant around this, you got to be a certain size of enterprise or nonprofit or association to make it worthwhile to go to Salesforce. What’s your own thoughts about this, Kurt?

[00:37:21.800] – Kurt von Ahnen

People that I know that are on Salesforce, the biggest comment that I usually see from them is that it’s overkill or it’s micromanagement, especially for people on sales teams. But when you’re looking at it from a sales tool in a sales like production or distribution enterprise thing, if you’re in management, you do want a little bit of micromanagement on sales to see what’s going on. I think nonprofits are a little bit different. The pricing did confuse me, Jonathan, because it said, like the nonprofit Cloud Unlimited said, $100 per user per month. And then I was like, well, how do we define a user in a nonprofit?

[00:38:03.460] – Jonathan Denwood

Somebody does it. That’s it, isn’t it?

[00:38:06.260] – Kurt von Ahnen

It’s so cheap. If I’ve got three or four people on my team or on my board, am I paying access for each of those people? It just seemed a little convoluted to me.

[00:38:16.980] – Jonathan Denwood

But I think- It’s not cheap. You do get a discount. They do offer a discount like HubSpot if you’re a nonprofit.

[00:38:27.300] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. And you get your first 10 subscribers for free. I saw that part. So at least you could try it out and see if you actually really liked it before you paid for it.

[00:38:38.160] – Jonathan Denwood

A lot of nonprofits that do have a consultant. They do have somebody that has… Or they have volunteers under the control of a consultant. Most of them can’t afford to have somebody in-house that has admin certification to be able to run it, basically. But if you’re a certain organization at a certain level, it’s probably worth investigating. Then we got something specifically… Sorry, go on.

[00:39:11.020] – Kurt von Ahnen

I was going to say before we bail off a Salesforce, they do have a feature I didn’t see the other ones have, and that was it has some grant-making tool in it. If you’re a mid-size nonprofit that’s really focused on grants and government giving and stuff like that, this might be a tool worth looking at from that perspective.

[00:39:30.000] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s it. Thank you so much. That’s the other side that some of these offer because a lot of these organizations, they’re constantly putting in grants because it’s a lifeblood to a lot of organizations. On to one that’s like NEO CRM, Boomerang.

[00:39:51.420] – Kurt von Ahnen

Boomerang.

[00:39:52.600] – Jonathan Denwood

I like the name, Aussies. Very lower price level, fundraising 40, Boomerang CRM, 125. Volunteer, 190. I haven’t used it, but when I was doing my research for this show, folks, it was coming up quite a lot. There are a lot of these platforms out there, folks. But it was one that was coming up quite a bit. What do you think of this one?

[00:40:23.300] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, I think one of the things that’s going to make it rise to the top when people are doing the search is it’s got the availability of a mobile mobile application. And a lot of people in this space seem to focus on, Can I have an app? Can I have an app? Can I have an app? They have no idea how they’re going to leverage the app or value it’s going to bring to the organization. But it’s like a little bit of… What do we call that? It’s like mind control. It’s like people believe, oh, I have to have an app. And Bloomerang has a mobile app available. I also noticed it has a lot of the same tools like the Neon one that you did mention that you likened it to. When you take a look at the platform, it’s donation forms, reporting, event management. It does do some SMS and texting for fundraising attempts, so that’s cool. It seems like it’s interesting, and it’s cheap enough that you could try it and not lose the house.

[00:41:22.780] – Jonathan Denwood

No, it’s not going to be all in it. We said in the first half, folks, it’s such a broad It’s more marketing-orientated and fundraising, and it’s got the app. The app situation is very similar to communities. There’s certain SaaS that offer app, and it’s just overblown in a way because it’s a fully responsive website. Are your subscribers really going to download the app and put it on their phone? Probably not. They’re just not going to do it. So be wary of being stuck in there. I did some basic research. I don’t think integrating it. I don’t know how open their API is. I didn’t have enough time to do the research on that. It just depends on… I don’t think something like WP Fusion offers anything, integration with it. There might be some tools like It interacts with Sepier. Yeah. There’s some other WordPress-focused tools that offer scripts that will integrate it using webhooks. So have a look at it. But yeah. Finally, ClickUp. Clickup is all-embracing CRM. Very popular out there. They do offer an add-on that’s aimed at nonprofits. They also charge per user. So you got to find out what they call a user.

[00:43:13.620] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s very popular, but it also… I was surprised WP Fusion doesn’t offer any integration with ClickUp, so that’s out. I don’t know if there’s third-party Zappia or the WordPress equivalent out there that uses Webhook technology. But really, the only one I know that works That’s on this list that WP Fusion really works with is HubSpot. What’s your thoughts about ClickUp?

[00:43:55.960] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, ClickUp is picking up a lot of steam in our own circles, Jonathan. But most people that I know that use ClickUp, they come at it from a small business management, project management perspective. Clickup is known for a lot of project managers will use that to organize a project, Gantt charts, timing, all that stuff, track your milestones. So it’s a really great tool for that. I think using it in the mindset that we were talking about nonprofits earlier in this episode, I think it’s a little bit of a stretch for the use case. I think you could put goals in, you could put milestones in, you could assign certain things to certain people. But then it becomes more like project management than, say, a CRM-based tool. The feedback that I’ve had on ClickUp has been phenomenal. The people that use it seem to really like it. They like its flexibility. There’s some advanced tools in there. It does a lot with documentation and whiteboards.

[00:45:07.860] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, it came up against Notion, doesn’t it?

[00:45:11.300] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah.

[00:45:11.930] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s why it’s Notion. There’s people in the WordPress community that love Notion. Yeah. But I was never in fraud with it. A lot of people then looked at ClickUp. But it’s a totally different history, a different beast in a way, isn’t it?

[00:45:32.780] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. You can create dashboards in it and do analytics and look at your goals and things like that. But when I look at leveraging that type of platform for managing members and giving members the ability to interact and communicate with the board or the team, it doesn’t seem to fit that use case as well as some other things we’ve already talked about.

[00:45:57.360] – Jonathan Denwood

Now, finally, we’re going to look at WordPress. And on my research, something came up straight away, and that’s member press. They have an add-on aimed or, supposedly, a solution for nonprofits. I’m not a fan of member press, not because of the founder and the team there, it’s the parent company. And I know that people, if you go down the Member Press route, It becomes rather complicated to get out of it. I treat it as a WordPress semi-walled garden scenario that if you’re going down, you’re going to be stuck with it or you’re going to have to cut it totally out. I don’t know if you know about their nonprofit solution and what they’re offering. What’s your own views?

[00:46:56.500] – Kurt von Ahnen

Member Press was one of the things that, because of my interaction with Lifter, I steered away from because I had to fix a lot of sites where people had used Member Press to start a membership site and then tried to add the LMS and then confused themselves. So for me, having to unwind those projects or unwind those things just gave me a different connotation. However, I had a friend that went to work for Member Press and came away saying that he really thought the product was well made and well represented and hit a lot, I picked a lot of boxes on the list. I don’t want my personal experience to interfere with it because I was seeing it from a different perspective. I’m going to switch the channel on this one. I’ve used paid memberships pro similarly for other clients, and I’ve been really happy with paid memberships pro.

[00:47:50.300] – Jonathan Denwood

I’ve got about that. Because really, MemberPress got popular because it worked with LearnDash, and with LearnDash, you really needed a membership plugin. The way it handles membership is a little bit strange. It’s effective. It’s a well-coded platform. They pushed it towards coaches, nonprofits, and specific verticals. Then you got something like… I’ve got Lifter, but it’s dealing with membership. Then I’ve also got Fluent Community, and then from Fluent, I’ve got their Paymatic, which is their donation solution. Then I’ve got GiveWP, and I added WP Fusion and Fluent at the last minute, which I didn’t share with you. But it’s a hodgepodge. But there’s nothing wrong with a hodgepodge, is there? But I think it isn’t easy. I don’t know what to say. Save me, Kirk. How would you wrap this up?

[00:49:09.720] – Kurt von Ahnen

That’s the whole thing. When we get into WordPress, our job, unfortunately, is to try to explain to regular people out there, away from this, why this is a good choice. I already mentioned the pros of paid memberships. So let’s say that you’re not going to have any courses at all, right? So you’re like, well, I really don’t need the So I think Lifter LMS has phenomenal membership management tools. I have projects where I have used Lifter LMS with no courses whatsoever, to use the membership tools because there are membership restriction tools that are in place. You can sell memberships, you can track your orders, which means you’re tracking your subscriptions, all those things. So I think Lifter works really great in that space. But let’s say I don’t want to go that route because I don’t have any courses. Paid Memberships Pro is an excellent membership platform with a lot of really key add-ons. So if there are specific things your organization needs to do, there are add-ons that usually fit the bill for you. But to your point, Jonathan, we were talking earlier about CRMs, segmentation, tags, and real marketing, messaging, and related things.

[00:50:21.150] – Kurt von Ahnen

And with WP Tonic Hosting, we could put in Fluent CRM Pro and Fluent Forms. You have access to LifterLMS with our LMS and those membership tools, if you like. I mean, we could build a really formidable nonprofit tool in that space and give people the freedom to design, the freedom to own, and the flexibility to scale as their project grows. We mentioned community. So, okay, earlier I said, if you don’t have the interactivity or the numbers or the audience to run a community effectively yet, well then don’t. You don’t even have to worry about it. But when you’re ready, you could always scale.

[00:51:01.160] – Jonathan Denwood

I think you put that well because what you’re really saying, which I wasn’t explaining, is modularization. It’s an enormous strength because here’s a big jump to move to HubSpot, especially if you’re going to start using the paid version. It’s a big jump to Salesforce. You’ve got to be a pretty specific size organization to look at it. Then you start looking at all-embracing solutions at a lower price. They are attractive folks. I haven’t used Boomerang, but Kirek pointed out that they’re pushing the app and the digital side. But is the subscription and the reporting up to snuff? I find that these all-embracing CRMs are strong in one or two areas but very weak in the third and fourth. That’s what I’m based on my experience: you invested a lot of money in them, they’re weak in one or two areas, and you’re stuck with them.

[00:52:09.960] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. Then, just thinking out loud, Jonathan, on the platforms we consistently build with the Fluent CRM setup we use, we have automation features that trigger if someone buys us, because we talked about tiers. So if someone buys an enterprise membership, they get put into this segmentation and this automation. If someone buys the individual giving plan, they get put into this segmentation and this automation. And those automations can do all kinds of things. They can add you to extra memberships. They could give you a free mini-course. They could send you a separate list of coupons or engagements, events. They could register you for events.

[00:52:53.900] – Jonathan Denwood

The Fluent CRM provides some nice reporting functionality. Is there any equipment as good as ActiveCampaign? Well, where a lot of people are, it’s not providing the insight reporting we’re looking for around subscriptions and Jonathan. And to be quite truthful, I know in my heart that the management of these organizations is stressed out as it is, the idea that they’re going to spend a lot of time. But the only thing that’s going to change all this is that you got AI, and how WordPress and these systems use AI agents will be able to gather information and produce custom reports to your heart’s content. That’s all coming up in the next year, 18 months, and it’s going to change the whole scenario quite dramatically. I think we’ll end it now. So hopefully we’re giving you some good, clear insights and info. We love your feedback, folks. If you go to the WPTonic YouTube channel, this actual show will be on there. And subscribe to the channel. Please share your feedback on the subjects you’d like us to cover in the new year. We love your feedback. Also, think about subscribing.

[00:54:20.400] – Jonathan Denwood

If you’re using Spotify or iTunes, can you leave us a review? It’s the best way to it show us to new people, and it grows the podcast. Kurt would much appreciate that. So, Kurt, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?

[00:54:39.100] – Kurt von Ahnen

Personal stuff is on LinkedIn. Just make the connection on LinkedIn. I’m the only Kurt von Ahnen there. If you find me, I’m it.

[00:54:46.400] – Jonathan Denwood

And like I say, we will be back next week with another show, helping you build membership, community, marketing, and anything else to help you have a successful business, or, if you’re a large organization, make the right choices. We will be back next week. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.

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