On average, it takes a non-profit with a strong reputation about 18 months with 6 moves to secure a donation from a new donor. Also, about 40-45% of donors continue to give to non-profits after their first donation. So, it’s easier to retain donors than to secure new ones.

However, securing repeat donations can become difficult when you lose track of valuable donors’ information. While no organization would voluntarily misplace its repeat donors’ information, if you use a manual donor management system, juggling endless spreadsheets, handwritten notes, and countless forms, errors creep will most likely creep in, and you would lose donor data and eventually their donations.

In this guide, let’s explore how you can leverage Formplus’s form lookup to create a seamless donor registration and information management process for your non-profit organization.

Understanding Formplus’ Form Lookup Feature

Form Lookup lets you automatically populate fields in new forms based on information from previously submitted forms. So, for a non-profit donor registration form, once a donor completes their registration and makes a donation, they don’t have to worry about manually filling those fields again, their details will automatically be displayed in future forms.

Unlike the traditional donor registration process, there’s no manual data entry or information storage across different spreadsheets and databases when using Form Lookup. The traditional process is tedious, error-prone, and often inaccurate, but using Formplus’s form lookup eliminates these issues, making your organization’s donor registration and information management smoother.

Read: Online Donation Forms: A Guide to Increasing Donations for Non-Profits

Benefits of Form Lookup in Donor Management

Here are some ways using form lookup helps you improve your donor management approach:

A. Streamlining the Donation Process

1. Pre-filling donor information: Form lookup auto-populates your donor form with donors’ details, so they don’t have to re-enter their details unless they want to change their information, such as an updated phone number, or email address. This quick information retrieval makes donations faster and easier.
2. Reducing manual data entry errors: Also, automatic population with form lookup makes the process seamless for donors, reducing their tendency to get overwhelmed by the process and make mistakes.

B. Enhancing Efficiency in Donor Management

The Formplus form lookup helps donors change specific information they want without having to start the whole process again. This means donors spend less time on data entry, making your donation process more efficient.

Also, your donor information database is accurate and reliable, allowing you to build relationships with donors effectively.

C. Fostering Better Donor Relations

1. Personalized communication: Having pre-existing data allows you to customize donors’ experience when filling out their information, they can easily skil steps, providing an opportunity to engage donors without overwhelming them. For example, you can add videos and infographics of how their last donations were used for repeat donors. Since they don’t have to waste time re-entering their information, they have enough time to go to the media, allowing you to create a stronger bond between them and the non-profit.
2. Improved donor experience and satisfaction: A smooth and efficient donation process increases donor satisfaction and encourages repeat donations.

Implementation and Integration

Steps to Implement Form Lookup

1. Create a Formplus account or sign in if you already have one
2. Click on Create New Form on your dashboard or use the donation form template

3. Edit or add new form fields to fit your donor information requirement

4. Go to Lookup

5. Next, connect your database from your previous Formplus forms or external spreadsheet (xlsx format)

6. Specify which fields in the donation form you want to be populated by the existing data source

7. Save your settings

Potential Challenges and Solutions

Data Security: Formplus ensures your forms are protected by end-to-end encryption to prevent sensitive donor information from authorized access. You can also implement access controls for your team to monitor who has access to donor data.

Troubleshooting Issues: Formplus’s lookup feature setup is user-friendly and seamless. If you have any problem setting it up, follow the instructions in this guide. If you still have issues setting up lookup for your forms after following the steps in this guide, contact the support team.

User Adoption: The Formplus lookup feature is user-intuitive, but if your team is facing challenges implementing it, you can also book onboarding sessions for ongoing training and support.

Adaptability: Formplus also provides customization options to make your donor information management more efficient. For example, you can use data maps to see where your donations are coming from. You can also integrate other third-party tools such as marketing and CRM tools for productivity and automation.

Conclusion

Form Lookup is a great solution for streamlined donor information management. It helps you save time gathering donors and makes the registration process seamless for them.

We hope this guide helps you optimize your donor information management, and helps you retain your donors! Ready to effortlessly collect donor registration? Get Started with Formplus!