Whether you work for an association or member-based nonprofit, your organization relies on members as both a key contributor to your mission and an essential source of recurring revenue. To retain your members’ support, you must consistently engage them and prove value in meaningful, ongoing ways.

One of the most effective ways to do this is by building a strong online member community. Online communities are no longer a standalone benefit: they can provide a central ecosystem that connects your content, program, events and member experiences.

An online community is a digital space where people with a common interest, passion, or goal connect and communicate. For association and nonprofit members, your community serves as an online hub where connection happens daily, powering everything from learning and networking to feedback and advocacy.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at these benefits and explain why you should start your own online community ASAP.

1. Increased Membership Value

Online communities can greatly increase the value of your nonprofit or association’s membership both by serving as a connection point and by making your member benefits more visible and easily accessible. Depending on how robust your community platform is, members might use your online community to access:

• Friendly community discussions where they can meet other members and discuss industry news
• Online networking opportunities and job boards
• An event calendar to keep track of upcoming events, and follow-up discussions after attending
• Large libraries of educational resources
• Online courses and certifications
• Community digest emails that are full of useful resources and member discussions

If you host your online community on a social media site like Facebook or Reddit, the only feature members will have access to is basic discussion boards. Full-featured community software, however, has all the functionality you need to increase membership value, such as member-only resource libraries and AI-powered search assistants.

2. Higher Retention Rate

Retention doesn’t happen just at renewal time, it’s built through consistent engagement over time. Your online community plays a critical role by giving members a reason to return, participate, and stay connected between events, emails and dues cycles.

Members who clearly see the value of their membership and regularly engage with benefits are more likely to stick around long-term. In fact, the 2025 Association Member Experience Report showed that 83% plan to remain members for at least five years because they feel engaged in their association.

This is especially true for active community members who participate in online discussion boards, subcommunities, or community groups. Members who are active in your online community feel a sense of connection with their peers and regularly take advantage of key benefits like educational resources.

Plus, community automation and gamification features help you encourage members to engage more by posting, commenting, and completing tasks. Gamification features that encourage retention include:

• Badges are visual tokens that represent levels of achievement. For example, if someone has been a member for a year or if they’ve commented on 30 posts.
• Leaderboards rank your members based on a specific category. For example, you can have a ranking of the most active members in the community.
• Challenges give your members fun, time-sensitive activities to motivate regular engagement.

You can get creative with your gamification strategies, too. If you don’t know where to start, send out a survey to your members to better understand their motivations

3. Source of Social Proof

Having a website for your association or nonprofit isn’t enough—you also need to add social proof because prospective members want to confirm that you’re good at what you do. When they see you have an active online community full of engaged participants, they feel like they can trust you and may want to join as well.

Incorporating specific social proof into your marketing can boost traffic for both the community and your website. If you have an ongoing fundraising campaign, this traffic just might help you get more donations.

Here are a few ways to identify and collect social proof from your community:

• Donor comments and messages: Use direct quotes from discussion boards, showcasing supportive messages from your most active members.
• Recent donor feed: Display a gallery of supporters who have recently contributed. In addition to showing ongoing support for your organization, this donor feed celebrates active members, too.
• Community polls and other user-generated content: Polls let you organize your discussions, as well as encourage your supporters to pitch in and interact with each other.
• Live updates: These can be for your fundraising campaigns or other important community-wide events. It will be even better if you imbue some impact into these updates—to show your supporters that their contributions have real outcomes.

A gentle reminder, though: if your social proof requires you to display a member’s name or photo, always ask for their permission to post it beforehand. Some might not be comfortable with public recognition.

4. Firsthand Insight into Your Member Base

Having an online community gives you insight into your members’ interests and preferences. By analyzing member activity, you can plan better strategies to engage and retain them. And these insights don’t just benefit your membership team—they can inform marketing, content strategy, event planning, and even product or program development, making your community a valuable source of intelligence across your entire organization.

There are many different metrics you can track and dig into to learn about your member base, but start with these:

• Log-in frequency: How often do your members log in? If they log in often, it means that they’re highly engaged in the community. If not, it’s a sign that you need to improve your content or communication strategy (e.g., setting up automated reminders to encourage members to log in and check out a discussion they may be interested in).
• Discussion activity: What topics inspire animated conversation among your members? Take note of them.
• Email newsletter open rates: Do your members read your email digest newsletters? What type of content gets the most clicks(e.g., educational resources, trending discussions)?

Use the information you glean to improve future engagement strategies. For example, if discussion posts about job opportunities consistently gain the most traction, you can host a free webinar about job opportunities in this sector.

5. More Engaged, Active Members

Your online community can become a pivotal part of your member engagement strategy, helping you maintain interest in your organization and encourage regular involvement.

Members who are more engaged and active in your community are more likely to support you in other ways, such as volunteering and donating. They can even recommend your organization to their peers, thus expanding your audience scope.

Long story short, your online community isn’t just another member benefit. It can serve as the foundation of an engaged member experience and be your key to staying relevant in your specific sector. When your community becomes the place where members regularly connect, learn, and contribute, it strengthens their sense of belonging and keeps your organization top of mind. That ongoing engagement is what drives higher retention, increased participation, and long-term loyalty. Highly engaged members keep the drive and passion for your mission active, helping your organization achieve more. This is especially true if your staff and board members participate, too. In other words, a thriving online community doesn’t just support your membership program; it helps power your entire organization.

For nonprofits, a CRM is an essential fundraising tool. With over 2 million nonprofits in the U.S., donors have an endless choice of causes to support.

A CRM, or customer relationship management software, is used by companies all over the world to track client data, gather insights, and build strategic sales and communication plans.

Unlike traditional corporate CRMs that focus more heavily on sales, nonprofit CRMs focus on building long-term relationships. Instead of moving leads through a short pipeline, nonprofits track donors across an entire lifecycle, from a first-time gift to repeat giving, major gifts, and legacy contributions.

This changes how you as a nonprofit define success. You’re not just measuring transactions; you’re tracking engagement over time. A strong nonprofit CRM helps teams identify giving patterns, understand donor motivations, and personalize outreach.

While your mission is what brings donors through the door, your relationship with them is what keeps them coming back. Your CRM is what empowers you to build and grow that relationship.

Nonprofits that use CRMs effectively can expect to boost their fundraising revenue by over 20%, with popular systems like Bloomerang reporting numbers much higher.

The Nonprofit Infrastructure Gap

Most nonprofits invest in their CRM with good intentions. They want a better system that will help them prioritize donor relationships.

Unfortunately, it’s not the platform that makes this happen. If your internal infrastructure doesn’t support growth, your CRM will just continue gathering dust. You may use it to log donations, but not much else.

Mapping Your Donor Journey in a CRM

With the right infrastructure, a CRM can help you:

• Track prospects
• Deepen your relationship with donors
• Be strategic in your outreach

At the earliest stage, a first-time donor should trigger immediate action. Your CRM can prompt a welcome email, assign a follow-up task, and track initial engagement.

As donors give again, your system should flag them for deeper outreach. You can group them into segments, monitor their behavior, and identify opportunities to strengthen the relationship.

For long-term supporters, your CRM should surface patterns like consistent giving, increased gift size, and strong engagement. These signals help you identify potential major donors and prioritize outreach.

Finally, you should use your CRM to schedule stewardship touchpoints, track communication history, and ensure no donor ever falls through the cracks.

When you structure your CRM around this lifecycle, you stop reacting to donations and start guiding relationships.

The reality is that most development teams don’t have the bandwidth to make this happen.

3 Ways to Make an Impact with Your CRM

The bottom line: you need infrastructure to use your CRM effectively. No matter your platform, Sprout recommends following these 3 principles:

1. Stop storing relationship intelligence in transaction notes.

When notes are buried in gift records (or worse Post-It notes on your desk), it’s nearly impossible to find them. Instead, build custom fields like donor bios and affinity interests that live in donor profiles where any team member can access them.

2. Assign every major prospect a solicitation stage.

Donor stages show you who needs attention and what kind. They make it possible to build a coherent outreach plan. Without stages, donor management is reactive; with them, it’s strategic. A major prospect could be a $100 donor for one organization or a $5,000 donor for another.

3. Let your CRM feed your leadership, not the other way around.

Build reports that outline who needs a touchpoint and set up weekly automated reminders. A well-built CRM should reduce decision fatigue for Executive Directors and Development Directors.

Why is Data Hygiene Important?

A CRM only works when you maintain clean, consistent data. Without clear standards, even simple reports can be ineffective and time-consuming to prepare.

It’s essential to define how your team uses key fields, record notes, and update donor records. When everyone follows the same structure, your system will stay stable even when staff transitions happen.

Regular audits are also critical. Sprout recommends scheduling time each quarter to review duplicate records, fill in missing information, and confirm that key donor profiles are up to date.

Strong data practices ensure that your CRM remains a reliable source of truth instead of a collection of disconnected entries.

What Strong CRM Infrastructure Actually Looks Like

If you’re struggling with your CRM, you might think you need more or different features. But it’s really about how you’re using your CRM’s features that’s important.

Strong CRM infrastructure starts with clarity. Your team should know exactly what information to capture, where to store it, and how to use it. It also requires clear ownership. Someone on your team should be responsible for maintaining data quality, reviewing reports, and ensuring the system reflects current priorities. Without ownership, even well-designed systems can break down.

Consistency matters just as much as structure. Every interaction, including calls, meetings, event attendance, and email engagement, should be recorded in a way that others can quickly understand. When you rely on memory or scattered notes, you’ll lose context.

Finally, strong infrastructure connects directly to action. Your CRM shouldn’t just store information; it should tell you what to do next. Reports should highlight who needs outreach, which relationships are growing, and where opportunities exist.

When these elements are in place, your CRM becomes a shared system your entire team can rely on. Instead of searching for information or guessing next steps, your team can focus on building relationships and moving them forward.

Bloomerang Case Study: Rooted Infrastructure Build & Data Cleanup

Let’s take a look at a real organization and how Sprout helped them use their CRM more effectively.

This team was highly impacted by fundraising staff turnover. Without strong systems in place, when those employees left, so did that knowledge.

Despite the setback, they were determined to build out their major gifts program. The problem was that they had 15,000 records in Bloomerang (their CRM of choice) but almost no clarity about the data.

The good news is they had the data; they just couldn’t see it yet. Staff lacked visibility into which donors were engaged, which relationships needed attention, and where real opportunities existed. As a result, outreach remained inconsistent and largely reactive.

Sprout helped them get there with their Rooted Infrastructure Build, a customized CRM setup and donor cleanup service.

First, Sprout customized their donor fields to capture the right information, including donor bios, relationship notes, and wealth indicator summaries. This step created a shared language across the team, making it easier to understand each donor at a glance.

Then, they built on that strong foundation with:

• A DonorSearch wealth screening to identify high-capacity donors
• Email click data to flag prospects who were already engaging
• A stewardship communication calendar
• A leadership outreach strategy to engage 5 donors per week

The team now had a clear weekly rhythm. Instead of wondering who to contact, leadership could rely on reports to guide their outreach. Conversations became more intentional, and follow-up more consistent.

By March, the nonprofit was already 36% of the way to their individual giving goal. Sprout then helped them use Bloomerang’s AI assistant, Penny, to maintain that momentum and support ongoing decision-making.

Inspired by this success, Sprout created 30 prompts for improving fundraising efficiency with Penny, which you can download here for free.

Get More Out of Your CRM

For development teams that simply don’t have the time to implement these steps, Sprout’s Rooted Infrastructure Build can help.

They’ll handle the database setup and deliver a system that actually works, with custom fields, wealth screening, and a weekly rhythm your team can sustain.

A CRM on its own doesn’t transform fundraising. The impact comes from how a nonprofit structures, maintains, and uses it over time.

When teams align their CRM with the donor journey, maintain clean and consistent data, and build systems that guide action, the platform becomes far more than a database. It becomes a tool for relationship-building: showing where relationships stand, where opportunities exist, and what steps to take next.

Successful nonprofits don’t just collect data. They organize it, interpret it, and use it to build stronger, more intentional relationships with their donors.

Curious to learn more about Sprout’s Rooted Infrastructure Build? Book a free consultation with the Sprout team. Year-end giving season is right around the corner. It’s time to put your data to work.

About the Author

hello@sproutfundraising.com

Gabie Benson, MBA and BoardSource Certified Nonprofit Governance Consultant, created Sprout Fundraising & Consulting, leveraging 20 years of nonprofit leadership and fundraising experience serving higher education, the arts, youth development, homelessness and housing services, and association foundations. She has worked in large institutions, small shops, and organizations of every size in between.

Recognizing the unique challenges of smaller nonprofits, Gabie founded Sprout Fundraising & Consulting, offering outsourced fundraising services to help organizations build their infrastructure. In essence, her team serves as your fundraising back office, bridging the gaps for small organizations, enabling them to realize their full potential and carry out impactful work.

We know that 81% of American donors attend nonprofit fundraising events, and 85% volunteer.While online giving remains a core part of almost every nonprofit fundraising strategy, in-person interactions offer a unique opportunity to build meaningful connections and trust.

With so many supporters showing up and offering their time, you have a clear opportunity to strengthen those relationships and inspire generosity in the moment.

But what convinces donors to follow through with their gift – and what unintentionally gets in the way?

Barriers to Face-to-Face Fundraising

Imagine this: a donor shows up at your event, listens to an inspirational beneficiary story, and feels genuinely moved to give. They reach for their wallet, but something stops them from completing their gift.

They don’t have any cash, and you don’t have an easy way to accept cashless giving. Or they used their smartphone to access your online donation form, but it wasn’t optimized for mobile and giving felt too complex to complete.

Just like that, the moment you worked so hard to create is lost. Not because they didn’t care, but because something small got in the way at the very moment they felt most inclined to donate.

Common barriers to in-person giving include:

• A lack of visible prompts, signage, or giving points
• A complex donation experience with too many steps, questions, or fields involved
• Poor mobile experience that includes slow-loading donation pages, forms that aren’t mobile-optimized, and clunky navigation
• A lack of preferred payment methods
• Unsecure payment gateways, which can erode trust and increase abandonment at checkout

From events to volunteer activations, in-person interactions are the perfect platform for supporters to learn more about your mission. And when they feel connected to your cause and have a clear, frictionless pathway to donate, they’re more likely to give and give again.

What Drives Donors to Follow Through in the Moment?

When a donor chooses to give, it’s often driven by an emotional connection to your cause – a reaction to an inspiring beneficiary story, social energy at an event, or trust built through a conversation.

Similarly, volunteers who are already passionate about your mission may feel most compelled to give when sacrificing their time.

But without a clear next step, you may miss out on capturing that moment of generosity.

Here’s what gets donors over the finish line when they’re moved to give in person:

1. A frictionless donation experience

Providing a seamless way to donate on the spot is the most important step for securing in-person donations.

Your donor should be able to give how they want and when they want, without second-guessing.

In a minute, I’ll outline an in-person giving ecosystem – one that offers donors multiple easy and efficient ways to donate without breaking their stride.

2. Clear communication

Communicate clearly to ensure donors follow through. This seems obvious, but confusing instructions or unclear language can derail even the most passionate supporters.

Provide clear and concise giving instructions. Test your donation process out with multiple people before your event to catch any unclear language.

Share how donations will be used. Donors may hesitate to give if they’re uncertain of the impact their gifts will have, so reinforce how you use donations to make a difference.

Express genuine gratitude: You get a rare opportunity to be with donors the moment they give, so make it count with a clear articulation of your gratitude.

3. Signals that increase trust

Cement your donors’ intent to give by sharing signals that secure their trust.

If you’re funneling supporters to your donation page, add a donor wall to show how others have given recently. Use a fundraising platform known for its secure giving experience, like Donorbox.

If you’re using a donation kiosk, add branding like your logo so donors have no doubt about where their gift will go.

And of course, provide clear communication about your programming, impact, and how donations will be used.

Create an Ecosystem for In-Person Giving

The best way to secure those moments of in-person generosity is to create an ecosystem designed for givers of all types.

Capture more gifts by providing your donors with options so they can choose the easy, in-person giving solution that works best for them.

I recommend a combination of these three tools:

• Donation kiosks stationed around your event, where donors can select the amount they’d like to give and donate with cards or digital wallets.
• QR codes linking to your mobile-optimized donation form posted around your venue, so all donors have to do is scan and give.
• Text-to-give, where all donors have to do is text a number to receive a link to your donation form for quick and easy giving.

Providing options for your donors will eliminate those face-to-face fundraising barriers I outlined above. When donors find giving convenient, they’re more likely to give again and build a stronger relationship with your organization.

Donorbox offers all of the solutions mentioned above in one easy-to-use, powerful platform. Track all of your giving in one place, sell tickets to your events, manage email marketing, and more.

Learn More About Donorbox

Final Thoughts

You’ve put in the work to create a positive in-person experience through an event, volunteer activity, or advocacy gathering.

Now it’s time to close the loop by offering effective in-person giving options, communicating clearly, and building lasting relationships with those face-to-face supporters.

While there may be common boundaries to in-person giving, smart steps can eliminate those hesitations to secure more funding and more donors.

Jamy-Lee Holt

Jamy-Lee has over 7 years of experience in copywriting and content marketing. With a background in teaching in underserved communities and volunteering for animal rescue organizations, she has a first-hand understanding of the challenges faced by nonprofit organizations. She now uses her passion for writing to share practical insights that help nonprofits fulfill their missions.