As the founder of your nonprofit, you’re putting in the hours to get your passion project off the ground. You’re working your networks to start building community around a cause. You’re writing content for your social channels. You’re making asks. You’re wearing all the hats. You also might be working a regular 9 to 5 to pay your own bills and maybe even to help fund your nonprofit passion project.

With limited time and resources, you’ve got to be strategic about every choice you make. In your heart, you know it’s time to level up. You’re ready to make this your nonprofit’s year! Making your big Oprah-sized goals a reality this year means you need moola to make it happen. Finding ways to optimize your fundraising efforts and tools is your path forward. Let’s talk about some ways you can do this as a team of one.

Get a solid fundraising plan in place

Next levels are reached with a plan! While some fundraising plans are pages and pages long, the reality is you don’t need a complicated plan to cast your vision and build a path to getting there. Having a fundraising plan means more focus for the precious time you have to work on your nonprofit. You can be on point about saying yes to work that gets you to your goal and saying no projects and tasks that end up being unproductive tangents.

Need help building your first fundraising plan? Follow our step-by-step guide for creating a stellar fundraising plan.

Put your website to work

Think of yourself as a team of one? Think again—you already have a team member: your website! Your website is always ready to welcome visitors and ready to take donations 24/7. It’s ready to communicate on your behalf to help you reach your goals. On the web, it’s your most significant asset and likely your homebase.

Ensuring your website has everything it needs to optimize visitors and donations is essential. This includes:

• An easy-to-find donate button
• A beautiful easy-to-use donation form
• Accessible payment methods any donor can use
• High converting popups to capture new donations or build your email list

And if you're scratching your head over being on a team with a website, try thinking of your website as a program—and listen to how it can level up your nonprofit on the Nonstop Nonprofit podcast.

Get ahead with your donor data

It is never too early to start using a nonprofit CRM. Whether you’re working on getting your first donation or you have a handful of donors, using a CRM from the start will help you lay some solid fundraising ground work. Long term, fundraising success is built on repeat donors and that means you need to build great relationships with your donors. Tracking their donation activity, interactions you have with them, and more will give you the ability to improve your donor retention rates over time and even turn one-time donors into recurring donors.

A great nonprofit CRM will include awesome report features and dashboards to help you make sense of your important data even if you aren’t a data nerd. In other words, it helps you work smarter, not harder.

Free up your time by integrating your tools

How much time are you spending transferring data from one tool to another? Maybe trying to get your email tool to talk to your CRM? Trying to get your website to work with a payment processor or donation form? It doesn’t have to be this way!

Choosing tools that seamlessly integrate with each other will save you time and a lot of headaches. A few tools that you definitely want to integrate include:

• Your email tool and your CRM
• Your CRM and your payment processor
• Your donation forms, payment processor and your website

As a new nonprofit founder, you know that having the right tools could really help you get ahead. If the cost of fancy fundraising tools has been a barrier for you, we’ve got you covered with Funraise Free + our Donors Cover Fees structure. You can get started with free fundraising tools and upgrade as you grow. Get started with Funraise Free today and get ready to take your nonprofit to the next level!