An Overview of HubSpot for Nonprofits
What is Hubspot?
In the organization’s own words, HubSpot is a “customer platform with all the software, integrations, and resources you need to connect your marketing, sales, and customer service.” It’s a constituent relationship management (CRM) system that enables content management, marketing, sales, and more—all in a single solution.
What Is HubSpot for Nonprofits?
The only difference between regular HubSpot and HubSpot for Nonprofits is cost. Eligible nonprofit organizations receive a 40% discount, which vastly reduces the cost of using this solution. This discount is only applicable to Professional or Enterprise Tier HubSpot products and excludes Starter Tiers, Add-Ons, capacity packs, or limit increases.
Although HubSpot’s tools were originally developed for businesses, many nonprofits use them with great success. HubSpot boasts over 4,000 nonprofit partners, including the World Wildlife Fund, Swipe Out Hunger, and The Nature Conservancy.
What Are the Eligibility Requirements of HubSpot for Nonprofits?
To qualify for HubSpot’s nonprofit discount, your organization must:
- Be located and registered as a charity, nonprofit, or non-governmental organization with recognized legal status in North America, Australia, or New Zealand.
- Be a new HubSpot customer.
- Sign up for an annual term contract (one-year subscription).
Additionally, your nonprofit must have a mission to benefit the community. HubSpot states that this includes, but is not limited to, “the advancement of social, racial, ethnic, cultural, gender, climate, and educational justice.”
A few examples of ineligible organizations include:
- Colleges and universities (except for foundations or nonprofit research initiatives)
- Hospitals, healthcare networks, health plans, ambulatory/outpatient healthcare organizations
- Professional and semi-professional sports organizations
- Governmental organizations or agencies, such as international governmental organizations and United Nations Entities
- Political, labor, and fraternal organizations
- Individuals and private organizations
Get the most out of HubSpot for
Nonprofits with Team DNL’s consultants.
Core Features of HubSpot for Nonprofits
Marketing Hub
With HubSpot for Nonprofit’s Marketing Hub, you’ll increase traffic to your nonprofit’s site, convert visitors into donors, and conveniently host and track various marketing campaigns. Its Professional package includes the following features:
- The ability to host 2,000 marketing contacts
- Email marketing
- Social media management
- Forms
- A/B testing
- Personalization tokens
- Marketing automation and scheduling
- Marketing analytics and reporting
HubSpot’s suite of marketing tools makes it easier than ever to reach new audiences, boost your nonprofit’s visibility, and increase awareness of your mission and programs.
Sales Hub
Although sales may seem irrelevant to nonprofits, there’s plenty of overlap between sales processes and donor acquisition practices. HubSpot’s Sales Hub enables charitable organizations to gain deeper insights into donor behaviors, automate key donor acquisition tasks, and strategically convert supporters into donors.
The Sales Hub Professional package includes the following features:
- Flexible donor database (CRM)
- Integrated donation forms
- Donor cultivation pipelines
- Pipeline automation
- Custom reporting and forecasting
- Multiple currencies
- Integrated payment processing
- Workflow extensions
- 1:1 technical support
HubSpot for Nonprofits provides all the features your nonprofit needs to build a strong system for turning new leads into supporters and eventually donors. It also gives you the tools to better understand your donors and uncover what motivates them to give.
Content Hub
For many, your nonprofit’s website is the first interaction they have with your mission. Make it a memorable experience with HubSpot’s Content Hub tools. This powerful website builder can easily be customized to meet your nonprofit’s needs, delivering a stellar online experience for new and long-term supporters, prospects, and more. Plus, it supports other aspects of content creation to fuel your donor journey.
HubSpot’s Content Hub Professional package includes the following features:
- Website builder
- Editable themes
- Drag and drop site editor
- Custom landing pages
- SEO tools and analytics
- Video hosting and management
- Content embeds
- Website traffic analytics
- Mobile optimization
Your website plays a key role in converting visitors into supporters, and eventually donors and volunteers. It also serves as a repository of information about your programs and mission, so it’s essential to develop a strong, well-designed site that meets web visitors’ needs.
Hubspot for Nonprofit Integrations
HubSpot boasts almost 2,000 integrations with other tools and apps. Here are a few standouts:
Integrations
WordPress
WordPress is one of the leading CMS systems, as it’s easy to use, offers tons of customization options, and securely hosts websites. Over 40% of websites worldwide use WordPress, and your nonprofit’s site might be among their ranks.
If that’s the case, HubSpot offers a WordPress integration that allows you to use HubSpot’s marketing and analytics features within the WordPress CMS. Most notably, you can easily build embeddable forms, manage your contacts, and see which pages drive the most conversions to amplify your web strategy.
Ads
If your nonprofit is interested in using paid ads to promote its mission, HubSpot enables you to integrate your ads’ results so you can fully understand your ROI and advertising outcomes. Namely, HubSpot offers integrations with Google, Meta, and LinkedIn Ads for cross-network reporting.
With HubSpot’s ad integrations, you can create highly targeted audiences, automatically sync leads into HubSpot, understand which ads are influencing your bottom line, and create a consistent narrative across all your marketing efforts.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an email marketing and automation platform that makes managing your nonprofit’s emails and SMS messaging a breeze. It natively enables you to create content faster, simplify audience segmentation, and optimize messages with analytics.
HubSpot’s integration iterates on this by connecting Mailchimp’s mail services to HubSpot’s dedicated CRM. Sync your HubSpot contacts to Mailchimp to easily create contact lists and start building email campaigns. You can also see Mailchimp email activity directly in HubSpot, including sends, opens, clicks, and bounces.
Eventbrite
Events are one of the main ways nonprofits like yours raise funds for their valuable missions. Eventbrite is an event marketing platform that allows organizations to reach more people and convert them into attendees.
HubSpot makes it easier to improve event promotion and visibility. Its integration automatically creates contacts in its CRM for new event registrants. Additionally, you can segment your contacts based on event information, creating lists, setting workflow triggers, and more, simply based on attendance. If you’re interested in converting supporters to donors, why not start with individuals who frequently attend your events?
Fundraise Up
Fundraise Up is an online fundraising platform that aims to streamline online giving, increase revenue, and boost donor engagement. It offers tools for personalizing the giving experience and enabling modern payment methods, increasing gifts to your nonprofit’s mission.
HubSpot’s Fundraise Up integration works with any version of HubSpot that has an available pipeline. It automatically syncs all data from Fundraising Up donations, including updates to donations and recurring gifts as they might occur. This provides a holistic view of the revenue you’re bringing in from this platform.
Zapier
Built to bring automation to organizations of all kinds, Zapier enables even further integration capabilities for HubSpot users. Zapier connects with over 8,000 apps to automate workflows, allowing you to connect HubSpot to those apps as well.
Most notably, HubSpot’s Zapier integration allows HubSpot users to set up automations that trigger upon the creation of new HubSpot contacts, engagements, and more. It can also update your HubSpot records automatically as data in your other tools is adjusted or updated. Best of all, you can use Zapier’s capabilities directly within HubSpot so you don’t have to navigate away.
Need custom HubSpot integrations?
We can bridge the gap between your tools and build the connections you need.
Benefits of Working with HubSpot for Nonprofits
All-in-One
HubSpot is a comprehensive solution that allows your nonprofit to handle everything from website content to email marketing workflows to donor data. When you combine these elements, you get a holistic system that empowers you to attract, connect with, and retain supporters. No more worrying about making disparate solutions work together or ensuring your data moves between tools—you can handle it all with HubSpot for Nonprofits.
User-Friendly
HubSpot is known for being a user-friendly solution, making it particularly valuable for nonprofit staff members who may not have dedicated training in CRMs and marketing tools. Its intuitive interface and features make it easy to find what you need and complete your essential marketing and stewardship tasks. In addition, the platform provides quick-reference tutorials for each feature that users can reference if they’re ever uncertain.
Marketing Automation
Getting the word out about your mission is essential for advocacy and attracting new supporters. Marketing is crucial to your success, but it can be time-consuming, making it especially difficult to handle for small or medium-sized nonprofits. With HubSpot, you can automate your marketing to schedule communications months in advance, important new contacts the moment they fill out a form or interact with your messaging, and create nurture pipelines that turn new contacts into supporters and donors.
Scalable
HubSpot offers tiers that can scale as a nonprofit grows, making it a great solution for charitable organizations that want a solution that can expand with them. You can start by choosing one of the Hubs (Marketing, Sales, Content, Service, or Operations), and grow your partnership with HubSpot by adding more Hubs when you need them.
Deciding if HubSpot is Right for Your Nonprofit
There are many tools available for nonprofits of all sizes, making it difficult to decide which is best for your organization’s specific needs. To determine if HubSpot is the right fit for you, sit down with your team and discuss your nonprofit’s:
- Core needs: What are your most urgent software priorities? Do they align with HubSpot’s offerings? If so, then HubSpot may be the right choice for your nonprofit.
- Budget: Establish how much funding you can allocate to your new software. Then, check HubSpot’s pricing page to determine if the cost aligns with your budget. Note that the costs on this page don’t reflect the 40% nonprofit discount, so factor that into your consideration.
- Staff knowledge and experience: Discuss how much experience and knowledge your staff members have about CRMs and marketing tools. If you have a lot of experience, you may prefer to use an open-source software that you can customize more specifically. If not, then HubSpot provides an easy-to-use solution that can meet your nonprofit’s needs.
- Needed integrations: What existing tools do you plan to use alongside HubSpot? Does HubSpot already offer integrations with these solutions? It’s most convenient if this is the case, but if there aren’t native integrations and you have the budget to spare, you can work with a third-party consultant to develop your own API integrations.
- Growth plans: If your nonprofit is only planning to work with one of HubSpot’s Hubs, consider if you’ll need to purchase other capabilities in the near or far future. If so, review HubSpot’s other Hubs and determine if the solution can scale up with your needs.
- Other software choices: Compare HubSpot against your other top software contenders. How does HubSpot measure up? Does it align more closely or less closely with your needs and preferences?
Work with your team to determine, based on this information, if HubSpot is the right and best choice for your organization. Book a demo or consultation directly with HubSpot to discuss your needs and preferences and explore how they address your concerns.
If you’re having trouble narrowing it down or making a decision, work with a dedicated nonprofit software consultant. You can trust their years of experience and expertise to provide the best suggestions for choosing and making the most of HubSpot’s solutions.
Need advice on which nonprofit CRM to pick?
Work with DNL OmniMedia’s consultants to determine the best software for your needs.
Tips for Getting Started with HubSpot for Nonprofits
If you’ve decided that HubSpot for Nonprofits is the solution you want to work with, here are a few tips for getting started:
1. Define your goals.
Establishing your goals early on helps keep your HubSpot efforts focused. Take this time to identify key performance indicators (KPIs) to track throughout the process to measure your progress and identify areas for improvement.
2. Set up with clean data.
Whenever you begin using a new CRM, importing clean data into it is a great way to get a strong start. Look through your existing data and clean up any inaccuracies, inconsistencies, or duplicates. Then, identify and remove any irrelevant data, and fill in any missing data. Finally, import your newly cleaned data into HubSpot.
3. Integrate HubSpot with other tools.
If you’re using any other software, make sure that data flows between them seamlessly by integrating with HubSpot. If HubSpot has native integrations with those tools, set them up. Or, work with a nonprofit software consultant to set up custom APIs.
4. Start small and scale up.
This advice is particularly useful for smaller nonprofits or organizations that are using a dedicated CRM for the first time. When you work with a feature-filled solution like HubSpot, it’s tempting to do it all. But this can quickly become overwhelming, which may lead to workflow inefficiencies or strategic mishaps. Instead, start small, such as by setting up your donor database and ensuring that it works well before moving on to marketing emails and forms.
5. Train your team thoroughly.
Although HubSpot is user-friendly and intuitive, that doesn’t mean your team will automatically know how to use it. Host team training sessions using HubSpot’s guided onboarding courses so everyone knows exactly what they’re doing. You can also leverage HubSpot Support and Community to give staff members a well-rounded understanding of the tools.
Working with a HubSpot for Nonprofits Consultant
If you want to ensure your implementation of HubSpot for Nonprofits goes smoothly and that these tools are effective from day one, consider working with a dedicated nonprofit software consultant. These individuals leverage years of experience to help you:
- Implement HubSpot for Nonprofits
- Customize HubSpot to your organization’s specific needs
- Build and develop custom API integrations
- Grow your audience and segment it effectively
- Integrate forms into your marketing materials
Should you want a professional to make sure that implementation goes smoothly and that you’re maximizing the value of your tools, software consultants like those at DNL OmniMedia can provide the impact and results you desire.
Implement HubSpot for Nonprofits with ease.
DNL OmniMedia’s team of experienced consultants is here to provide all the support you need.
Additional Resources
Nonprofit Consulting Firms: 25+ Top Options To Choose From
Need external help for your nonprofit? Explore our guide of 25+ top consulting firms that can assist with everything from software to digital marketing to talent development.
Nonprofit Marketing: The Savvy Nonprofit’s Ultimate Guide
Investing in HubSpot for Nonprofits can greatly upgrade your marketing, but only if you have a solid foundation. Learn everything you need to know about nonprofit marketing here.
Nonprofit Website Design: An In-Depth Look at the Process
Your nonprofit’s website is a key component of your marketing strategy. Discover how to create a well-designed, visually appealing, and valuable website for your nonprofit.