By Sean Clarson on 29th October 2024
Bridgit - Connecting charity data to unlock supporter intelligence
Bridgit has begun the incredibly important task of creating a no-code, simple-to-use platform that helps disparate fundraising platforms and other useful marketing tools & platforms to automatically talk to each other. Saving charities, and especially fundraising staff who rely on supporter data, huge amounts of time - time that may be better used to help charities grow!
Supporter data admin challenges - What our research is uncovering
Unlike most organisations that collect funds from the public, not-for-profits have an especially difficult problem. Firstly, managing the sheer number of ‘giving’ platforms, apps and routes to receive funds is quite staggering. Secondly, collating the supporter data from all these disparate platform donations (and the associated ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ data, into a single view) has traditionally been incredibly time-consuming. Thirdly, charities understand that delivering exceptional supporter journeys is crucial for donors. Many supporters of course like to see the impact their contributions are making, and to feel the difference they are making. For all these reasons and more, charities, especially the busiest fundraising staff, drown in a sea of millions of bits of data in an attempt to offer the best possible supporter experience.
Studies have shown that as much as one full day each week is lost to donor data admin by charity professionals.
Receiving physical donations is not the issue, the banking system and internal IT systems take care of all that. Seeing an instant holistic view of a supporter - i.e. piecing together the generosity of ‘individual’ supporters and relaying this gratitude back to the supporter is something entirely different. For example, a supporter may contribute several times in a year to their favourite cause using a variety of giving platforms. Understanding this is a single donor, and not several separate donors ensures that future conversations with the supporter are congruent. This is just one example of how complex supporter data collation can be.
Seeing a single automatically populated supporter view - the holy grail of charity data.
Seeing a single view of the individual supporter, irrespective of their varied interactions across multiple fundraising platforms and campaigns is an essential part of the relationship between charity and supporter. Would a donor enjoy receiving three separate letters of support all exactly the same? Or thanked for only a tenth of their contribution? Mistakes such as these don’t occur when a supporter is seen holistically.
Charities traditionally have leaned on "sticky tape solutions" - spreadsheets, bespoke integrations with very limited coverage, accounting software and even project management tools - to piece together the full picture for each individual giver. Some fundraising platforms might output a .csv file, and, occasionally, large platforms like JustGiving integrate with the in-house CRM. It’s often a mess, and this is where the time goes for charity professionals.
This is all set to change. Bridgit is the integration hub for charities and it aims to help all charity platforms talk to one another, seamlessly. Every supporter data point, irrespective of how, where or when it was created, will be routed through the Bridgit and sent to where charities need it. This will finally enable the possibility of an instant, single, holistic view of the supporter, without any manual data admin! Bridgit provides the pipes for supporter data to flow between systems.
This means that charity professionals will not only save time, but also have a reliable way to gain supporter insights and create powerful segments - which ultimately underpin best-in-class supporter experiences. On top of that: data security, integrity and compliance are also more easily managed.
Data integrity and compliance - Charities are always in the spotlight - Bridgit can help!
Before GDPR, cleansing a CRM with the support of external data houses, particularly to fill out missing or incorrect supporter details was relatively simple. Equally, the deduplication process was relatively straightforward. Adding incorrect or removing duplicate data to a CRM could be resolved often after the event using commonplace data cleansing.
Since GDPR, fewer compliant external tools meet the data security requirements of GDPR. There are also fewer compliant external data service providers to work with and data errors can prove very costly for the reputation of charities. In the best case, a data error could be mildly embarrassing - sending a duplicate thank you letter to a donor’s old address for example. In the worst case, charities can lose the public's trust and be fined by the ICO.
So what is the solution? Real-time accurate, automated supporter data entry
A real-time, accurate, automated population of a central system that cleanses and performs a variety of supporter data with quality checks is the ultimate solution. Yet, to date, there hasn’t been a dedicated, off-the-shelf supporter data tool that can import and integrate the many popular charity platforms within a single system. That is until Bridgit.
Bridgt - helping fundraising platforms to speak with each other
Bridgit has begun the incredibly important task of creating a no-code, simple-to-use platform that helps fundraising platforms, and other marketing platforms talk to each other. This means that instead of spending hours and hours of precious time importing/collating and moving supporter data around, charities can gain and act upon insights.
Bridgit's featured platform integrations - No code required!
- JustGiving
- Enthuse
- Stripe
- iDonate
If you’d like to connect your supporter data and ultimately provide the best possible supporter journeys, why not contact the team at Bridgit? Your fundraising staff and lovely supporters will thank you :)