Discover folk - the CRM for people-powered businesses
As a non-profit organization with a team of 20-50 people, your mission is at the heart of everything you do. Managing donor relationships, tracking volunteer activities, and organizing fundraising efforts are crucial to your success—but can be challenging without the right tools. A dedicated CRM for non-profits can help you streamline these tasks, allowing your growing team to focus more on making an impact and less on administrative details.
In this blog post, we'll explore the best CRM solutions tailored for medium-sized non-profit organizations like yours, highlighting those that offer essential features, ease of use, and scalability to help your team of 20-50 people build stronger connections, maximize resources, and drive your mission forward.
👉🏼 Try folk now to centralize donor and volunteer data for your 20-50 person team
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Why fundraising and donor tracking require a dedicated CRM
For many nonprofits, fundraising is more than collecting donations. It involves building long-term relationships with individual donors, corporate sponsors, grant providers, volunteers, and board members. As the organization grows, keeping this information in spreadsheets or scattered databases becomes difficult to maintain.
A dedicated CRM for nonprofit fundraising and donor tracking centralizes every interaction in one place. Donation history, campaign engagement, emails, meetings, follow-up tasks, and supporter notes stay connected, giving fundraising teams the context they need before every conversation.
The best platforms also help nonprofits:
- Track one-time and recurring donations
- Organize donors by campaign, interest, or giving history
- Monitor fundraising pipelines and grant opportunities
- Schedule follow-ups with major donors
- Automate outreach and stewardship emails
- Maintain a shared history across fundraising teams
- Generate reports on donor engagement and campaign performance
Whether the goal is increasing donor retention, managing grant applications, or building stronger relationships with major supporters, the right CRM provides the visibility needed to make fundraising efforts more consistent and measurable.
How We Evaluated the Best CRMs for Nonprofits
Nonprofits manage several types of relationships at once. A single database may contain individual donors, corporate sponsors, volunteers, members, grant providers, board members, and community partners. We therefore looked beyond standard contact management and assessed how well each CRM supports the day-to-day work behind fundraising and supporter engagement.
Our evaluation covered the following criteria:
- Constituent management: How effectively the CRM organizes individuals, households, organizations, relationships, communication preferences, and engagement history.
- Donor management: Support for donation histories, pledges, recurring gifts, acknowledgments, soft credits, campaigns, and donor stewardship.
- Donation processing: Whether the platform provides native donation forms and payment processing or requires an external integration.
- Fundraising workflows: Tools for managing major gifts, appeals, sponsorships, grants, fundraising campaigns, and follow-up activities.
- Volunteer and membership management: The ability to record volunteer activity, memberships, renewals, event participation, and other forms of engagement.
- Segmentation and communication: Filters, custom fields, email tools, sequences, and automation for sending relevant messages to different supporter groups.
- Reporting: Visibility into fundraising performance, donor retention, campaign results, volunteer activity, and pipeline progress.
- Integrations: Connections with accounting software, payment processors, email platforms, event tools, and other systems used by nonprofits.
- Ease of use: The time and technical knowledge required to configure the CRM, migrate existing records, and train users.
- Pricing: Subscription fees, contact or user limits, implementation costs, payment-processing fees, and nonprofit discounts.
A platform did not receive a higher ranking simply because it offered more features. We also considered whether those capabilities would be practical for the organization most likely to use them. A small nonprofit may benefit more from transparent pricing and unlimited users, while a national organization may need advanced permissions, program management, and extensive customization.
The 7 best CRMs for non-profit organizations
| CRM | Best for | Key nonprofit features | Donation processing | Starting price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| folk | Relationship-driven nonprofits managing donors, volunteers, partners, sponsors, and grant contacts | Custom pipelines, contact enrichment, segmentation, email sequences, reminders, automations, and team collaboration | Available through integrations | $24/user/month |
| Neon CRM | Growing nonprofits that want fundraising, memberships, events, and volunteers in one platform | Donor management, recurring giving, memberships, event registration, volunteer tracking, email, and reporting | Built in | Custom quote |
| DonorPerfect | Fundraising teams managing campaigns, recurring gifts, grants, volunteers, and major donors | Donor profiles, donation forms, payment processing, automated receipts, moves management, and fundraising reports | Built in | $99/month |
| Little Green Light | Small nonprofits seeking affordable donor management with unlimited users | Gift tracking, pledges, appeals, acknowledgments, online forms, volunteer records, and supporter segmentation | Built in through LGL forms and supported payment processors | $45/month |
| Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud | Large or complex nonprofits requiring extensive customization, automation, and reporting | Fundraising, program and outcome management, volunteer management, automation, permissions, and advanced reporting | Available through Salesforce products and integrations | $60/user/month |
| CiviCRM | Organizations seeking a customizable open-source nonprofit CRM | Contributions, memberships, events, email campaigns, case management, grants, and volunteer records | Available through payment processor integrations | Free software; hosting and implementation costs apply |
| Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT | Established nonprofits and institutions with complex fundraising and advancement operations | Gift management, major-donor portfolios, prospect research, online fundraising, analytics, and advanced permissions | Available through Blackbaud fundraising and payment tools | Custom quote |
1. folk
folk is the ideal CRM platform for medium-sized non-profit organizations with 20-50 team members, offering intuitive contact management, customizable workflows, and collaborative features specifically designed to enhance team coordination and relationship building at scale.
Key features
- Centralized contact management: Store donors, volunteers, members, sponsors, partners, board members, and grant contacts in one shared database.
- Custom nonprofit pipelines: Build tailored workflows for major gifts, grant applications, corporate sponsorships, volunteer onboarding, partnerships, and donor stewardship.
- Contact enrichment: Find missing professional email addresses, phone numbers, job titles, and organization details without researching every contact manually.
- Flexible segmentation: Organize supporters by relationship type, program, location, campaign, funding interest, engagement level, or any custom field.
- Email and calendar synchronization: Connect Gmail or Outlook to keep messages, meetings, notes, and previous interactions attached to each contact.
- Personalized email sequences: Create targeted outreach and follow-up campaigns for donors, volunteers, sponsors, or potential partners.
- Automations and reminders: Assign contacts, update fields, create tasks, and schedule follow-ups as relationships move through each pipeline.
- Team collaboration: Share notes, interaction history, contact ownership, and next steps to prevent duplicated or inconsistent outreach.
- AI-powered assistance: Generate personalized icebreakers, summarize relationships, complete custom fields, and identify the next best action.
- Import and integrations: Import existing databases from CSV files and connect folk with other tools through native integrations, Zapier, Make, or the API.
Pros
- Perfect for team collaboration: folk's intuitive interface makes it accessible to all team members regardless of technical expertise, with quick onboarding that works seamlessly for teams of 20-50 people.
- All-in-one solution: folk streamlines your team's workflow by allowing you to import contacts from LinkedIn, automatically find their emails, coordinate outreach through customizable email sequences, and track interactions in shared pipelines, eliminating the need for multiple tools and reducing costs across your team.
- Scalable LinkedIn integration: Your entire team can seamlessly import contacts from LinkedIn, track conversations within folk, and share templates for consistent, coordinated communication across departments.
- Team-focused customizability: Custom fields, shared pipelines, and collaborative workflows enable your 20-50 person team to tailor the CRM to support coordinated donor and volunteer management across multiple departments.
- Comprehensive integrations: Native integrations and an open API—plus Zapier and Make—let teams connect folk to 6,000+ tools (e.g., Kaspr, Allo, Salesforge, PandaDoc), allowing your medium-sized team to centralize workflows and reduce manual coordination while maintaining consistency across all team members.
Cons
- Advanced reporting and analytics: Pipeline and stage analytics, revenue forecasting with weighted probabilities, and customizable breakdowns by owner, channel, industry, region, or any custom field.
Price and plans
folk offers excellent value for teams of 20-50 people with a 14-day free trial. Monthly or annual subscription plans are competitively priced for medium-sized organizations:
- Standard: $24 per user, per month
- Premium: $48 per user, per month
- Custom: Starts from $60 per user, per month
2. Neon CRM
Neon CRM is an all-in-one nonprofit CRM built to manage fundraising, memberships, events, volunteers, and supporter communications. Unlike a general-purpose CRM, it connects donor records with gifts, event attendance, campaign activity, and engagement history. This makes it a practical option for growing organizations that want to replace separate fundraising and operational tools with one nonprofit-focused platform.
Key features
- Donor management: Stores contact details, relationships, donation history, communication preferences, and engagement activity in unified constituent profiles.
- Online fundraising: Provides customizable donation forms, recurring giving options, campaign pages, and automated acknowledgments.
- Membership management: Tracks membership levels, renewals, expiration dates, and benefits.
- Event management: Supports registrations, ticketing, attendee records, and event communications.
- Volunteer tracking: Organizes volunteer applications, assignments, hours, and engagement history.
- Email communication: Segments audiences and sends newsletters, appeals, receipts, and automated messages.
- Workflow automation: Triggers tasks, emails, and record updates based on supporter actions.
- Reporting: Creates dashboards and reports covering donations, campaigns, memberships, and constituent activity.
Pros
- Built specifically for nonprofits: Fundraising, memberships, events, and volunteers are handled within the same ecosystem.
- Complete supporter history: Teams can see donations and other forms of engagement without consulting separate databases.
- Strong automation: Automated acknowledgments and workflows reduce repetitive administrative work.
- Broad functionality: Suitable for organizations managing several programs and revenue streams.
Cons
- More complex than a lightweight CRM: Configuration and onboarding can take time, particularly when migrating historical donor data.
- Costs may increase with usage: Payment processing, implementation services, additional products, or higher database requirements can raise the total price.
- Potential feature overlap: Smaller nonprofits may not need every fundraising, event, and membership tool included in the platform.
Price and plans
Neon CRM pricing depends on the organization’s database, required functionality, and selected services. Nonprofits must request a personalized quote from Neon One.
3. DonorPerfect
DonorPerfect is a fundraising CRM designed to centralize donor information, process gifts, automate acknowledgments, and measure campaign performance. Its feature set covers individual giving, recurring donations, volunteers, events, memberships, grants, and major-donor development.
Key features
- Donor profiles: Combines biographical information, giving history, communications, relationships, and engagement records.
- Donation processing: Supports customizable online forms, integrated payments, digital wallets, recurring gifts, and automated receipts.
- Fundraising automation: Creates alerts, follow-up tasks, acknowledgments, and stewardship workflows.
- Moves management: Helps development teams plan and record each stage of a major-donor relationship.
- Email marketing: Includes Constant Contact capabilities and supports Mailchimp integration.
- Volunteer and membership forms: Collects and connects volunteer, membership, donation, and event information.
- Grant tracking: Records grant opportunities, deadlines, applications, and funding outcomes.
- Reporting: Offers dashboards, fundraising reports, segmentation, and scheduled reporting options.
Pros
- Strong fundraising functionality: DonorPerfect covers more of the donation lifecycle than a general-purpose CRM.
- Integrated forms and payments: Donations flow directly into the donor database, reducing manual reconciliation.
- Flexible donor segmentation: Fundraisers can build targeted groups based on giving history, interests, campaigns, or engagement.
- Suitable for growing organizations: Core, Plus, and Pro packages support different levels of fundraising complexity.
Cons
- Quote-based plan details: The starting price is public, but organizations must contact sales for exact package pricing.
- Additional implementation work: Data migration, field configuration, and process design may require onboarding support.
- Broader interface: Teams looking only for simple relationship management may find the platform more extensive than necessary.
Price and plans
DonorPerfect fundraising suites start at $99 per month. The available packages are:
- Core: Essential donor management, outreach, forms, payment processing, and stewardship tools.
- Plus: Adds tools such as QuickBooks integration, crowdfunding, moves management, batch gift entry, and automated tasks.
- Pro: Adds advanced segmentation, enterprise reporting, scheduled reports, and custom API access.
Exact pricing depends on database size, required features, and implementation needs.
4. Little Green Light
Little Green Light is an affordable donor management platform aimed at small and growing nonprofits. It combines constituent records, gift tracking, online donation forms, acknowledgments, appeals, events, volunteer information, and reporting under a single plan.
Key features
- Constituent management: Stores donors, volunteers, members, organizations, households, and related contacts.
- Gift tracking: Records donations, pledges, recurring gifts, soft credits, matching gifts, and in-kind contributions.
- Online forms: Collects donations and event registrations through customizable forms.
- Acknowledgments: Generates receipts, thank-you letters, emails, and mailing lists.
- Appeals and campaigns: Connects gifts to specific funds, appeals, events, and fundraising goals.
- Volunteer tracking: Records volunteer interests, activities, and hours.
- Reporting and segmentation: Creates queries, reports, exports, and targeted supporter lists.
- Integrations: Connects with payment processors, accounting software, email platforms, and other nonprofit tools.
Pros
- Transparent pricing: Costs are based on constituent count rather than the number of users.
- Unlimited users: Organizations can give the entire team access without paying for additional seats.
- All features included: There are no separate feature tiers or paid upgrades for core functionality.
- Accessible to small nonprofits: The interface and pricing model suit organizations moving away from spreadsheets.
Cons
- Less automation than larger platforms: Organizations with highly complex workflows may need external tools or more manual processes.
- Limited enterprise functionality: Advanced security, forecasting, and multi-entity management are not its primary focus.
- Database-based price increases: The subscription rises as the number of constituent records grows.
Price and plans
Little Green Light includes unlimited users and all features. Monthly pricing is based on the number of constituent records:
- Up to 2,500 constituents: $45/month.
- Up to 5,000: $60/month.
- Up to 10,000: $75/month.
- Up to 20,000: $90/month.
- Up to 30,000: $105/month.
- Up to 40,000: $120/month.
- Up to 50,000: $135/month.
Each additional 10,000-record tier costs $15 per month. Annual subscriptions receive a 10% discount, and new accounts include a 30-day free trial.
5. Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud adapts the Salesforce platform to fundraising, program delivery, case management, volunteer coordination, and grantmaking. It is best suited to nonprofits that need extensive customization, automation, reporting, and integration across several teams or programs.
Key features
- Fundraising management: Tracks donors, gifts, commitments, campaigns, and fundraising relationships.
- Program management: Connects programs, services, participants, outcomes, and organizational goals.
- Case management: Helps teams coordinate services, assessments, referrals, and participant interactions.
- Grantmaking: Supports applications, reviews, awards, budgets, and grantee relationships.
- Automation: Uses Salesforce Flow to automate assignments, approvals, communications, and record updates.
- Reporting and dashboards: Provides customizable reports across fundraising, programs, grants, and supporter engagement.
- AppExchange ecosystem: Extends the platform with accounting, payments, marketing, events, and nonprofit applications.
- Permissions and security: Offers granular access controls for organizations handling sensitive supporter or beneficiary data.
Pros
- Highly customizable: Data models, workflows, interfaces, and reports can be adapted to complex nonprofit operations.
- Scalable ecosystem: Suitable for organizations that expect their database, programs, or integrations to grow.
- Strong reporting: Teams can connect fundraising and program data to measure both revenue and impact.
- Large partner network: Nonprofits can access consultants and applications specializing in Salesforce implementations.
Cons
- Complex implementation: Most organizations need careful planning, configuration, and administrator training.
- Potentially high total cost: Consulting, migration, integrations, additional products, and ongoing administration can cost more than the licenses themselves.
- Excessive for simple needs: Small nonprofits seeking basic donor tracking may find the platform unnecessarily demanding.
Price and plans
Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud offers a 30-day free trial. Its nonprofit plans are billed annually:
- Nonprofit Cloud Enterprise: $60 per user, per month.
- Nonprofit Cloud Unlimited: $100 per user, per month.
- Nonprofit Cloud Agentforce 1 for Sales: $135 per user, per month.
- Nonprofit Cloud Agentforce 1 for Service: $135 per user, per month.
6. CiviCRM
CiviCRM is an open-source constituent relationship management system created for nonprofits, associations, advocacy groups, and membership organizations. It can manage donors, members, events, volunteers, campaigns, cases, grants, and communications without charging a traditional software license fee.
Key features
- Contact management: Stores individuals, households, organizations, relationships, groups, tags, and interaction history.
- Contributions: Tracks donations, pledges, recurring contributions, payment methods, and receipts.
- Memberships: Manages membership levels, renewals, expiration dates, and benefits.
- Events: Handles registrations, participant records, fees, and event communications.
- Email campaigns: Segments audiences and sends bulk communications through CiviMail.
- Case management: Tracks structured service-delivery or client-support workflows.
- Grant management: Records applications, awards, funding periods, and grant-related activity.
- CMS integration: Works with platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, Backdrop, and Joomla.
Pros
- Open-source software: Organizations can inspect, adapt, and extend the platform without paying per-user license fees.
- Extensive nonprofit features: Contributions, memberships, events, grants, cases, and communications are available within one system.
- Strong customization potential: Developers can create extensions and adapt workflows to specialized requirements.
- Community ecosystem: The platform is supported by contributors, implementation partners, and nonprofit technology specialists.
Cons
- Technical setup: Hosting, installation, updates, security, and extensions require internal expertise or a qualified provider.
- Variable user experience: The interface and performance depend partly on the chosen CMS, hosting environment, and configuration.
- Unpredictable implementation costs: The software is free, but migration, development, maintenance, and support can become expensive.
Price and plans
CiviCRM is free and open source, with no mandatory per-user subscription. Organizations still need to budget for:
- Web hosting.
- Implementation and configuration.
- Data migration.
- Custom development.
- Maintenance and security updates.
- Training and technical support.
- Payment processing fees.
Managed CiviCRM hosting and support plans are available from third-party providers at different prices.
7. Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT is a cloud fundraising and donor management platform designed for established nonprofits, educational institutions, healthcare foundations, and other organizations with complex advancement operations. It combines donor records, gift processing, fundraising workflows, analytics, and prospect research.
Key features
- Constituent records: Centralizes donors, households, organizations, relationships, gifts, actions, and communication preferences.
- Gift management: Records donations, pledges, recurring gifts, matching gifts, tributes, and planned giving activity.
- Fundraising workflows: Helps teams manage annual giving, major gifts, campaigns, portfolios, and stewardship plans.
- Prospect insights: Supports wealth screening, prospect research, scoring, and major-gift prioritization.
- Online fundraising: Connects donation forms, payments, campaign pages, and donor records.
- Analytics and reporting: Provides fundraising dashboards, gift reports, portfolio analysis, and campaign reporting.
- Integrations: Connects with other Blackbaud products and third-party nonprofit applications.
- Security and permissions: Supports detailed user roles and controls for larger fundraising departments.
Pros
- Deep fundraising functionality: Designed around the operational needs of professional development and advancement teams.
- Strong major-gift support: Prospect research and portfolio tools help organizations prioritize high-value donor relationships.
- Suitable for complex databases: Handles extensive donor histories, relationships, funds, campaigns, and gift types.
- Broad nonprofit ecosystem: Integrates with additional Blackbaud products for payments, financial management, education, and marketing.
Cons
- No transparent public pricing: Organizations must speak with Blackbaud to obtain a quote.
- High implementation burden: Migration, configuration, training, and data cleanup can require significant time and specialist support.
- Too complex for many small nonprofits: Organizations with simple donor databases may not use enough of the platform to justify the cost.
- Potential ecosystem dependency: Nonprofits using several Blackbaud products may find future migrations or integrations more difficult.
Price and plans
Blackbaud does not publish a standard starting price for Raiser's Edge NXT. Pricing is customized according to database size, organizational requirements, selected modules, implementation services, and support.
The total budget should account for software access, migration, onboarding, payment processing, training, integrations, and ongoing database administration.
Conclusion
Choosing the best CRM for your medium-sized non-profit organization with 20-50 team members is a critical decision that can significantly impact your collaborative efficiency and fundraising success. The right CRM will streamline processes across departments, enhance donor and volunteer relationships, and provide valuable insights through coordinated data analytics. Among the platforms evaluated, folk CRM stands out as the clear winner for teams of your size. Folk combines an intuitive interface that works seamlessly across your entire team with robust LinkedIn integration and collaborative features specifically designed for relationship management. Unlike HubSpot's complexity and high costs, Zoho's overwhelming customization requirements, Streak's limited functionality, or Less Annoying CRM's basic feature set, folk provides the perfect balance of power and usability for medium-sized non-profit teams. Folk's pricing remains reasonable as your team scales, its collaborative workflows support coordinated donor and volunteer management, and its AI-powered features help your 20-50 person team work more efficiently without requiring extensive technical training.
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FAQ
Which CRM is best for a 20–50 person nonprofit?
For medium-sized teams, folk is recommended: it centralizes donors, volunteers, partners, and grants with shared pipelines, contact enrichment, email/calendar sync, automations, and team collaboration. Plans start at $24/user/month with a 14-day free trial, making it suited to 20–50 person organizations.
What features should nonprofits prioritize when choosing a CRM?
Prioritize constituent and donor management, donation processing, fundraising workflows, volunteer and membership tracking, segmentation and automated communications, reporting, integrations, ease of use, and transparent pricing. These capabilities ensure consistent stewardship, measurable fundraising, and efficient cross-team collaboration.
How does folk support donor tracking and fundraising workflows?
folk offers centralized contact records, custom nonprofit pipelines (major gifts, grants, sponsorships), donation history tracking, personalized email sequences, automations and reminders, and contact enrichment to fill missing details. Shared notes and ownership prevent duplicated outreach and help teams coordinate stewardship.
Can nonprofits import existing data and sync email/calendar with these CRMs?
Yes. folk supports CSV imports and connects to Gmail or Outlook to attach messages and meetings to contacts, and it integrates with other tools via native connections, Zapier, Make, or the API for broader workflows.
What are typical costs for nonprofit CRMs for medium-sized teams?
Costs vary: folk lists Standard at $24/user/month, Premium $48, and Custom from $60, with a free trial. Other platforms range from free open-source software with hosting costs (CiviCRM) to mid-tier or custom quotes (Neon, Blackbaud) and per-user pricing like Salesforce at $60/user/month or DonorPerfect at $99/month.
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