In a tough economy like the one we’re currently living through, charities can struggle due to falling donations and smaller campaigning and fundraising budgets. A CRM system can be a valuable tool for a charity needing to manage its contacts, and there are some very cost effective and even free CRM software options to choose between.
At its heart, CRM is all about fostering relationships – the ultimate driver behind helping others, the key mantra for charities.
Nonprofit organisations (NPOs) therefore need a people-focused CRM system that can organise and encourage donations, while communicating to donors and trustees what your foundation is about and where their money is going.
Below, our expert team of analysts has identified the top systems for NPOs. Our results are based on specific criteria including discounts, feature-focuses, and charity structures.
- Freshsales – best overall choice, with premium contact outreach tools that can maximise fundraising efforts
- Salesforce – a good choice for very large charities, with deep reporting tools
- HubSpot – outstanding campaign tools that help with brand awareness
- monday CRM – a user-friendly, excellent choice for volunteer management
- Zoho CRM – a good choice for managing grant applications
We’ve put in the research to help you identify the best CRM for the particular needs of your charity or non-profit. You can read the guide below for more detail on each of the CRM prviders we’d recommend.
Short on time? You can also use the Startups free online quote-matching tool. Simply fill in some general details about your charity, and we’ll connect you with our top recommended providers.
| BEST OVERALL  |  |  |  |  |
| Best for: Community development charities | Best for: Charities with lots of trustees | Best for: Seasonal fundraising | Best for: Shelters or hospices | Best for: Large-scale fundrasing projects |
| Price per month (billed annually): Free plan, or £7 per user | Price per month (billed annually): £20 per user | Price per month (billed annually): Free Plan, or from £14 per user | Price per month (billed annually): | Price per month (billed annually): £12 per user |
| Nonprofit discount? N/A | Nonprofit discount? Contact sales | Nonprofit discount? 40% off higher tiers | Nonprofit discount? 10 free users, then 70% off | Nonprofit discount? Contact sales team |
| Features:
| Features:
| Features:
| Features:
| Features:
|
| Contact limit: Unlimited | Contact limit: Unlimited | Contact limit: 1 million | Contact limit: Unlimited | Contact limit: 100,000 |
| Start Free Trial | Start Free Trial | Start Free Trial | Start Free Trial | Start Free Trial |
This page is part of a larger series on CRM. Read more about the top CRM systems in our full guide:
Best CRM Software for Small BusinessesThis article will cover:
- Freshsales for Donor outreach and tracking
- Salesforce for Impact reporting
- HubSpot for Fundraising campaigns
- monday CRM for Volunteer management
- Zoho CRM for Grant applications
- How do I find the best CRM for charities?
- Verdict
- What are the benefits of using a charity CRM?
- How we test CRM systems for UK small businesses
Freshsales for donor outreach and tracking
Best for: community development charities
- Free trial? Yes
- Brilliant customer support
- Automated workflows make managing work easy
- Automated emails for campaigns and fundraising events
- Built-in phone system and pay-as-you-go call rates
- Mobile app for fundraising out and about
- Some feature limitations on lower tiers
- Can’t create invoices for donations
If you’re running a community-based organisation, like a local food bank or arts collective, we think Freshsales is the best CRM for you.
As an incredibly easy-to-use system with a penchant for customisation, you can store pretty much every bit of information about your donors in Freshsales, including addresses for door-to-door visits.
Communication is a must when it comes to raising money. People want to know exactly what they’re donating to and where their money has gone. Freshsales boasts a built-in phone dialer with pay-as-you-go call rates for low-cost donor outreach.
You can use this service to make as many phone calls as you’d like from inside the system. All relevant information – such as a donor’s bank details, name, and email – can then be quickly logged into the Freshsales system.
Freshsales’ AI tool ‘Freddy’ is also clever enough to allocate an automatic lead score to your contact. This is a great way to recognise and reward valuable supporter relationship and understand what you can do to retain those important customers.
Freshsales pricing
Freshsales costs £7 per user for its lowest-priced plan, putting it in the middle of the CRM cost spectrum. One area we think Freshsales doesn’t score so well in is feature allowances.
Most of its elements have caps. For instance, while it permits an unlimited number of contacts, only 1,000 of these can be used for marketing emails per month on the Freshsales Growth plan.
- Freshsales Free – £0
- Freshsales Growth – £7 per user, per month (billed annually)
- Freshsales Pro – £29 per user, per month (billed annually)
- Freshsales Enterprise – £49 per user, per month (billed annually)
Salesforce for impact reporting
Best for: charities with lots of trustees
- Free trial? Yes
- Hundreds of prebuilt charts and template options for a quick overview of your sales pipeline
- Our highest-scoring CRM software for organisational tools and contact management
- Huge range of reporting tools
- ‘Chatter’ function for cross-departmental communication
- Custom dashboard to monitor fundraising targets
- Business-centric jargon eg. ‘sales’ instead of ‘donations’
- Steeper learning curve than platforms like Freshsales
Our full review of the Salesforce platform outlines that Salesforce is an incredibly sophisticated CRM tool, which makes it ideal for NPOs with complex operations and lots of trustees.
As you’ll be aware, every charity needs to prepare a trustee annual review each year, outlining where you’ve got your money from and what you’re planning to do with it.
Startups’ specialist team of testers found that Salesforce has the biggest range of dashboards and reports among all of our CRM brands, dramatically simplifying the process.
These include:
- Deal reports
- Activity reports
- Lead reports
- Revenue reports
- Custom reports
Displaying this data is also very easy. You can use number and speedometer widgets or select a donut, funnel, line, bar, or dot chart.
Used alongside Salesforce’s high-powered analytics – including website visitor tracking – you can build real insights for your donor base and present key information to stakeholders. Such transparency is crucial to nurturing important working relationships with large partners.
Salesforce pricing
Salesforce Essential costs £20 per user, per month.
However, NPOs should contact the Salesforce customer team to qualify for Salesforce’s special ‘Power for Us’ package, which provides charities with 10 free subscriptions.
- Salesforce Essential – £20 per user, per month (billed annually)
- Salesforce Professional – £64 per user, per month (billed annually)
- Salesforce Enterprise – £132 per user, per month (billed annually)
- Salesforce Unlimited – £264 per user, per month (billed annually)
HubSpot for fundraising campaigns
Best for: seasonal fundraising
- Free trial? Yes
- Intuitive user interface
- Brilliant email marketing features that make it easy to attract new business
- Permanently free plan for unlimited users
- Social media lead generation
- Free library of nonprofit resources
- Poor customer support tools
- No security emails
For campaigning and awareness, HubSpot’s scores are green across the board. A favourite amongst cash-poor charities due to its generous free plan, HubSpot takes care of all those repetitive outreach tasks that can take up a lot of management time.
Users can send follow up emails directly to donors from the HubSpot system. You can also send autoresponses, and gather insights on who is reading and engaging with your messages.
We therefore most recommend HubSpot to those who carry out seasonal campaigns – for example, themed sends during Christmas.
Another strong point is that HubSpot integrates with website builders, so you can use it for lead generation via webforms or pop-ups.
As a charitable cherry on top, you can also integrate HubSpot with ecommerce builders like BigCommerce and WooCommerce. This is a great way to upsell any charity merchandise sold on your website.
HubSpot pricing
NPOs with more capital to spare can apply for HubSpot CRM’s nonprofit program, which offers a 40% discount for higher tiers.
However, these start from around £300 per month. As we noted in our HubSpot review, the HubSpot Marketing Hub Starter pack is a better way to spend your money (£18 per month, billed annually).
- HubSpot Free – £0 per month
- HubSpot Marketing Hub Starter Plan – £18 per user, per month
- HubSpot Sales Hub Starter Plan – £18 per user, per month
- HubSpot Service Hub Starter Plan – £18 per user, per month
monday CRM for volunteer management
Best for: shelters or hospices
- Free trial? Yes
- Ecommerce integrations offered - rare for a CRM tool
- Excellent customisation means you won't have to redesign your existing CRM process
- Simple ‘traffic-light’ colour coded system
- First-class resource for managing staff
- Intuitive customisation tools
- Confusing pricing structure
- Can be slow to use
A large number of volunteers is exactly what a lot of charities want – but this can create issues when it comes to shift scheduling and communication.
monday CRM is our top nonprofit CRM for volunteer management. This is due to a set of fantastic customisable tools, for which we gave monday full marks in our latest round of user testing. It’s also one of the many reasons monday CRM took the crown as our best CRM for small business overall.
A particular highlight is the app’s preset templates. Drag-and-drop functionality means users can effortlessly move these around to:
- Assign volunteer tasks/shifts
- Instantly visualise volunteer availability and capacity
- Automate post-event feedback forms
- Create volunteer profiles with detailed notes
Being able to organise and coordinate each staff member is a smart way to improve the volunteer experience and increase retention, saving you time that would otherwise be spent attracting new talent. Still, if you need to recruit new volunteers, monday CRM can take care of that as well.
Using its web form feature, you can embed integrated recruitment forms into your website, so people can easily sign up to support your cause.
monday CRM pricing
We recommend monday CRM Basic. It permits unlimited users for just £10 per seat. Here are the other monday plan costs:
- Basic – £10 per seat, per month (annual billing, minimum 3 users)
- Standard – £14 per seat, per month (annual billing)
- Pro – £24 per seat, per month (annual billing)
- Enterprise – bespoke pricing
Complaints about monday CRM’s confusing pricing structure are common amongst users. If you want to know more about how much the platform will cost you, read our monday.com pricing guide.
Zoho CRM for grant applications
Best for: large-scale projects
- Free trial? Yes
- Excellent onboarding and support functions
- Huge range of report types
- Clever social media workflow function
- Lots of integrations available for advanced CRM functions
- Particularly good for customer service tools
- Mobile app has been described as clunky
- Less intuitive than other platforms when creating a workflow
Grant proposals take up a lot of time. If you’re wanting to get a project up and running quickly – for example, if you need the money to build a new play area in a local park – then you want to make the process go as smoothly as possible.
We think Zoho CRM is the best system for this duty due to its superb document management system.
Users have access to a central library with relevant preset document templates. Need to find a particular donation invoice or a volunteer’s sponsorship form? Zoho stores all of this information in one easily accessible location.
You’ll even have user hierarchies, so you can control who has access to which documents at any time.
Surprisingly, one of the most common reasons for proposal rejection is simple: the deadline for submission was not met.
Zoho CRM’s time management features include a calendar, appointment scheduling, and automated reminders. These will ensure that every grant or award application you submit is done on time, so you won’t have to sacrifice funding due to silly time-based errors.
Zoho CRM pricing
Priced at £12 per user, per month, Zoho CRM has excellent value for money thanks to its premium offering and affordable cost.
- Zoho CRM Free – £0
- Zoho CRM Standard – £12 per user, per month (billed annually)
- Zoho CRM Professional – £18 per user, per month (billed annually)
- Zoho CRM Enterprise – £35 per user, per month (billed annually)
How do I find the best CRM for charities?
Does it integrate with accountancy software?
An area of charity management that you really don’t want to get wrong is financial planning. Most nonprofits will use accounting software to manage their money.
We’d recommend you look for a CRM for charities which integrates with your existing tools so you don’t need to waste time downloading new platforms.
What are the contact limits?
Outreach is a really important part of attracting donations. Some CRM systems have contact limits on how many potential leads you can store, so it’s a good idea to check this beforehand.
Does it have a Document Management System (DMS)?
Another key requirement for nonprofit CRMs is that they have a DMS, for storing and sharing sponsorship forms, grant proposals, contracts, and any other document that you frequently use.
- Freshsales
- Salesforce
- HubSpot
- monday CRM
- Zoho CRM
Do you need a bespoke solution?
These recommendations come from our team of CRM experts. They are based on over five years of exhaustive research into the market.
But running an NPO can bring a unique set of challenges that you might also need to consider. To help you out, Startups has built a free-to-use online CRM comparison tool, designed to match you to the most suitable provider in just one minute.
Verdict
Freshsales is our top charity CRM software. You should choose Freshsales if you’re running a community-based organisation that needs to engage in local outreach and donation drives.
- Salesforce has lots of nonprofit-specialist discounts and package deals. Advanced reporting tools also make it a good option for those with lots of trustees.
- HubSpot is the best charity CRM for those running regular annual or seasonal campaigns. Its email marketing features are second to none.
- monday CRM is our top choice for nonprofit organisations that need to manage large numbers of volunteer staff, such as those running homeless shelters or hospices
- Zoho CRM is best suited for charities that engage in large-scale projects. Its outstanding DMS is ideal for fundraising packs or grant applications.
What are the benefits of using a charity CRM?
Spreads awareness
CRMs are excellent for email marketing campaigns. These are a great way to engage in lead generation and spread awareness of the work your charity is doing.
Some CRMs, like HubSpot, boast in-built email design editors to personalise your emails. You can also use charity software to apply automated outreach tools to send regular appeals or personalised updates to your donor list.
Manages admin tasks
Because charities don’t have a lot of resources, many complex duties like managing finance, HR, and communications are often handled by one charity administrator.
CRM software helps to automate or simplify a lot of these tasks. For example, by storing meeting minutes inside the database to be automatically distributed to colleagues.
Makes reporting easier
Charity CRM software manages, analyses, and stores data for use by every employee or volunteer. This information can be used for many purposes, including creating visual donation pipelines and attracting corporate business partners.
How we test CRM systems for UK small businesses
At Startups, it's important to us that the product recommendations we make to small UK businesses are useful, accurate, and based on thorough product testing.
We tested 13 CRM systems across seven main categories of investigation and 13 subcategories – all in all, we covered 84 areas of investigation. Next, we gave a ‘relevance weighting' to the final product category scores - this ensures the products' final ratings perfectly reflect the specific needs and requirements of Startups readers.
Our main testing categories for CRM systems are:
Features: the functionalities and capabilities provided by the CRM software, including contact management, lead and opportunity tracking, and task and activity management.
Help and Support: the assistance and resources available to users when they encounter issues or need guidance while using the CRM software.
Customisation: the ability to tailor the CRM software to suit the specific needs and processes of the organization, including customising fields, layouts, and workflows.
Scalability: the ability of the CRM software to accommodate the growth and changing needs of the organization, such as the capacity to handle a growing customer database.
Price: the cost associated with using the CRM software. It includes factors such as licensing fees and subscription plans.
Team Structure – Sales CRM: determining if a platform makes it easier to manage large sales teams, including team dashboards and team hierarchies.
Usability – Small Business CRM: assessing the simplicity of the interface, the ease of navigating through menus and options, and the overall user experience.
The Startups product testing process
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