Best Practices for Optimising Your Workflow with Engage CRM

Engage is a CRM built specifically for charities and nonprofit organizations (NGOs), designed to help manage donations, donor relationships, and streamline operations. With its rich feature set and intuitive design, Engage empowers organizations to optimize fundraising, enhance donor engagement, and operate with greater flexibility.

Here’s how your charity can make the most of the Engage CRM:

1. Manage Donor Data with Engage

• Engage centralizes donor information (phone numbers, emails, preferences) in one secure location for easier access.
• Engage supports targeted outreach based on preferred contact methods (email or phone).
• Enables personalized engagement with high-value donors.
• Eliminates the need to manage donor data across multiple tools, improving fundraising and reporting efficiency.

2. Gift Aid Claims

tip

A pre-requisite for Gift Aid to be effective is to ensure you import and input all data accurately into the Engage CRM.

• Engage facilitates quick and accurate Gift Aid claims and reports on donations between set key dates, with minimum readily available donor details like first & last name, postal address and latest Gift aid preference.

3. Keep an Updated Donor Database

• Import donor data from external platforms (e.g., LaunchGood, JustGiving) into Engage regularly. This centralizes date for furture fundraising campaigns and data mining.

4. Create and Maintain Pledges

• Create fundraising pledges into the system via three methods:

  • Add them manually via call campaigns or events.
  • Import them with donation data from third party platforms e.g. Launchgood, etc.
  • Utilize N3O’s crowdfunding platform for automated updates into the CRM.

• Once pledges come into the system, you can contact the pledge owners/fundraisers by phone or email to encourage them to fulfil and complete their pledge goals. However, it is best to ask your fundraisers to work alongside them to try and complete the pledges, thereby creating an important relationship that can be developed in the future.

5. Call Center Functionality

• Create targeted call list campaigns for your donors. Some are explained in the table below.

Campaign	Description	Benefit
Fundraise Campaign	Standard fundraising campaign.	To fundraise and raise donations.
Gift Aid Preference	Contact donors who have an unspecified gift aid preference. By converting them, you can generate significant additional gift aid income.	To develop admin cost pool.
Sponsorships Renewal	A list of all sponsorships ending in the next "30-60" days ( a call to renew before they end the sponsorship).	To recoup lost funds.
Emergency Campaign	A full outbound campaign to raise funds and awareness for any emergency outbreak.	For fundraising and awareness.
Regular Giving Campaign	A targeted campaign for only one-off donors and try to convert them to small, regular donors.	To fundraise and raise donations.
Thankyou Campaign	A thankyou campaign targeted for long-term supporters without asking to fundraise.	Providing customer satisfaction.
VIP or High-Net Worth Donor Invites	A campaign to target high-net worth donors for invitation to events, offerings or even a simple thankyou.	Providing customer satisfaction.

• Activate the call dialer to ensure synchronization between the call center team and the numerous calls. Train your team to take full information from the donor onto the CRM.

• Set up call compliance to ensure donors are not called too many times within a small amount of time. N3O suggests contracting or employing a donor care consultant to help manage the team recruitment, hardware setup, performance KPI's, scheduling etc., to maximise the benefit.

6. Create and Manage Email Campaigns

• Create email campaigns based on key donor segmentation. Instead of sending the same email to everyone, utilize the data and merge fields in Engage to slice & dice your donors with targeted messaging. Some examples below include:

Email Campaigns	Description	Benefit
Event Invitations	A bespoke invitation to donors who live within a certain city/postcode.	Provide customer satisfaction.
Gift Aid Preference	Contact donors who have an unspecified gift aid preference. By converting them, you can generate significant additional gift aid income.	To develop admin cost pool.
General Project Feedback	Collate donors who have donated to a specific project/fund/location and provide them a focused email on the update of these projects.	To gain customer trust.
Emergency Campaign	A full outbound campaign to raise funds and awareness for any emergency outbreak.	For fundraising and awareness.
Regular Giving Campaign	A targeted campaign for only one-off donors and try to convert them to small, regular donors.	To fundraise and raise donations.
5 year Certificate of Appreciation	Select donors who have supported your organization for over 5 years and send them apprciation emails.	Providing customer satisfaction.
VIP or High-Net Worth Donor Invites	A campaign to target high-net worth donors for invitation to events, offerings or even a simple thankyou.	Providing customer satisfaction.

7. Create and Manage SMS/WhatsApp Campaigns

• Create bespoke SMS outbound campaigns just like the ones created for email campaigns.

• It is also possible to send some of the following via SMS or WhatsApp, if you have the correct consent (read the WhatsApp and SMS guidelines):

  • Event reminders
  • Donation appeals
  • Project updates
  • Links to new campaigns or videos
  • Automated thank-you messages

8. Maintain Donor Communication

• Effective donor communication is vital to building trust, securing ongoing support, and fostering long-term relationships. You can segment donor lists based on giving levels or interests to tailor communications, communicate how donations are being used and maintain accurate donor records in the CRM.

• Utilize the "Print Queue" section in Engage CRM to send printed copies of donation receipts, orphan profiles or Feedback reports to the donors. With the correct setup, a full print queue can be maintained making it easier for donor care teams to send the exact communication to donors.

9. Use Data Lists for Targeted Actions

• Generate bespoke reports/lists from the data within your CRM. With this data you can:

  • Segment your donors according to different needs (see examples below).
  • Connect these lists to external email/SMS platforms like mailchimp etc.
  • Connect lists to internal tasks for your staff to action (e.g. follow up outstanding pledges).

Type of List	Usage	Example
Accounts	Gift Aid Unspecified	Identify accounts which have Gift Aid unspecified and then contact donors to update their preferences.
Accounts	Failed Direct Debits	List of all failed direct debits and a plan to contact them to recoup lost funds.
Sponsorships	Sponsorships Due Renewal	All sponsorships which need renewal due to the regular payment or duration ending. Contact them to recoup potentially lost funds.
Sponsorships	Active Sponsorships	All sponsorships which are currently sponsored.
Sponsorships	Sponsorships Consistency Report	Report for sponsorship clean-ups. E.g. sponsorships where payments haven’t been taken, an active sponsorship but no donor, etc.
Feedbacks	Feedback Reports Uninstructed	List of feedbacks which still need instructing to the partner.
Feedbacks	Feedback Reports Ready for Review	List of feedbacks to be reviewed before being sent to the donor.
Accounts	High-net Worth Donors	List of all high-net worth donors. Connect those lists to tasks for personalised calls.
Accounts	Regular Donors	List of report on regular donors.

• With Engage's lists feature, you can generate dynamic and filtered lists for various use cases:

  • Gift Aid claims
  • High-value donors
  • Donors from the last 1–2 years using date filters
  • Donors who supported specific campaigns

• Create location-based lists, for example; when hosting events in different cities, you can identify donors from those specific areas and send them tailored event invitations.

• In campaigns or projects, for example a mosque extension, you may want to engage high-value donors more personally or donors who donated to the same themed projects in the past.

• Lists are used to personalize interactions for special campaigns by:

  • Sending a thank-you gift or hamper.
  • Issuing a personalized certificate.
  • Coordinating a call from a senior team member (CEO or Chair) to express gratitude.

10. Financial Reconciliation Made Simple

• Finance teams can begin monthly reconciliation 3–5 days before month-end by:

  • First, uploading external income data (crowdfunding, event donations).
  • Then, matching this data with bank statements and payout reports (e.g., from Stripe).

• By following this process consistently, with clean, reconciled data in the CRM, organizations can generate reliable financial reports and process Gift Aid claims efficiently on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. This way the CRM reflects accurate, real-time donation histories, making it easier to manage donor relationships, segment donors, and generate reports.

11. Configure Workflows for Internal Operations

• Set up different workflows for a good, automated customer experience with some of them explained below:

Entity	Trigger	Action	Benefit
Account	Contact Preference Updated	Send an email with their new contact preferences (GDPR compliance).	GDPR compliance
Donation	Donation Processed	Send automated email to the donor showing a donation is being processed.	Customer trust
Donation	Regular Donation Failed	Send automated email asking them to try again or contact you.	Recoup lost funds
Donation	Scheduled Donation Processed	Send automated email for every payment taken out.	Customer trust
Donation Statement	Upon Donor Request	Send PDF list of all donations done by the donor year-to-date.	Customer trust
Feedback	Feedback Instructed	Send email to your implementing partners automatically about projects which need implementing.	Automate internal processes
Feedback	Feedback Complete	Send automatic email/PDF to a feedback project donor of their completed project.	Customer Trust & Automate internal processes
Pledge	Pledge Complete	Send automated email to donor when they have reached their fundraising target.	Fundraising
Regular Giving	Regular Giving Commitment Update	Send automated email when you change a giving price on a regular payment.	Complaince
Sponsorship	Sponsorship Ended	Send automated email or internal task for donors to renew their sponsorship	Fundraising

12. Internal Workshop & CRM Setup Recommendations

For charities new to Engage:

• Conduct an internal workshop with your key staff members across the following departments: Marketing, Fundraising, Senior Management, Donor care, Website/digital team, and, Finance and Programmes. Utilising any problem analysis framework and identifying key pain points faced by the team in their daily operations.

• Once the main challenges are listed, prioritise the top 50% issues by impact vs probability if needed.

• Next, identify the potential solutions for each of these problems. Segregate by different solution types: people, processes, technology, etc.

• For those related to technology and processes, you can set up a small working-group to identify what CRM workflows can be incorporated to enhance the solution.

Some examples below:

• Problem 1: Donors complain of not receiving their receipts when donating at an event.

  • Solution 1: Check the different sources of donor interaction: "online", "in-person", on "3rd party platforms", etc. Set up automated triggers and receipts on the CRM.

• Problem 2: Lack of real-time information on fund availability for different projects.

  • Solution 2: Designate and train an individual from the team to ensure all donations are imported on to the system at regular intervals (e.g. end of every week). Thereafter, set up some report lists for donation reports to be run periodically and given to senior management. Better still, get familiar with the analytic reporting and use the data for reporting to senior management.