103 – Non-Profit CRM Strategies with Matt Bitzegaio

Episode Transcription

David Pisarek: Hey, everybody. Today, we’re diving into how technology can revolutionize your non-profit’s impact with insights from a tech expert who’s dedicated his career to supporting organizations like yours. Get ready for some game-changing advice.

Welcome to the Non-Profit Digital Success podcast. As always, I’m your host, David. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about all things technology solutions for non-profits with Matt Bitzegaio.

A career in technology inspired Matt to help non-profits change the world. He founded DonorDock in 2018. From where he lives in North Dakota, he’s built a team and a company that is there for non-profits like yours so that your non-profit can be there for everybody else. Matt, thank you so much for joining on the episode today. How’s your day going so far?

Matt Bitzegaio: That’s great. Thanks, David. I appreciate you inviting me on. We have a beautiful day outside here in North Dakota, so I can’t complain.

David Pisarek: Awesome. I guess let’s jump in from getting a career in technology, doing that to founding DonorDock and supporting non-profits; what made that connection there?

Matt Bitzegaio: Yeah, I appreciate the question.

I have been in the CRM space for a number of years, working with more enterprise-type CRM solutions. Microsoft CRM, some work with Salesforce, worked with a lot of for-profit customers, but also a lot of non-profit customers, and through that, had built some add-on solutions for Microsoft CRM that were designed for the non-profit sector.

I just kept seeing how those large solutions, those large monolithic CRMs that were designed really for sales teams, trying to make those work within the non-profit sector just continued to prove very, very difficult, and the complexity and the cost of implementation and all those various factors.

Recognizing that passion for working with non-profits and really believing that technology can be something that should really be a differentiator versus a burden for non-profits, I decided in 2017 to start working on building a CRM that was designed to work well for these mid-size and smaller non-profits.

My co-founder Andrew and I were working nights and weekends writing code and trying to build a product that we thought would fit and would resonate. We worked with local organizations here in the Fargo-Moorhead area to make sure what we were building actually made sense and would work well for them.

We launched the product in June of 2018, and here we are. I think we have customers in 48 states in the US now, thousands of customers using the product. It’s just been really a compelling journey to be able to feel like we’re building something that’s helping these people. Why do we do this? We do this so that these non-profits can provide the services and provide that they provide to their community. That really connected and resonated with me when you use that term.

David Pisarek: Yeah, I love that what you’re doing came out of a place where you saw an issue. Instead of trying to stick a square peg in a round hole, you made a round peg to go into a round hole that can work for people.

The idea of a CRM, I guess, let’s take a quick step back for a second. Can you just explain to the folks who are listening? I know I’ve talked about CRM on other episodes as well, but give everybody a quick education. What’s the one or two sentences? What is a CRM?

Matt Bitzegaio: It’s really a software tool and a strategy. It’s not just the software itself, it’s the strategy that goes along with it that really is designed to help you understand and build better relationships with your donors because, through that, you’re typically going to have better fundraising if you’re able to understand and build those relationships and drive the right engagement with donors.

The CRM tool and strategy is really what helps you try and do that.

David Pisarek: I love the word strategy that you use there.

You can build smarter campaigns. You can make business decisions around the data once you’ve actually got it if you’ve got people who have made a donation to your organization every August. You can run analytics against that and go, “All right, we need to start hitting them up with some messaging, maybe May and June, so that when they go to make that donation in August, maybe be for a bigger amount because they understand the impact their dollar is having in the community, the constituents,” whoever it is that you’re helping.

Matt Bitzegaio: Yeah, that tailored communication and engagement, I think, is one of the big benefits and advantages of CRM in general. It’s understanding and being able to keep track of how each donor wants to be communicated with.

What channels do they want to hear from us through? What programs are we doing that are important to them? As you said, giving preferences, giving history, all of those things become really powerful tools that help you so that you’re not just sending out that same blanket email or newsletter to all your donors at the same time about the same things when that might not be what’s resonating with a particular donor or a subset of donors.

And so, yeah, you hit on it right there. I think that data becomes powerful. It’s a piece of the puzzle, for sure. I think as a CRM technology provider, we talk to prospects, we talk to customers, and there’s this mindset that, “Well, it’s software, and all I’ve got to do is get the software, and it’s going to make all this work better magically.”

I think that’s why I always like to make the distinction that CRM is both a software tool and a commitment to the strategy and to the work that has to go into getting that data in there and then using that data appropriately.

Obviously, the more we can do as technologists to make those things easier and less complicated and less complex, as I mentioned earlier, we’ve removed the burden from that to some degree, and now it becomes something that people can buy into and use. But it is both the software and really the mentality that goes with it, that you’re going to be a data-driven organization and take advantage of these tools that are in front of you.

David Pisarek: Yeah. To that point, I worked in non-profits for about 16 years. I’m doing 47 hours of work a day feeling I’m doing the job of 10 other people.

Technology is, from my perspective, usually pushed to the back burner because there are so many fires and so many things that organizations and people that are working in them are working on.

But what do you see from your side as technological challenges that non-profits are facing, and how could they potentially overcome those?

Matt Bitzegaio: Yeah. Like a lot of things,

I think we have a marketing campaign about “I wear a lot of hats.” It has resonated so well in the space because that’s how people feel.

Like technology, being the de facto IT person for my non-profit is just one of the many hats that I wear. I think resources are probably the biggest challenge that we see, both in time, in dollars, in mind share.

Like you said, people are stretched thin like, “One more thing I have to think about.” Those are all challenges that are very real. We see them every day. It’s starting to try and shift the narrative that if you have the right solutions and the right technology, and you get through the initial phase of getting that up and running within your organization, and you make it a part of how you operate, it’s helping these non-profits understand that it’s by doing those things and having that pain once through the beginning that you start to actually then use the technology to help you with every one of those issues that we just said.

So not only will it help you save time if you’ve got it set up right, it can help you raise more money to help with the dollar side of it.

If the tool is the right tool and it’s not overly complicated and it’s hard for your team to use where they don’t want to do it, they don’t want to use it, those are all things that can help make that successful.

A lot of that comes from good leadership and good change management within the non-profit, helping people understand the why around it versus “we’re just getting this CRM and fundraising and marketing tool because…” No, let’s help them understand the why. “We’re doing this because this will help us raise more money through building these better relationships. It’s going to help save time by automating certain things that we’re doing very manually today. It’s going to make the experience of our donors better across the board, both from how they give to us, but also how we thank them and how we engage with them,” and going back to the tailored communications and the tailored engagement strategy that you have. But it is challenging.

There’s a reason that a large number of CRM implementations fail. I think it’s not an easy process always to go through. If you don’t go into it with the right mindset and the right mentality, it can be really challenging.

I think it’s incumbent a bit on the technologists that you’re working with to help you through that process and also the leadership within the non-profit to be able to set the right tone and make sure that they’re championing what’s going on within this.

David Pisarek: Absolutely. I mean, it can be quite a daunting task to migrate if you’ve already got a platform.

I know I don’t want to mention them by name, but there’s a very big player in the space and it’s been in the space for a good, probably 25 to 30 years. Their platform does a lot of mediocre stuff. It’s not really phenomenal with anything.

There are better tools out there, but the migration path, right? Picking the time to actually plan it, dealing with the staff going, “Oh, another thing that we have to do,” “Really, you’re giving me more work?” It can take time. And explaining to people, “This is why we’re doing this,” I think, is really, really powerful. You’ll get buy-in, you’ll get not necessarily less pushback, maybe not necessarily less attitude, but maybe less pushback and attitude, even if it’s just minor. Really, “Why are we doing this, Matt? Come on. You know how much work I’ve already got.” Really making a cohesive effort.

There’s an organization where they were opening up a new division there, and they had this platform and system, and there was a consultant that was hired and brought in, and he said, “You know what? We actually need separate systems. We’ll take what you’re doing over here, we’ll clone it, we’ll bring it online,” licensing, whatever, it doesn’t matter. But “we’re going to take what you’re doing; we’re going to clone it over here.” The accounting team went, “No, we’re not doing any more work.” They reverted back.

Then, four years later, they went, “All right, well, yeah, we need to split the system. This doesn’t make sense.” They duplicated their efforts at that point. Being smart, hiring people to come in and maybe give you some expert advice, it’s worth that support. There are businesses and organizations out there that can help you with that if you do need support around that.

Matt Bitzegaio: I think like most things, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. I may hate the tool that I have today, but I may hate it less than the idea of switching to something else because what if I hate that more? That thing. I think there’s some of that that goes into it.

But again, there are so many good options that you’re not stuck with something that is old, archaic and challenging to use. There are a lot of tools. Most implementations for us with DonorDock are under two weeks when we’ve got our customers up and running. And part of that is just due to simplicity being one of our five core values. And so we try and make sure that we see that in the product and how we deliver it and all those things.

And even just our implementation processes, I think we put an eye to that. But if you can get through that step and when you get to the other side of that, then you start to see the time savings and like, “Oh, wow, this is like, I went from a manual this thick to try and understand how to use our CRM to something where I figured it out, and I understand it in a day of working with it.”

That can be really, really powerful. Turnover is another challenge that we see in the non-profit space. Having a tool that, when you do invariably have team members that leave and you’re bringing new team members in, a tool that is easy for them to learn and to pick up, can also be a real benefit.

I definitely encourage people within the space, if you’re not happy with what you are using or what the incumbent solution is within the non-profit that you’re working in, to take the time to look at what else is out there. There’s been a lot of software that’s come into the market over the last 5-7 years that I think is modern, it’s cloud-based, it’s easy to use, there’s a lot of advantages.

I think that would be my message is you’re not necessarily stuck with what you have. There are a lot of other options out there, and they are worth looking at.

David Pisarek: Yeah, and I I think DonorDock is a really great platform to help alleviate a lot of this work and effort and systems and processes and all that.

In terms of solutions, totally go check them out. In terms of digital tools, what would you say are maybe three of the top digital tools? We were talking about CRM and how that could also be a strategy. So digital tools are strategies that non-profits should adopt to help maybe streamline operations or fundraising efforts.

Matt Bitzegaio: I think fundraising side of things, we really love solutions.

Classy has got a great solution from a fundraising tool perspective. If you’re doing events, you’re doing peer-to-peer, even just the ease of what that is for donors to give through those tools, that’s a great one. We work with One Cause a lot.

Again, another really good solution for that event fundraising side of things. I think people really like that. A lot of things have come in the market more recently.

Givebutter is a great example where they’ve got a really unique model. If it works for you, I think it can be a really great and powerful tool. There’s obviously the AI piece is this new piece that I think has a lot of potential to help and save people time.

I think right now for a lot of non-profits, I think it’s this nebulous thing, “How do I actually use this or get value out of it?” I think you’re starting to see providers, technology providers, are trying to figure out how do we take that complexity, and we take the brunt of that so that our customer doesn’t have to, and we figure out ways to incorporate those solutions into the tools they’re already using to help save time.

There’s a lot of neat things happening there. Project management tools. We see a lot of people using tools like Asana, those types of things to help manage things within their program. There are so many different tools out there now, thousands and thousands of cloud apps.

I think looking for tools that integrate well is a good tip for people. A red flag for me if I was exploring a new CRM or something like that would be something that doesn’t integrate well with these other tools that are out there that I need to maybe use to run my non-profit. You can take different approaches. You can have a really good all-in-one solution that does everything for you in one tool, or you take the approach of, “I want to build the best in class on each of these things and have them talk to each other.”

So lots of different options to go. But I think looking for tools that integrate well is a good tip for people, for sure.

David Pisarek: Yeah. One little note about the AI thing for anybody listening is don’t take your donor list and upload it into AI. Assign if you want to use that to try to figure out your data in some way. Apply ID numbers, remove people’s names, emails, and addresses, and then tie that back with the ID number so that it’s anonymized.

Just be careful around your use of AI. If it’s built into a platform, check with the developers and make sure that the data isn’t being shared with third parties or anything like that, just so you know that you’re compliant in that way.

Matt Bitzegaio: I think that’s a good tip on anything you’re looking at for tools.

Do a little research on their security processes. Are they SOC-compliant? Are they following good policies and procedures around data privacy? And are they telling you who they’re sharing your data with? Those types of things.

That’s just a really good tip in general. Ai absolutely couldn’t agree more with you. I think, again, you start a ChatGPT account, you pay your 20 bucks a month, and you’re uploading data; you got to understand that with those types of personal accounts, that data is going into their training models, and it’s being used to train data for every other personal customer.

So make sure that if you are working with a provider, I think that’s a great tip, that they’re doing it in a way that respects that privacy. Really good call out there.

David Pisarek: Yeah, I think it’s It’s important for people to understand that you can use technology in a non-scary way, right?

Getting somebody or a system or a platform such as DonorDock involved in your organization to a point where it helps you, it doesn’t hinder you, it makes your life easier, it saves you some time. That’s the point of this, right? And that’s how you can accomplish a little bit more than you could have in the past.

Matt Bitzegaio: Yeah, I look at it.

We have this equation that we put together that it’s relatively new to the way we are thinking about it and how we’re articulating it or presenting it. But this idea that the human is at the core of everything, right? And so we’re in a world where we’re talking a ton about AI and all these things, but At the end of the day, good fundraising comes from human connections.

We have this equation where it’s like you’ve got the human piece is the root of it, and then you’ve got automation is like this exponent. It’s like the idea that you’ve got zero on the human piece, and if you do that to the power of two, it’s still zero.

You have to have a human base. But that idea that the technology can complement the human piece and help you scale more as a human being there’s a rule or a law out there that basically says a human being can only manage about 150 relationships at any given time in any meaningful way before it becomes unmanageable.

The goal with the technology is to help you increase that number from 150 to whatever your caseload is as a fundraiser.

If it’s 300 donors or 500 donors, we’re using that technology and automation and those things to help complement you and make your life a little bit easier is the goal.

David Pisarek: Yeah, and I think the root of what we’re talking about for a large part of the conversation today is helping with overwhelm and leveraging things in a way.

So, thinking through that, do you have any advice for non-profits who want to integrate or implement new tech without being overwhelmed, either with their team or their budget?

Matt Bitzegaio: Yeah, I think you’re going to want to really think about what are the right questions you should be asking yourself as an organization when you’re going to evaluate solutions in your evaluation process, looking for and trying to make sure that there are not these red flags that “this isn’t going to be a good fit for me.”

“How complex is the system? How hard is it for me to use? Are there hidden costs that I’m going to incur? Is everything priced in a way that as I grow, my price is going to go up all the time? What support and training am I going to get through the process of getting up and running and then ongoing after that? Looking for what’s the feeling about this product or this company in the space?”

Negative reviews, “Can it be customized to work the way we need it to? Do they have big, long contracts?” There are all sorts of things that you probably want to be asking yourself in the evaluation step with the goal that you’re going to narrow it down to the couple of solutions that you think are going to be the best fit for you and then follow your gut on that.

Your gut is not wrong a lot of the time. If you find that there’s a provider that you feel a connection to, like “I’ve had a really good experience through this buying process, through this evaluation process,” that’s probably what your experience is going to be ongoing. You know what I mean? So, just like in fundraising, I think the relationship piece in this technology side is actually really, really important.

And that’s why the technology sometimes is the easy part, and it’s the people part that you want to spend the time making sure there’s a good fit organizationally with the vendors you’re going to work with and that thing. Those are just a few things that come to mind for me as I’m trying to think through “How would I want to go through this process if I’m trying to have a good outcome and save myself and my organization time and money?” Those are things that for sure think about.

David Pisarek: I love that you talked about trusting your gut. The number of times in my life, when I let my brain dictate a decision versus going against what I was feeling, did not pay off.

Matt Bitzegaio: I’m right there with you.

David Pisarek: I would encourage people, if you’re looking at other products or just starting, if you’re a new startup and you’re looking for a platform, to create a matrix, basically like a table chart. “These are the features, these are the platforms, which ones check them off.” That’ll help you with some of the decision-making that you could go through, “Oh, okay, well, this doesn’t have this feature. We really need to have that feature.”

And break that list down by must haves and nice to haves. Then you’ll probably have, there’s probably 30 different platforms out there that you could be looking at. We’re partners at my agency with six different platforms. There’s a lot out there. Figure out which one hits all the boxes that you absolutely need to have.

Matt Bitzegaio: Think about when you say features, think about it not just features in the product, but features of the relationship with that vendor as well. You know what I mean? I think about things like training and support.

Those are not features in the product, but they are definitely things that should be on that matrix that you’re looking at. And yeah, I think that’s a great idea.

Sometimes, we’ll get these RFPs for software that are 30 pages long, and this is a $ 200-a-month piece of software. You’re not spending seven figures on trying to build some customized solution. And so I would encourage people not to overcomplicate it either. I think your example of a matrix is a great way to go.

And you’ll find, I think in a lot of cases, that there will be several solutions that really come out, like, “These are the ones that really are probably going to fit best for us.” So now it’s “what’s the cost of each solution? What does the process of getting it up and running look like? How do I feel about the conversations I’ve had with these different providers?” And that’s, I think, where you can go from the analytical side with the matrix to the gut side of, okay, which one feels right.

David Pisarek: So Matt, here are some amazing, fantastic insights around technology solutions for non-profits and other bits of insight, like how to manage your data, things like that. I hope that people listening have been able to get some really great advice through our conversation. So, if anybody wants to get in touch with you, what do they need to do?

Matt Bitzegaio: I think the easiest thing, DonorDock.com is our website. We’d love to give you a demo.

We do have a free 14-day trial of the product. If you’d like to get in and do a test drive, check it out. I am on LinkedIn, and so I would love to connect with people there. But I think the website is a great starting point, and we look forward to meeting and chatting with people about your technology needs.

David Pisarek: Amazing. Thanks so much for joining in, Matt. It’s been great having you here on the Non-Profit Digital Success podcast.

To everybody listening, if you want the links to Matt’s LinkedIn, to DonorDock, to anything else that we’ve been talking about here, we will have that.

Just head over to our podcast page at nonprofitdigitalsuccess.com. Click on this episode for all the details.

Until next time, keep on being successful.