Frequently Asked Questions About Using HubSpot for Nonprofits

Q: What is HubSpot, and why is it a good fit for nonprofits?

HubSpot is a modern CRM platform that centralizes donors, members, volunteers, programs, and marketing into one system. Nonprofits use it to manage relationships at scale with automation, reporting, and integrations. It goes beyond marketing to power operations across teams.

Q: How do nonprofits use HubSpot differently from for-profits?

Nonprofits apply the same CRM mechanics but toward stewardship, pledges, programs, and impact instead of sales. The vocabulary shifts—leads become prospects and donors; deals translate to asks and pledges—yet the tools are identical. HubSpot supports both lenses on one platform.

Q: What HubSpot features are most valuable for donor management and fundraising?

Custom properties, pipelines, and automation keep gifts, pledges, memberships, and outreach in one place. Native marketing tools flow directly into donor records. Dashboards surface retention, lifetime value, and campaign ROI in real time.

Q: Can HubSpot replace a donor management system (DMS) or fundraising-specific CRM?

Yes—when configured for nonprofit needs, HubSpot can replace a DMS. It unifies donor management with marketing, events, and stewardship on one platform. Integrations or native builds bring ticketing, advocacy, and finance into the same system.

Q: How do nonprofits manage major donors and pledge commitments in HubSpot?

Model cultivation and pledges in pipelines with stages, reminders, and rollup reporting. Track multi-year commitments and automate tasks and follow-ups. Teams gain transparency so no relationship falls through the cracks.

Q: How should a nonprofit decide between HubSpot and a “nonprofit-specific” CRM?

Choose HubSpot when you need a platform with shared data, automation, and a robust integration ecosystem. Choose a nonprofit-specific CRM only for narrow use cases and fixed data models. A platform posture preserves optionality as programs grow.

Q: What KPIs should the board see monthly from HubSpot and how do we build those dashboards?

Boards value donor retention by cohort, recurring revenue trends, average gift, first-to-second gift conversion, and major gift pipeline. Build dashboards with fiscal filters and add narrative context. Use contact/deal reports and calculated properties for clarity.

Q: How do we forecast revenue from recurring gifts and pledges in HubSpot?

Track recurring gifts in a pipeline or custom object with cadence, next charge date, and amount, then roll up expected value. Model pledges with parents and installment children plus reminders. The result mirrors SaaS-style MRR forecasting for mission revenue.

Q: What is the cleanest way to move off point tools while keeping operations stable?

Migrate in thin slices—online giving, then events, then memberships—while mirroring critical automations in HubSpot. Switch traffic once validated and retire duplicates. Prefer native integrations to avoid rebuilds.

Q: How much does HubSpot cost for nonprofits, and what discounts are available?

Eligible nonprofits receive a 40% discount on Professional and Enterprise tiers. Total cost depends on contacts, seats, and automation needs. Many start with the free CRM and scale hubs as value increases.

Core Questions About HubSpot for Nonprofits

What is HubSpot, and why is it a good fit for nonprofits?

TL;DR: HubSpot is a flexible, modern CRM that for nonprofits unifies donors, members, volunteers, programs, and marketing so organizations can run everything in one place.

HubSpot is a CRM platform designed to manage relationships and engagement at scale. For nonprofits, that means tracking donors, members, volunteers, and program participants in one place, with automation, reporting, and integrations layered on top of that.

Many organizations think it’s just for marketing, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. That’s a relic of the company’s early focus on inbound marketing. But since its founding it has evolved into a multi-hub operational engine for organizations of all sizes. The development of HubSpot’s custom objects, advanced automation, and enterprise-grade reporting makes it clear that HubSpot is a tool that’s not just about filling the funnel anymore. It’s about managing every relationship (think donors, members, volunteers, partners, and more) in one connected system.

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How do nonprofits use HubSpot differently from for-profits?

TL;DR: Nonprofits use the same CRM mechanics as for-profits but map them to stewardship, pledges, programs, and impact rather than sales.

We often hear the assumption that nonprofits have simpler operations than their for-profit peers: smaller budgets, fewer moving parts, simpler workflows, you name it. We’ve worked in the sector for years and can confidently say that we’ve seen the opposite. Nonprofits juggle as much complexity or more than big for-profit companies: multiple donor/membership programs, in-kind gifts, recurring giving, event fundraising, volunteers, grant cycles, stewardship pipelines, regulatory compliance, data integrations, global operations, and more.

Think about it: for-profit CRMs are built around sales cycles, conversion funnels, lead scoring. They might be called something else, but nonprofits have those, too. And in addition, they have donor loyalty, impact reporting, pledge tracking, volunteer engagement, and mission fulfillment.

The tools look different at times; instead of “leads” you have “prospects & donors”; instead of “deals closing” you have “asks & pledges fulfilled”; instead of simple marketing automations it’s workflows that trigger stewardship, pledge follow-ups, grant reporting, and cross-program communications. Ultimately, nonprofits and for-profits are solving similar problems (how to engage people, keep relationships strong, and measure impact). That’s exactly what HubSpot delivers.

So in the end, it’s not the mechanics of CRM use that is different. It’s the lens. Nonprofits are using the exact same CRM tools as their for-profit counterparts, but with a different vocabulary and a different set of goals. In the for-profit world companies are tracking revenue. Nonprofits? That might be donor lifetime value. A for-profit sales team looks at pipeline velocity, while on the nonprofit side it’s development teams focused on stewardship and retention. HubSpot gives both sides the same foundation to use.

All of this is why you can hear the Nonprofit Tech Shop team shouting from the rooftops that nonprofits really aren’t “less than” or somehow fundamentally different from for-profits in how they use technology. They deserve (and can fully leverage!) the same best-in-class tools. The difference is that nonprofits need to be understood on their own terms, with their own vocabulary and priorities, and not squeezed into a for-profit mold.

What HubSpot features are most valuable for donor management and fundraising?

TL;DR: Custom properties, pipelines, automation, native marketing, and dashboards keep donor data, outreach, and reporting centralized and actionable.

Fundraising tools for nonprofits are a dime a dozen. Classy or Donorbox for online giving, Eventbrite for events, Mailchimp for newsletters, Bloomerang for donor tracking. Each of them does the job, and generally pretty well. But the issue is that none of them talk to each other without a lot of manual work. And you see the results when you realize that a donor who gave through a campaign platform didn’t show up on the list for your year-end appeal. Or when people who attend your events aren’t recognized in your stewardship pipelines. Or when a donation logged in one system doesn’t trigger a thank you in another.

What nonprofits love about HubSpot is that it pulls all of this into one place:

Custom properties & records: track gifts, pledges, membership status, or volunteer involvement on the same contact record.
Pipelines: major donor cultivation or recurring gifts are managed the exact same way sales teams manage opportunities (with stages, forecasts, and reminders).
Automation: workflows to instantly send acknowledgments, trigger renewal asks, or alert staff when a donor hits a milestone.
Marketing + fundraising integration: email campaigns, landing pages, and forms flow straight into donor records without staff time exporting, importing, and juggling other tools.
Dashboards: donor retention, lifetime value, and campaign ROI are all visible in real time.

So instead of bolting on single-purpose tool after single-purpose tool to create your own organizational Frankenstein of a donor management system, HubSpot becomes your single source of truth and your operational brain. It integrates with those systems when you need them, but it keeps your donor data, communications, and reporting centralized in one place.

Can HubSpot replace a donor management system (DMS) or fundraising-specific CRM?

TL;DR: Yes, configured correctly, HubSpot can fully replace a DMS with stronger automation, reporting, and cross-team workflows.

We like to say that we can bend HubSpot to the will of any organization. Really, it’s that flexible. But the reality is that straight out of the box, HubSpot is not a donor database. Replacing your donor management system with HubSpot requires the right configuration. So whether you're doing this yourself or hiring a partner, you want to make sure you get this part right.

If we're involved, you'll know we have an entire team dedicated to this sort of nonprofit customization: building custom properties, pipelines, and integrations that make HubSpot handle donations, pledges, memberships, events, and stewardship just as well (and often better) than traditional fundraising CRMs.

Regardless of who does it, the payoff of using such a flexible platform is huge. Imagine your donor management system running on the same foundation as your marketing, your events, and your outreach. The same workflows that welcome a new prospect can trigger a thank-you letter for a donation or a reminder for a recurring gift. Your membership renewals can now flow directly into the same reporting dashboards that show email engagement and campaign ROI. Integrations tie in ticketing, finance, or advocacy systems so that donor data doesn’t just sit in a silo. Or, when it makes sense, we build those functions directly into HubSpot itself. (We’ve done it for ticketing, we’ve done it for advocacy!) The point is, if the data and workflows belong in the CRM, HubSpot can be bent to handle it.

That flexibility is why nonprofits love HubSpot and why they look to it to replace legacy systems like Blackbaud, Tessitura, Salesforce NPSP, DonorPerfect, and more. HubSpot allows these organizations modern automation, unified reporting, and a user-friendly interface…plus the long-term advantage of having every touchpoint on a single platform.

How do nonprofits manage major donors and pledge commitments in HubSpot?

TL;DR: We recommend modeling donor cultivation and pledges in pipelines with reminders, schedules, and roll-up reporting so nothing falls through the cracks.

We design custom pipelines that reflect how real development teams cultivate their donors. For most, a donor pipeline probably will look something like: identification > qualification > ask > stewardship. But like anything in HubSpot - it's a flow that can be heavily customized. Pledges can be tracked as multi-year deals, tied to donor records and with automated reminders and reporting. For capital campaigns and large gifts, HubSpot provides transparency across teams so no relationship falls through the cracks.

Strategy & Leadership

How should a nonprofit decide between HubSpot and a “nonprofit-specific” CRM?

TL;DR: Choose HubSpot when you need a true platform (shared data + automation + integrations); pick a nonprofit CRM only for narrow, fixed needs.

The first thing we do in any HubSpot vs “nonprofit CRM” discussion is reset the vocabulary. The term "CRM" gets slapped on almost any database with people in it, especially after the pandemic made organizations push all of their operations online. If a system mainly stores contacts and logs basic interactions, it is a CRM tool, and it may be fine for a narrow job. Many products marketed as “nonprofit CRMs” fit that description. Most organizations, though, need a platform, and that is the lens we use when we're helping organizations approach this decision.

A platform like HubSpot is unique in that it brings multiple native capabilities under one roof, so you are not stitching together a stack of basics that HubSpot already includes. Think email, automation, forms, journeys, CMS options, and reporting that work together. A platform also has a large integration ecosystem so the things you should not rebuild, like accounting or ERP, can connect cleanly. Just as important, a platform has a robust API that does more than move data. HubSpot’s API can create and manage assets inside the system, which means your team can programmatically spin up workflows, emails, and landing pages without relying on an external iPaaS for every change.

If a competitor piece of software a) cannot be your central place to work; b) lacks intuitive built-in tools; c) does not integrate easily; and d) its API cannot both connect and create...you do not have a platform. You have a collection of tools.

In today’s environment, owning your data and understanding constituents is non-negotiable, and that takes optionality. Many nonprofit-branded CRMs are excellent at a few jobs like gift entry and receipts, but with fixed data models, limited APIs, and shallow integrations they behave more like discrete tools than a true CRM. A best-in-class CRM is a platform: one shared data layer for people, organizations, giving, and programs; native automation and cross-object reporting; a real marketplace; and an API that not only moves data but can create and manage assets. And committing to a platform posture gives you choice. You can swap ticketing, payments, advocacy, or a data warehouse in or out without rebuilding everything. And you can make those switches while things like identity, consent, and permissions remain the same.

Choose a nonprofit-specific CRM if your needs are narrow, you can live with a fixed data model, and you want an out of the box donor database with minimal change. Choose HubSpot if you want a platform that centralizes your data, integrates cleanly with the rest of your stack, and can flex as your programs grow.

What KPIs should the board see monthly from HubSpot and how do we build those dashboards?

TL;DR: Give your board retention, recurring revenue, average gift, first-to-second conversion, and major pipeline - all assembled in a fiscal-filtered dashboard.

No two boards are alike, but having been around the block a few times with nonprofits big and small, we've got a pretty good idea of reports that nearly every board loves.

We'd start by building a top card for the following:

donor retention by cohort
recurring revenue trend
average gift
first-to-second gift conversion
major gift pipeline by expected close.

Under that, think about showing campaign attribution (but keep it at a reasonable level): dollars influenced, new recurring donors, and cost per acquired donor if you track it.

In HubSpot we'll typically build the data architecture from contact and deal reports, a recurring-gift pipeline or custom object, calculated properties for lifetime value, and a dashboard filtered by fiscal period. Another thing we often do when configuring board reports is keeMaster Donor Attribution and Forecasting with HubSpotp a “Notes to Board” rich-text card that explains context/confidence so the numbers make sense to those outside your team.

How do we forecast revenue from recurring gifts and pledges in HubSpot?

TL;DR: Track recurring gifts and pledge schedules as objects/pipelines with next-charge dates and calculated rollups to create reliable forecasts.

There are a few ways we've done this for organizations in HubSpot, but generally the idea is to treat recurring gifts as their own pipeline or custom object with one record per active commitment, a next-charge date, cadence, and amount. Then we would make calculated properties for monthly equivalent and next 90-day expected value, and then roll those up in a forecast by close date and status.

Pledges are a little bit different and we would likely model a pledge parent with scheduled installments as children, tie payments back to the schedule, and then use workflows to update remaining balance and trigger reminders.

Doing it this way is a great example of the ways in which nonprofits and for-profits use the same tools, just in different ways. The results looks a lot like MRR forecasts in SaaS, only you’re forecasting fuel for your mission vs. software subscriptions.

What is the cleanest way to move off point tools while keeping operations stable?

TL;DR: Migrate in thin slices (giving, events, memberships), mirror automations in HubSpot, then switch traffic and retire the duplicates.

Many organizations will come to us already knowing that they want HubSpot to be the single source of truth for a certain type of record (think people, organizations, giving history, stewardship, etc.). Once you know that, you'll know what can stay external for the time being. It's not always necessary to jump from all of your point tools into HubSpot at once. If you know some tools can stay external while you make switches elsewhere, a phased approach often works best - even if you know the final goal is to get out of your legacy systems and point tools completely.

Be sure to use native integrations where possible so data flows into HubSpot without a rebuild, mirror critical automations in HubSpot while keeping legacy tools live for a short overlap. Once you're confident the automations are working as intended in HubSpot, switch traffic and retire the duplicates.

Best practice is to do it in thin slices, for example online giving first, then events, then memberships, then the website so staff feels a smooth, phased handoff.

Cost, Implementation & Adoption

How much does HubSpot cost for nonprofits, and what discounts are available?

TL;DR: Eligible nonprofits get 40% off Pro/Enterprise, with overall cost driven by contacts, seats, and automation scope.

Eligible nonprofits receive a 40% discount on HubSpot’s Professional and Enterprise tiers. Plenty of nonprofits start with the free CRM to get a feel for the tool and then scale into Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Data Hub (formerly Operations Hub) as the flexibility of the software becomes apparent. Once it’s clear that HubSpot can make many of your organization’s tools redundant and tie together the remainder into a single CRM, the value becomes evident. And software-wise, like most CRMs of its kind, HubSpot cost depends on contact volume, user seats, and the level of automation and reporting you need.

How much does it cost to implement HubSpot for a nonprofit?

TL;DR: Light onboarding can be <$5k, but multi-system migrations and custom builds typically start around $10k and scale with complexity.

Implementation of a system that is going to be so central to your operations is not a “plug and play” scenario. Yes, there are plenty of HubSpot partners who do light onboarding & implementation: perhaps setting up your portal, configuring defaults, running a training or two, and making a few email templates or sequences. That’s a great fit for nonprofits that want the basics covered, and organizations can often find that service for $5,000 or less.

That’s not usually why people come to us. We’re typically brought in when a nonprofit needs more complex implementation and customization. Often it’s moving off a legacy system like Tessitura, DonorPerfect, or Constant Contact, migrating years of donor data, standing up new fundraising pipelines, integrating outside tools, or even rebuilding a website on HubSpot CMS alongside the CRM rollout. These aren’t “out-of-the-box” jobs. They require serious consulting and data modeling, and generally custom properties, coded workflows, and integrations that go well beyond a starter setup.

That’s why when we talk about “implementation,” we’re really talking about custom projects. A basic migration or implementation with us usually starts around $10,000, with larger multi-system projects scaling from there. If you only need straightforward onboarding and basic implementation, we’re happy to point you to trusted partners who specialize in that. But if your use case is complex (and in our experience, most nonprofits’ use cases are), that’s where we shine.

How do you migrate donor data into HubSpot without losing giving history?

TL;DR: We design a field-by-field data architecture, migrate in validated batches, and preserve all gifts, pledges, and notes as first-class records.

This question comes up all the time - and it’s understandable. We routinely work with teams that have been collecting gifts, pledges, event attendance, and supporter notes for decades. Nine times out of ten, their first concern is: we cannot lose our giving history.

So our entire process is built around preserving every detail. We start with consulting workshops where we map out your current systems (that might be DonorPerfect, Raisers Edge NXT, Salesforce NPSP, or custom databases) and we align with your team on where that data should live in HubSpot. From there, our solution engineering team takes over to develop a robust data architecture plan. This is where we create a field-by-field mapping to show exactly how donations, recurring gifts, pledges, in-kind contributions, memberships, events, and communications history will flow into HubSpot.

The migration itself is run in small batch phases so that we can validate that your data is landing in the right place (with the right formatting, linked to the right records, etc.) We also spend a lot of time accounting for edge cases like recurring donation schedules, soft credits, tribute gifts, membership renewals, volunteer activity, or legacy notes that need to be preserved for stewardship. Many of our migrations involve multiple systems, and when that is the case, we unify records across platforms to avoid duplication and ensure a single source of truth in HubSpot.

At the end of the day, this is often the single biggest, most pressure-filled task of any HubSpot migration. Donor lifetime value, retention analysis, and major gift forecasting all depend on complete, accurate historical data. Losing a decade of pledge history or donor interactions isn’t an option.

Data Architecture

How should nonprofits model households vs. individuals vs. organizations in HubSpot?

TL;DR: Create a Household custom object linked to people and gifts so stewardship, receipts, and analytics work at the family level.

Unlike most nonprofit-specific CRMs, HubSpot doesn’t give nonprofits an out-of-the-box native Household object (and yes, we've asked for it!). The good news is that HubSpot is flexible enough that you can create it yourself.

What you'll want to do is to stand up Household as a custom object, then associate it to the right people and records. Think “The Jackson Family” as a single record that shows who belongs to the household, which gifts are tied to those people, and every relevant interaction that should be visible at the family level.

On the Household record you’ll see the members (Tom, Mary, and Jane), their relationships to one another using association labels like Primary, Spouse, or Child, and the gifts that roll up to that family. If someone in the household opens an email, attends an event, schedules a meeting, or calls in, and that activity is logged on the contact, you can surface it on the Household so staff have the full picture in one place.

This model is especially helpful for stewardship and finance. Set up correctly and you will surface household lifetime giving, most recent gift, first gift date, RFM-style signals, and pledge balances directly on the Household so acknowledgments and asks are set at the right level. With this setup, joint receipts are straightforward and soft credits are clear.

Sometimes it's necessary to add logic for shared addresses, preferred salutation, and a designated household steward, but HubSpot makes that easy, too. A proper Household setup also makes it easy to consider edge cases like adult children who split off into a new household while still being related to the original family.

Under the hood the Household object looks and feels like any other HubSpot object. (And yes, this is yet another way that nonprofits aren't that different than their for-profit peers - they just need HubSpot tailored for nonprofit reality.) Contacts stay as people, Companies stay as employers or institutions, and the Household go alongside them to unify giving and engagement at the family level. We implement this pattern for every fundraising client because it keeps your data and reporting clean.

What is the best practice for deduping contacts and companies in HubSpot for nonprofits?

TL;DR: Prevent first, then clean with HubSpot’s duplicate tool, marketplace apps, and (if needed) coded actions or offline reconciliation.

Dealing with duplicates is basically a rite of passage when you're dealing with data that is coming in from multiple systems or when teams have been working without a shared architecture. The cleanest fix to dealing with a deduplication mess is prevention: before any migration, pick unique identifiers, decide property precedence, and document your merge rules. Be sure you're planning for households as well as individuals and organizations so related records merge correctly. Because even with a solid plan, in any migration there's a chance that duplicates will slip in, so you need a practical cleanup path.

So how do you clean up? Start with HubSpot’s built-in duplicate management and add a reputable marketplace tool if volume is high. There are plenty of tools out there.

If matches are straightforward, you can use HubSpot standard workflows to normalize values and help you merge at scale. If you have Data Hub Pro (formerly Operations Hub Pro), write custom coded actions to use keys that are not visible in the visual builder, transform your data, and apply merge logic that respects relationships (like households and employer links).

If the duplicate set is large or messy, your best bet might be to export and resolve offline...and then reimport cleanly. In practice that probably means using pivot tables and lookups to pick the surviving record and reconcile properties. Then a cross-object import plus using the API to reattach activities where they're needed should do the trick.

However you get there, close the loop with guardrails. Make sure you maintain consistent architecture across departments, that your imports default to non-marketing status, that you have clear ownership of data quality, and that you meticulously document your merge process so your duplicate problem stays solved.

How should we structure custom objects for memberships, grants, or programs?

TL;DR: If it has a lifecycle, give it an object (for example, Membership, Grant + Deliverables, Program + Services Delivered) and associate it to people and funds.

Our philosophy is this: if it has a lifecycle, you should give it a home. So think of memberships, for example. Memberships work best as a custom object with term, tier, status, start, end, and renewal settings, associated to both the member and the organization (if that's relevant).

Grants should be a parent Grant object with Deliverables as children so you can track reports, amounts, restrictions, and deadlines, relating them to funders, internal owners, and programs served.

For programs, consider using a Program object and a Services Delivered object so outcomes can roll up to people and to the program. Done this way and now linking program impact to fundraising is a breeze.

For marketing contacts vs non-marketing contacts in HubSpot, how do we control cost without losing data?

TL;DR: Keep everyone in the CRM but only flag in-cycle segments as marketing contacts via workflows and re-engagement rules.

This is a question we hear a lot. Some organizations come to us with millions of contact records and think HubSpot will charge them for every last one of them. Thank goodness that's not the case!

Here's what to remember: you do not need to market to everyone in your database! And in fact, trying to do that only drives up costs and muddies your reporting. Yes, you want to keep the full CRM for history and stewardship...but you only need to promote the people you intend to message this cycle to marketing contacts.

So the idea is to store everyone, but only market to the right ones.

Practically, this means keeping all constituents as non-marketing contacts by default, then utilizing workflows to flip people to marketing when they opt in, donate, register, or volunteer. Layer in a quarterly re-engagement and sunset policy that flips long-term non-engagers back to non-marketing.

How do we handle multi-currency and multi-language for international donors?

TL;DR: Use HubSpot’s currency settings and language variants so giving stays in local currency while reporting rolls up to your finance currency.

Luckily, HubSpot was built to handle international complexity, so a lot of the concerns from nonprofits with international chapters/needs actually are solved right out of the box.

HubSpot lets you turn on multi-currency, set your home currency, add additional currencies, and maintain exchange rates. Gifts live on the record in the donor’s native currency but you can set reports to roll up in your finance currency. Dashboards, lists, and calculated fields can all respect currency. And for payments, so long as you settle through an integrated payment processor that accepts multiple currencies, the integration with HubSpot will write the right amounts to the right properties and HubSpot does the rest.

HubSpot makes language just as straightforward. Every contact can carry a preferred language, and you can create language variants of pages, forms, and emails so the right version renders automatically. With smart rules and list segmentation you can target by language or by country, plus your legal copy and consent prompts can be localized based on GDPR or CASL requirements.

Here are a few flows that we implement regularly in our nonprofit travels: a global NGO that accepts EUR, GBP, and USD, stores each gift in the donor’s currency, and rolls totals to USD for the board; a Canadian org that serves French and English email and landing pages from the same campaign with smart content; a Latin American chapter runs Spanish-language forms and nurture while the central team in Miami sees unified reporting in USD.

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Integrations & Ecosystem

Which fundraising platforms integrate with HubSpot today, and what should we evaluate if there isn’t a native app?

TL;DR: Prefer native/marketplace apps (for example Fundraise Up, Stripe, GoFundMe Pro/SyncSmart), and only build custom when coverage or depth is lacking.

HubSpot connects to a range of donation tools. Fundraise Up has a strong, no-code HubSpot app, and Stripe-based giving can sync cleanly as well. Classy has rebranded to GoFundMe Pro and there is a marketplace integration available through SyncSmart. If you used Classy’s older connector in the past, know that the current path is the GoFundMe Pro/SyncSmart app rather than a Classy-built native app.

Some tools simply do not offer a HubSpot app, or the app is limited, so plan for either a lightweight custom connector or an alternate giving flow when that happens.

Before choosing or integrating a donation platform, be sure to pressure-test three things. First, test the overlap. If the tool duplicates core HubSpot features, you may be paying twice and fragmenting data. Second, test for integration depth. Confirm what objects and fields sync, in which direction, and on what schedule. Third, get a grip on the openness of the tool's API. If there is no marketplace app, verify that the vendor’s API will actually let you pull the fields you need, including designations, tribute info, recurring schedules, and refunds. If the app covers your needs, use it. If it doesn't, decide between a small custom layer or moving to a tool with a better connector.

Finally, map your giving patterns before you pick the tech. One-time gifts, recurring subscriptions, peer-to-peer, planned gifts, and memberships all have different data shapes. Decide what must live in HubSpot as the source of truth and what can remain in your payment stack, then choose the integration path that keeps donor records unified.

How do point tools integrate with HubSpot?

TL;DR: Let HubSpot be the system of record while event, giving, and advocacy tools sync bi-directionally into unified contact timelines.

Point solutions trap data in silos. One tool for donations, another for events, another for email, another for ticketing. The tools are all probably doing their respective jobs, but if they’re not talking to each other or to a common platform that unites them, you end up with fragmented donor records, incomplete reporting, and gaps in stewardship.

This is where HubSpot’s integrations matter. With native or marketplace integrations, HubSpot becomes the brain of your organization. An event tool like Eventbrite can remain your go-to tool for registration, but the integration ensures every attendee record lives in HubSpot. A fundraising platform like Classy can still power your campaigns, but the integration pushes every donation into HubSpot tied to the right donor. The same goes for Fundraise Up, Donorbox, advocacy platforms, and more. HubSpot’s marketplace has thousands of integrations available right out of the box.

And if you’re looking at this from the cost perspective, the good news is that most native integrations can be enabled right out of the box, oftentimes without outside help. Marketplace integrations often have robust documentation that allows internal teams to get the integrations spun up themselves. And for organizations that want help getting the most out of them, the lift is still lighter than building something custom. Marketplace integrations mean most of the heavy lifting has already been done, which makes them almost always more cost-effective than starting from scratch.

Which native integrations should most nonprofits enable on day one?

TL;DR: Start with quick wins like email/calendar, fundraising, events, Slack, GA4, and webinars, then add the rest as real needs emerge.

It's easy to get distracted by the sheer number of integrations that are available in the HubSpot marketplace. They all serve very specific purposes, but some are worth setting up ASAP while the rest probably don't need to be prioritized...or they need to be thought about in the context of your tech stack as a whole.

Here's how we recommend prioritizing: turn on the integrations that centralize your daily work without muddying the waters. Email and calendar integrations keeps activity in one place, so start there. Fundraising tools like Fundraise Up, Classy, or Donorbox should push gifts straight into donor records. Event tools like Eventbrite should sync attendees so stewardship can start the day after the event. Add Slack for alerts, GA4 for analytics continuity, and Zoom or Demio for webinars. This isn't an exhaustive list, but the idea is to get the basics of your daily workflow synced with the simple integrations before turning to integrations that are more complex and require mapping.

When do nonprofits need custom HubSpot integrations?

TL;DR: We recommend building custom only when a marketplace app can’t meet object coverage, directionality, latency, or custom-field requirements.

The HubSpot marketplace is full of tools with native HubSpot integrations, and many nonprofits can run just fine using the prebuilt integrations available. But when your needs go beyond what’s out there in the marketplace (or they push the limits of what a pre-built integration can do), that's when it makes sense to think about a custom integration.

You don't need custom integrations just because you think your workflows are special. The reality is that complex operations are often handled just fine with out-of-the-box solutions. We only build custom them when the marketplace doesn’t cover the use case or when the available connector isn’t robust enough. And the best way to determine that is to explore the documentation of the marketplace app thoroughly. Here are some things to ask: does it allow you to do what you need to do? Is the sync one-way or two-way? What is the latency target: near real time, every 15 minutes, nightly? How robust is it? Which objects and fields sync on each side? Are custom properties supported or only a fixed map?

Answering those questions should give you a good idea of which route you need to go.

How do we integrate HubSpot with QuickBooks or NetSuite for finance reporting?

TL;DR: Keep the ledger in your ERP and sync gifts/invoices/payments with proper codes so development and finance stay in lockstep.

To be clear, HubSpot isn’t a financial system, and it shouldn’t replace your ERP or accounting software. But organizations get major wins when they remove redundant steps between development and finance so revenue is entered once, reconciles cleanly, and reports line up. We connect HubSpot to systems like QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, or Tyler Technologies Munis so gifts, invoices, and payments flow with the right metadata while your ERP remains the system of record for the ledger.

A simple example is planned giving. For planned giving the gift is always managed in HubSpot; you generate a quote or invoice and collect payment via HubSpot Payments or Stripe. When it’s paid, the payment and invoice sync to accounting with status, GL codes, fund or class, and dates, so finance does not have to manually retype anything.

And not every dollar needs an invoice. Online donations and one-off payments can post to HubSpot first, then sync over as the correct transaction type in QuickBooks or NetSuite. Status changes and refunds can flow back so development sees what actually cleared.

Beyond gifts, we sync operational data when it matters. For example, we've worked with food banks that track inventory in NetSuite so that they can surface product availability inside HubSpot and write allocations back after a distribution. Similarly, museums and historic sites can manage field trips, private events, and memberships in HubSpot, then push signed contracts to the ERP for revenue forecasting and close them out when payment lands. The pattern is always the same: pick a source of truth for money, map funds and restrictions up front, use a reliable cadence for syncs, and let HubSpot show staff the revenue story (without asking them to maintain two systems).

How do we connect HubSpot to a data warehouse like BigQuery or Snowflake for BI?

TL;DR: Use HubSpot’s native connectors/data share, a managed ELT, or open-source pipelines to warehouse HubSpot data beside finance and programs.

Now this is a meaty subject. And another perfect example of how nonprofits can have operational complexities that rival any Fortune 500 company.

If you're talking about data warehousing, you've probably got an IT team and a BI stack. The goal is usually similar from org to org - get clean HubSpot data next to finance, programs, web analytics, and ticketing so your analysts can model outcomes...and then push the best insights back to HubSpot.

Here's a 30,000-foot view of three patterns we've used to connect data warehousing to HubSpot. First, you could do it via HubSpot’s native connectors. Use those whenever you can. For Snowflake, for example, HubSpot offers a Data Share that exposes your HubSpot data directly inside your Snowflake account. Your data team will love that, because they can govern it like any other data set. HubSpot also has a BigQuery app in the marketplace that lets it manage table writes on a schedule. Point being - there are connector apps out there, see if your data warehouse offers one of them.

A second pattern is to use a managed ELT if you want broader object coverage. For this you find a preferred third-party tool that will pull HubSpot objects and engagement events into your data warehouse.

Third, if you prefer open source or to self host, there are tools that can accommodate that, as well. We see plenty of orgs go this route when their IT teams want full control.

What is the right role for Zapier, Make, or n8n vs using Data Hub programmable automation?

TL;DR: Use iPaaS for cross-app chores, but handle critical transforms and governance inside Data Hub or a proper integration.

Hopefully your team has a few people on it who are power user of no-code iPaaS solutions like Zapier, n8n, or Make. These tools are great for cross-system automations, and we use them regularly to orchestrate several apps at once (or when a ready-made connector exists and would take weeks to rebuild ourselves).

But when the data flow is critical is when it's time to consider Data Hub (formerly Operations Hub) or just a proper integration. Since Data Hub runs inside HubSpot it respects rate limits, handles retries, writes usable logs, and sits behind HubSpot’s governance and permissions. If the workflow spans many systems at scale, we recommend keeping a purpose-built integration as the control and using Data Hub handle data hygiene in HubSpot.

Can HubSpot integrate with Salesforce NPSP?

TL;DR: Yes, the native connector is robust, but mind Household mappings and custom-object limitations when syncing from NPSP to HubSpot.

Yes, HubSpot can integrate with Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). But note a couple of things up front: first, Salesforce is deprecating NPSP is on a path toward replacement by Nonprofit Cloud, so many organizations will be planning a migration that may carry higher costs. If that's the boat you're in, it is worth evaluating HubSpot as your primary CRM while you are at the crossroads.

Whether you are on NPSP today, already on Nonprofit Cloud, or planning that move, the native HubSpot < > Salesforce connector offers bidirectional sync and is quite capable. But pay close attention to households. HubSpot’s core objects are Contacts, Companies, Deals, and Tickets, and you can rename them for staff clarity. If you want to keep Companies for employers and also have a separate Household concept, you can end up mapping two Salesforce objects to Companies. Additionally, note that the HubSpot < > Salesforce native connector doesn't support syncing Salesforce standard objects to HubSpot custom objects (or HubSpot custom objects with Salesforce standard objects). So depending on what you're looking to accomplish, you might need custom object mapping or a third-party solution.

So yes, there are limitations to think about, but the connector is generally robust and allows teams to keep giving or memberships in Salesforce and run engagement and automation in HubSpot, or manage selected revenue components in HubSpot because the day-to-day is easier but keep Salesforce as the donor database. Both approaches work. The choice is about where each record is authoritative and how you want the two systems to divide the work.

Can HubSpot integrate with Tessitura?

TL;DR: Not cleanly; Tessitura’s integration model is dated, so we use exports/middleware or move to HubSpot-centric patterns (for example MuseumHub).

In museums and similar orgs there isn’t a single cohesive platform that handles everything. That is why we built MuseumHub on HubSpot: to consolidate constituent touchpoints in one system so teams aren’t stuck stitching tool to tool or tool to platform. More and more orgs are landing on HubSpot as the platform. The snag is ticketing. Because of contracts and entrenched processes, swapping ticketing isn’t always easy.

Some systems integrate cleanly. Tessitura isn’t one of them. Its API and licensing approach make it effectively closed to the kind of real-time, bi-directional sync you need for a true single source of truth in HubSpot. And Tessitura itself doesn’t serve as a single source of truth for all revenue streams, which is why many museums end up standing up Snowflake, layering on Tableau, and adding staff just to see revenue and engagement in one view.

Tessitura markets itself as an all-in-one and it does certain things well, but the integration story is dated. There’s no modern connector, so migrations and data sharing fall back to periodic file exports and imports. When clients know that they really want to get into HubSpot, we set them out on a phased path, set up scheduled exports, run them through a small middleware layer, and push the results into HubSpot so fundraising and stewardship can run.

What Tessitura cannot do is sync in real time for a modern online ticketing experience or for flows like field trips and private events. Bottom line: it offers a lot, but if your goal is unified data and a single source of truth, it is a difficult fit. Which is exactly why built our MuseumHub solution - to get everything for museums, arts, and cultural institutions into one place in HubSpot.

Which fundraising platforms integrate with HubSpot, and what should we evaluate if there isn’t a native app?

TL;DR: Use a native HubSpot app when available (Fundraise Up, Stripe, GoFundMe Pro via SyncSmart); if not, check for feature overlap, confirm what syncs and in which direction, and verify the API exposes key donation fields to choose your native app.

Before choosing or integrating a donation platform, pressure-test three things. First, overlap. If the tool duplicates core HubSpot features, you may be paying twice and fragmenting data. Second, integration depth. Confirm what objects and fields sync, in which direction, and on what schedule. Third, API openness. If there is no marketplace app, verify that the vendor’s API will actually let you pull the fields you need, including designations, tribute info, recurring schedules, and refunds. If the app covers your needs, use it. If not, decide between a small custom layer or moving to a tool with a better connector.

Finally, map your giving patterns before you pick the tech. One-time gifts, recurring subscriptions, peer-to-peer, planned gifts, and memberships all have different data shapes. Decide what must live in HubSpot as the source of truth and what can remain in your payment stack, then choose the integration path that keeps donor records unified and reporting clean.

Should we integrate Mailchimp with HubSpot?

TL;DR: Usually no - Marketing Hub replaces Mailchimp; integrate only for a transitional or very specific edge case.

There’s a two-part answer for this one. From a technical perspective, sure - HubSpot offers a native Mailchimp integration, and it works. In practice, though, integrating the two is usually unnecessary if you're already using a lot of HubSpot. That’s because HubSpot Marketing Hub already includes email marketing, segmentation, and automation. Maintaining two systems that do the same thing adds cost and complexity without much upside.

What we often see is organizations that have already invested in HubSpot wanting to migrate off of Mailchimp to consolidate their email marketing in HubSpot. The only time a Mailchimp integration makes sense is if you have a unique Mailchimp use case and aren’t ready to transition fully into Marketing Hub.

Should we integrate every tool into HubSpot?

TL;DR: No, integrate your daily drivers; for rare, low-value tools a periodic import/export is often cheaper and safer.

If you’re using a number of tools and want HubSpot as your single source of truth, trying to integrate them all might sound like your dream state. But in practice, there are plenty of cases where integration really isn’t the best path forward. For example, for point tools you only use occasionally or that hold minimal data, a simple import/export might be more efficient than a permanent sync. For example, if you only use a volunteer tool for one annual event and don’t need it to power ongoing stewardship, it might not be worth building or maintaining an integration.

Membership, Volunteers, & Advocacy

How do we track event attendance and tie it to stewardship workflows in HubSpot?

TL;DR: Ground events in a Campaign, capture attendance to a person/household/event, then let workflows drive timely thank-yous and follow-ups.

We have seen events done a hundred different ways depending on the organization, the venue, and general tech stack. We usually consider two patterns: connect an events tool like Eventbrite to your HubSpot portal so registrations and check-ins write to the right contact, or run events natively in HubSpot with an Event custom object and a lightweight ticketing layer. In either case, you would ground the entire effort in a HubSpot Campaign so pages, forms, emails, ads, attendance, and revenue roll up cleanly.

In terms of attendance capture, you have some decisions to make. It can be either automated or manual. We will often recommend the flow of one ticket per person with a unique QR value that flips a record to Attended at the door. Some orgs prefer a tablet view of registrants for quick tap-to-check, and others do a simple walk-up list with a quick import after the event. The thing to remember is that it's not about the scanner - it's about the record. If each attendance is tied to a person, the household when relevant, and the event, all of your post-event work can be automated right in HubSpot vs. being a spreadsheet chore.

And then of course, once membership hits HubSpot, from there stewardship is very straightforward. Most orgs want attendees to receive a same-day thank you and maybe even a short pulse survey. Event first-timers might get a welcome flow, while members might see renewal nudges when they are inside a renewal window.

What is the simplest way to run memberships and renewals in HubSpot?

TL;DR: Treat manual renewals as a pipeline and automatic renewals as subscriptions, with payments via HubSpot/Stripe and workflows doing the lifting.

Membership renewals are really straightforward in HubSpot once you translate the vocabulary into nonprofit terms. HubSpot talks in sales and subscriptions. Memberships map perfectly to those same mechanics. If renewals are manual, think “renewal pipeline.” If renewals are automatic, think “subscription.” As we always explain, HubSpot's backend machinery is the same whether you're a for-profit or nonprofit, it's just for nonprofits use that machinery for different ends.

There are a number of ways to run memberships in HubSpot, and like most things, the exact setup should be driven by your goals, your renewal model, and the benefits you want to deliver.

When you're thinking about membership, just remember that members live as contacts, and membership lives as either a renamed Deals pipeline or a true Membership custom object.

Manual renewals act like a renewal pipeline with tasks, reminders, and owner handoffs. Automatic renewals act like subscriptions with payment links, recurring cadence, dunning, and grace periods. Payments can run through HubSpot Payments, through Stripe, or through another gateway via a marketplace app. The important thing is to track the basics your team cares about (like term, tier, status, start and end dates, etc.) so that your workflows can do the heavy lifting without your staff touching the flows.

How do we manage volunteer onboarding, hours, and recognition in HubSpot?

TL;DR: Keep volunteers as contacts, run onboarding via statuses/tasks, log hours through simple flows, and trigger recognition from rules-based thresholds.

We have built a number of flows from organizations from food banks, museums, to campus orgs without forcing them into a one-size-fits-all solution for volunteers. HubSpot makes it easy to manage your volunteer programs inside the system, and below is how we tell organizations to approach it.

At a high level, consider that volunteers live as contacts, and the key touch points around them get captured, associated, and reported in one record. If you're running onboarding you would want to do it through a clear process with statuses, tasks, and approvals, and a great wrinkle you can throw in is to pull in background checks and scheduling tools when needed. Depending on your setup, you could log hours by the volunteer or by staff, through simple forms or simple check-in flows, then rolled up for monthly, quarterly, and lifetime totals. Recognition is rules-based, so thresholds trigger thank-yous, badges, or a personal follow-up, and leadership sees clean dashboards for participation, retention, and the “time and treasure” overlap. If you want the deeper playbook, we bring that to the project and tailor it to your programs.

How do advocacy actions feed fundraising pipelines in HubSpot?

TL;DR: Bring actions in as tagged events, score affinity, and trigger issue-aligned nurtures and asks with clear consent.

We think of advocacy actions as high-intent signals that belong on the contact record. Any action platforms that we integrate then bring petitions, calls, letters, tweet storms, and event turnouts into HubSpot as structured events with topic tags, recency, and intensity. These things together give you issue affinity and engagement signals you can trust. So what does it look like in practice? A supporter signs a housing petition in New/Mode, HubSpot stamps the contact with Housing Affinity, increments an Advocacy Score, and records the district or target they engaged.

From there, orchestration is simple. People who act on housing see nurture that educates on your housing work first, then a tailored appeal mapped to the housing fund or program. Voting-rights advocates get a different path, maybe an event invite or volunteer shift before an ask. When someone crosses a threshold, HubSpot can open a cultivation record, assign an owner, and queue a task for a personal follow-up. You can also use these signals to prioritize campaigns: issue-aligned landing pages, CTAs, and donation forms - they certainly convert better than generic appeals!

But keep in mind, you'll definitely want guardrails. Consent types need to be crystal clear so advocacy updates and fundraising appeals can be managed separately. And be sure to report on action-to-donation conversion, time from first action to first gift, and average gift by issue to prove the lift your efforts are achieving.

Events and Ticketing

Can HubSpot handle event ticketing?

TL;DR: Yes, either integrate a tool like Eventbrite or run native events (and MuseumHub) so registrations, check-ins, gifts, and follow-ups live together.

We've accomplished this a number of ways for our nonprofit clients. The first flow that works for many is just plugging in an events tool like Eventbrite and let the native integration write registrations and check-ins to the right contact.

Alternatively, you can run events natively in HubSpot with an Event custom object and a lightweight ticketing layer. Our MuseumHub module does this out-of-the-box for museums and cultural institutions, and we also deploy the same event capability as a standalone build for any other type of organization needing the same functionality. In either approach, start with a HubSpot Campaign for the event so all pages, emails, forms, ads, and revenue roll up in one place.

Check-in can be automated or manual, depending on the venue and budget. A great flow we've configured is one ticket per person with a unique QR value stored on a Ticket object associated to the contact or household. At the door, a simple scanner or mobile web app flips status to Attended and timestamps the check-in. If you do not want scanners, a tablet view of registrants works too - staff tap to mark attendance and a workflow writes the same properties. Walk-ups are easy to handle with a paper list or Google Sheet and a quick cross-object import after the event. All three options end in the same place: an attendance record tied to the person, the household, and the event.

Once attendance lands in HubSpot, stewardship runs itself. Attendees get a same-day thank you and a short survey, first-timers go into a welcome path, members see renewal nudges if they are inside the renewal window, and major-gift prospects generate tasks for a personal follow-up. We also update a few helpful fields in the background: last event, last event date, events attended in 12 months, first event flag, attended with household, and on-site gift.

Event gifts, whether taken online or at the door, associate back to the Event and the Campaign so you can report on show rate, attendee-to-donor conversion, and event ROI without spreadsheets.

The end result is a single record of truth where invitations, registrations, check-ins, gifts, and follow-ups all live together, and your team can see exactly what to do next.

What is MuseumHub, and can I use only parts of it?

TL;DR: MuseumHub is a modular, HubSpot-native layer for ticketing, memberships, donations, field trips, and private events where you can adopt modules à la carte.

MuseumHub is our modular platform built on HubSpot that brings together everything a museum or cultural organization needs under one roof. It’s not a separate piece of software—you stay inside HubSpot, but gain tailored functionality for ticketing, memberships, donations, giving, field trips, private events, and even resource management (spaces, staff, AV, security, etc.).

The key advantage is flexibility. You don’t have to adopt every module at once. Some organizations roll out Ticketing, Memberships, Donations & Giving, Field Trips, or Private Event Management individually, depending on their priorities. If you’re locked into a long-term ticketing contract, for example, you can still implement MuseumHub’s Event Planning or Membership modules today and integrate your existing ticketing system via API. Pricing scales to your transaction volume and the modules you choose, so you can start with what you need now and expand over time.

How does MuseumHub handle ticketing differently than traditional platforms like Tessitura?

TL;DR: MuseumHub keeps ticketing data live inside HubSpot with real-time sync, capacity controls, and refunds/exchanges with no data silos.

Traditional ticketing platforms like Tessitura are powerful but were never built to serve as a modern CRM or marketing automation platform. They often lock data inside the system, lack bidirectional integrations, and force organizations into long contracts that make change slow and costly. This leaves organizations with only part of the picture, often missing a large chunk of the data they need for unified reporting and automation.

MuseumHub was designed to solve this problem. It sits directly inside HubSpot and treats ticketing as one piece of the larger relationship with your constituents. That means timed admissions, general entry, field trips, and private events all connect to the same record that holds membership, giving history, and advocacy actions. Unlike legacy systems, MuseumHub supports real-time data flow, capacity management across multiple spaces, and the modern expectations of refunds, exchanges, and complex pricing, all while ensuring your event and revenue data feeds directly into HubSpot automation and reporting.

Can MuseumHub integrate with our existing ticketing system even if we can’t switch right away?

TL;DR: Yes, if your ticketing tool has an open API, we’ll bidirectionally sync while you phase into or mix with MuseumHub.

You sure can. While MuseumHub includes its own ticketing layer, it’s modular and doesn’t force you into a one-size-fits-all setup. If you’re under contract with a platform like ACME Ticketing or prefer to stick with Ticketure, we can connect MuseumHub to that system (or any of them, so long as it has an open API). Our team has built recipes for most of the common ticketing tools used by museums, cultural institutions, and membership organizations.

That means you can continue selling tickets in your current platform, while still centralizing constituent and revenue data in HubSpot. Over time, you can decide whether to fully switch into MuseumHub ticketing or keep a hybrid setup. Either way, your team gets the benefits of centralized data, automation, and reporting without waiting out a multi-year contract.

What makes MuseumHub’s event management unique compared to off-the-shelf integrations?

TL;DR: It dynamically manages capacity across spaces, resources, and complex transactions while running entirely inside HubSpot.

Most event tools on the market were designed for simple B2B meetups or single-space events. MuseumHub’s event management was built for the complexity of museums, historical societies, and multi-venue organizations. It can:

Adjust capacity dynamically: if a private event books a gallery, MuseumHub automatically reduces general admission inventory for that day.
Manage multiple spaces, resources, and services: everything from AV and security to tables, chairs, and staff assignments.
Reconcile complex transactions: such as refunding an event ticket and rolling it into a membership purchase on the spot, online or at a POS.

This level of flexibility means organizations can cover both the simple cases (a one-off lecture with tickets at the door) and the complex cases (a wedding rental that blocks multiple rooms and includes catering, AV, and security), all while running inside HubSpot.

Grants and Institutional Giving

How do we track grant cycles, requirements, and reports with HubSpot objects?

TL;DR: Treat grants as objects/pipelines with stages, deliverables, deadlines, and approvals so compliance and reporting are built-in.

If you can think of the grant lifecycle as a pipeline, managing grants in HubSpot becomes very simple. Stand up stages (think Prospect, LOI, Proposal, Award Pending, Awarded, Reporting, and Closed) and use tasks, reminders, and stage gates with required fields so nothing advances without the right attachments or approvals. Need a review? Just route drafts for approval and notify the right owner. This keeps submission deadlines, compliance notes, and correspondence in one record your team can actually manage.

In terms of data structure, use Deals as “Grants” or a Grant custom object if you want a dedicated home. Capture the essentials (funder, fiscal year, requested vs awarded, restriction, dates, probability), track Deliverables as children, and associate the grant to funder contacts, the funder company, and the programs it supports. There's certainly more to it, but the point is that most of this uses native HubSpot tools coupled with light workflows.

Can HubSpot help with prospecting for foundations and managing grant submissions?

TL;DR: Yes, run prospecting, outreach, submissions, awards, and reporting in HubSpot with tasks, stage gates, and optional finance syncs.

Think about the full lifecycle of grant management: prospecting and discovery, applying, administering the award, and reporting on outcomes. HubSpot is a good home for all of it because you can stand up pipelines, automate tasks and reminders, capture approvals, sync with finance, and track the activities that prove impact. And in this case, "prospecting" can mean outreach to specific foundations and it can also mean researching open opportunities for your type of organization or project. Either way, both belong in HubSpot.

For prospecting we often handle it with three common patterns: first, recurring opportunities you already know about. Add them to a grant pipeline and have HubSpot automatically create a new opportunity on whatever cadence makes sense. Layer in a task checklist for your grants team that can be generic or tailored to that grant type. Second, relationship outreach. This is a place where nonprofit teams use HubSpot the exact same way a B2B team does: map the prospect foundation’s contacts, log emails, calls, and meetings, build a simple “buying committee” view, and work your plan. Third, research. Assign tasks to staff or connect a workflow to OpenAI, Claude, or any LLM to surface candidate grants for your focus areas and deliver a short list by email. When you accept one, a checkbox can trigger HubSpot to create the opportunity, stamp key properties, and start the submission workflow.

The application and administration phases straightforward, as well. We generally run the submission process in a dedicated pipeline with deadlines stored as properties. And we stage gates that require the right documents. Most orgs also want a light approval flow added so the right people can review before anything goes out. Track win or loss for reporting, and for repetitive grants let HubSpot auto-create the next cycle with the right tasks.

Once a grant is awarded, you can build in an administration pipeline. Depending on your scope, you might have budgets, GL codes, and spend tracking to deal with. And in that case, just sync HubSpot with your accounting system so awards, drawdowns, and expenses reconcile without double entry. And finally, when a grant requires proof of outcomes, that's a great use case for HubSpot’s operational tools so that you can capture exactly what happened once the grant was awarded (people reached, conversations completed, services delivered, etc.) and build the reports and dashboards that tell the story.

How should we report grant impact to stakeholders using HubSpot dashboards?

TL;DR: Combine cross-object reports with narrative blocks to show activities, outcomes, and ROI for your stakeholders.

HubSpot is genuinely strong at impact reporting because you can build custom reports and assemble them into dashboards that actually tell a story. Dashboards are flexible - you can add text blocks for narrative, embed images, and even embed reports from external systems. Data sets let you define complex cross-object joins once and reuse them, so you are not rebuilding the same pulls over and over. Underneath it all, HubSpot excels at capturing interactions with useful detail, which is what impact reporting runs on.

Grants are a good example. You often need to prove activity and outcomes: campaign impressions, phone conversations completed, forms submitted, services delivered. Take for example a project we worked on that focused on helping people file for the earned income tax credit before the expanded benefit expired. We received direct reporting from a partner on how many people filed and the average amount they received and were able to pull that dataset into HubSpot and built a board-ready dashboard that showed total dollars returned to households and a clear view of program ROI.

The building blocks are there: custom objects, pipelines, and properties represent the work. Automated task lists and emails keep activity moving. And you can correlate tracked interactions across records. From there, you can roll everything up with cross-object reports and layer in narrative summaries and supporting graphics so leadership sees both the numbers and the context.

Program Operations

Can Service Hub handle intake and case management for a nonprofit help desk?

TL;DR: Model intakes as tickets with SLAs and queues, using forms/KB/self-service to route cases and escalate edge situations.

This a good example of how nonprofits can work with Service Hub. Just model intakes as tickets and set up pipelines for stages like received, triaged, in service, and resolved. You can add SLAs where appropriate.

Using forms for self-service intake, knowledge base for common answers, and workflows that escalate edge cases to a specialist or to development (if philanthropy is the right next step) would have a nonprofit using the extent of Service Hub to its full advantage.

How can nonprofits track program services delivered and connect that to fundraising impact?

TL;DR: Log Services Delivered to people/programs so impact rolls up to dashboards and fuels segmented stewardship.

There are lots of ways to go about this, but we will often see organizations create a Services Delivered object with a range of fields (think program, date, units, location, and outcome, etc.). Then that object would be associated to the person served and to the program. Entries in that case would be recorded as they happen or in structured imports. Numbers roll up to the dashboards that show impact by program and by audience, then those numbers are mirrored in fundraising communications. The result? Development can show a donor exactly how their giving translates into services, not just dollars raised.

Can we route support tickets from web, email, and phone to development or programs automatically?

TL;DR: Use shared inbox + routing rules to send tickets to the right team and convert stewardship triggers into development tasks.

Absolutely, and this is a fantastic use case for nonprofits. Orgs can use shared inboxes and phone capture to create tickets, add topic fields and routing rules, and assign based on keywords, forms, or caller type. Think of the possibilities: if a ticket matches a stewardship trigger, you can automate its conversion into a task for development with context attached. If it's a program request, you can keep it in program queues and notify development only when engagement thresholds are met.

CMS, Content Hub, & Web

HubSpot CMS vs. WordPress, Drupal, and more for nonprofits - when should we switch?

TL;DR: Switch when your website must behave like part of your CRM (personalization, integrated forms, reporting, and governance).

Don't switch for the fun of it. If your site is serving its purpose as a standalone marketing tool and it doesn't need to connect to any outside systems, there's an argument to be made for staying put.

Switch to HubSpot CMS when your site needs to behave like part of your CRM. Switch if your web team is struggling to publish or if plugin updates or security patches are eating away at your weekends. Switch if you want personalization tied to constituent segments.

That's when HubSpot CMS becomes very compelling. It's a unified CMS that gives marketers publishing control, devs modern tooling, and everyone the benefit of native forms, memberships, and reporting that talk directly to your CRM (without connectors).

How do we migrate a website to HubSpot CMS without losing SEO?

TL;DR: Preserve URLs/metadata, map 301s, keep schema, move analytics/Search Console, and ship an XML sitemap.

This is a common concern when we're migrating a website from another platform to HubSpot. The good news is that anyone worth their salt who is migrating you to HubSpot will be sure to inventory URLs and metadata, map one-to-one 301 redirects, and carry forward schema markup. A thorough migration to HubSpot for nonprofits also means moving analytics and Search Console over and submitting a fresh XML sitemap.

Your SEO doesn't have to be impacted by the move if it's planned thoroughly and done correctly. Plus, getting your website on HubSpot has net-new benefits of its own.

How does Content Hub help a small team produce content and personalization?

TL;DR: Build once, personalize with smart rules and AI assist, and scale content across segments from one library.

Content Hub is a dream for small teams. If you're using the content library, AI assist, and smart rules, you only have to build once and you can personalize infinitely. You can present a story about impact differently for a recurring donor than you would for a first-time event attendee - all based on properties you already track. When you pair that with topic clusters and CTAs that move people along the journey, small nonprofit marketing teams can punch far above their weight.

Read more:

👉🏽 Ways HubSpot AI Handles Your Nonprofit’s Busywork
👉🏽 8 Great HubSpot Automations for Museum Marketing
👉🏽 HubSpot Keeps Donor Engagement On Track Without The Overwhelm
👉🏽 Boost Your Nonprofit’s Impact with Smart Tech Solutions

Advanced Automation

What advanced automations save the most time for nonprofits?

TL;DR: Automate the revenue loop (receipts, renewals, stewardship, planned giving tasks, and roll-ups) so staff focus on relationships.

A practical place we encourage organizations to start is with the general revenue loop around memberships and gifts. After a one-time donation, enroll the donor in a short nurture that thanks, reports impact, and invites a second gift. You could automate a separate flow that treats monthly donors differently, with fewer asks and more impact touches. Planned giving deserves its own flow, and we'll often help orgs add a few custom properties that define amount per year, term, and lead time. Whether you keep planned gifts in a separate pipeline or as a gift type in your giving pipeline is up to you. But in either case, workflows can create the right transactions in the right fiscal years, queue tasks for the gift officer, and enroll the donor in a tailored sequence. The benefit of correctly setting up the architecture here is that you'll have clean forecasting that lands in the correct reports.

Memberships would follow the same rhythm. If renewals are automatic, let recurring payments handle the cadence and keep the membership record in sync. If renewals are manual, have a workflow create the renewal each year, assign the owner, and generate a short task list that includes payment collection (and maybe a sensible upsell to a higher tier). For one-off memberships, do the same thing but pair it with a light relationship plan. In the background of all of these you would use calculated properties to track visit frequency, event attendance, party size, etc. because data will fuel your segmentation and keep your outreach relevant.

On the subject of segmentation, this is where nonprofits can really see the benefits of automation. Use workflows to set properties that drop people into the right segments and update those segments when behavior changes. HubSpot recently shifted language from "lists" to "segments," and the new features make it easy to keep audiences clean without manual work. On the operations side, new members can automatically roll up to a monthly total on a leadership dashboard and staff can get a weekly digest without exporting anything.

If your ERP exposes an API, one of the biggest time savers is applying GL codes automatically in HubSpot, then pushing transactions to accounting on a schedule so reconciliation does not rely on retyping.

Our general recommendation is to use automation anywhere you find yourself repeating the same click path to update a value on a person or a transaction. That includes audience syncs to ad platforms. Your static segments can map to paid channels so acquisition and stewardship campaigns stay in sync with what is happening in the CRM.

How can AI in HubSpot assist with donor segmentation, content drafts, and task automation?

TL;DR: Use AI to propose segments from your data, draft tailored content, and summarize next actions with human review.

HubSpot has put a lot of effort into integrating AI with its core functions, and teams who use HubSpot's baked-in AI tools love it. Teams can either use HubSpot’s native AI or an OpenAI/Claude/etc. integration, but the flow is generally the same for segmentation. First you need to make sure your taxonomy is straight, then ask the model to propose and build segments from the data you already track (think average gift size, giving frequency, event attendance, communication cadence, donor tenure, and original acquisition source). Then you can even take those segments and write them back to properties and lists through workflow actions.

A practical note, though: HubSpot’s native AI features consume credits, so plan usage accordingly (or connect with another service).

On the audience front, once your audience is shaped, AI can help you decide what to say. Feed it your content categories and recent performance, then ask which themes land with which segment. Housing policy content might perform with supporters who signed a housing petition, while first-time donors may respond better to impact stories. From there, have AI draft first passes of subject lines, emails, CTAs, and landing page blocks tailored to each segment. Your team can keep the voice and approvals tight, but the heavy lifting is done. The same approach can generate a simple marketing plan by intersecting segments with recommended messages and suggested cadence.

Finally, automation ties everything together. Workflows can queue tasks, schedule sends, and set reminders based on segment membership and behavior. AI can summarize long notes into next steps, suggest a next best action for a gift officer, and produce brief call sheets by segment. As always, you'll want to be sure that you keep guardrails in place. Consent needs to be stored correctly and watch fatigue. Require human review for high-stakes stewardship. But when you're effectively using AI integrated into your CRM, you can command a system that groups your donors intelligently, drafts what you need to say, and even tees up follow-on work for your team.

What should we automate vs. keep manual to avoid donor experience problems?

TL;DR: Automate time-sensitive, rules-based steps and keep high-stakes donor moments human.

We view this as a question of philosophy vs. technology. Automation should prepare the ground and tee up tasks, but people should build relationships. So through that lens, we recommend automating anything that is time-sensitive and rules-based (think receipts, renewals, reminders, internal alerts, etc.). But keep high-stakes moments human. A first time major gift donor doesn't want a boilerplate "Thank you for donating!" email from your email marketing domain. Sensitive stewardship and complex pledge conversations should remain in human hands.

Communication & Deliverability

How do we set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for nonprofit email deliverability in HubSpot?

TL;DR: Connect your sending domain, publish SPF/DKIM, start DMARC at p=none, and follow warm-up and alignment best practices.

There's nothing out of the ordinary with setup here - if you've got an IT team, this will be second nature. And if you're don't - HubSpot makes it very easy.

HubSpot prompts you to connect your sending domain in HubSpot, and it provides you with SPF and DKIM records to publish, as well. Add a DMARC policy at p=none to start with reporting.

Then just follow normal email sending best practices: warm your audience gradually and be sure that your from domain is aligned with your authenticated domain. HubSpot's email health dashboard gives orgs an email health dashboard where you can monitor sends, as well.

What sender reputation practices matter most for year-end appeals?

TL;DR: Pre-warm core segments, suppress non-engagers, lead with stewardship, test early, and follow with impact updates.

End-of-year giving is the lifeblood of so many nonprofits we work with, so email deliverability is something we deal with regularly.

When we know an organization is prepping for a year-end appeal, we recommend that they spend October and November pre-warming their core segments and suppressing longtime non-engagers. That keeps your list clean, but that's only half of the battle.

We also encourage orgs to always lead with stewardship before "the ask" and to send at a sane frequency. Content testing is always recommended (that means start testing in September, not on Giving Tuesday!)

And finally, reset engagement by sending meaningful, impact-driven follow-ups. This way your list isn't sitting stale into the new year.

Can we use SMS or WhatsApp with HubSpot, and how should nonprofits govern consent?

TL;DR: Yes, use approved providers, store explicit opt-in, honor quiet hours, and log all messages to the contact record.

There are a number of approved SMS/WhatsApp providers in the marketplace that you can connect to. Just be sure to store explicit opt-in on the contact and gate all sends behind consent and quiet hours.

We have seen nonprofits use HubSpot-integrated SMS tools very successfully for time-sensitive nudges like event reminders or pledge payment links. As long as you make opt-out easy and and ensure the integration is logging all messages so staff can see the full conversation in the record, integrating SMS is a great idea for many organizations.

What is the right email cadence for stewardship vs appeals in HubSpot?

TL;DR: Keep stewardship as a steady drumbeat and run appeals in focused bursts with smart content per segment.

We hear this question plenty, and the answer is the same whether you're using HubSpot or any other CRM or mail service. No matter how you're sending emails, your stewardship should feel like a reliable drumbeat. You know the drill: a welcome series for new donors, a 30-60-90 day sequence for first-time gifts, and quarterly impact updates tied to programs they care about. Your appeals should be seasonal and purposeful with an intense window and then a cool-down. And then in terms of HubSpot functionality, use smart content and segments so major donors, recurring donors, and prospects each get a cadence reflective of their relationship with you.

Implementation and Change Management

What is a realistic implementation timeline by org size and stack complexity?

TL;DR: Timelines depend on systems, data quality, integrations, and change management—from ~6–10 weeks (simple) to ~16–24 weeks (complex).

Timelines are truly scope-driven, so take these ballparks with a grain of salt. The big levers for timeline are how many systems you’re moving, how clean your data is to start, whether you can use native integrations or need custom work, and how much change management is wrapped around the build. And as always, a focused, phased rollout will ship faster than a net-new rebuild.

Ask yourself:

how many source systems are we migrating from and how much history are we carrying over?
are we using native marketplace apps or do we need middleware or a custom connector?
do we need custom objects for things like memberships or grants?
are there custom-coded workflows or data transforms in play?
is a website or CMS migration in scope?
do we have multi-currency or multi-language requirements?
who’s available to make decisions and test in a sandbox?
what training and adoption support will we need?

Now for the ballparks. Note again that these are not definitives, this is specific to the Nonprofit Tech Shop team, and everything here bakes in a number of consulting workshops with your team + super robust diagramming and mapping sessions: migrating from a couple of systems into HubSpot with standard objects and native integrations often lands around 8 weeks. Building a custom integration for a system with no marketplace connector varies with complexity, but 4 to 8 weeks is a sensible range per system. A large website migration with significant custom functionality is commonly about three months. As a broader guide, small teams coming off spreadsheets can be live in roughly 6 to 10 weeks; midsize orgs moving from a legacy CRM plus email and events often run 10 to 16 weeks; multi-system, multi-region programs with several custom integrations are more like 16 to 24 weeks.

How do we train staff and drive adoption so HubSpot becomes the source of truth?

TL;DR: Design role-based layouts, hands-on testing, and post-launch coaching so HubSpot becomes the obvious source of truth.

We've seen organizations get so excited about their digital transformation project and what it will mean for their operations once it's done that they underestimate or overlook adoption completely. That's understandable from their perspective - but we treat it as a core workstream from day one.

We start by resetting vocabulary and expectations: HubSpot is a platform, not just another tool. Most teams have been living in disconnected tools, so we begin with a simple platform primer that shows how work, data, and reporting come together in one place in HubSpot.

Next, we turn to the native tools within HubSpot and shape the training experience to each role. HubSpot lets users personalize the left sidebar, the center timeline, the right sidebar, and even the tab layout on a record, so we interview stakeholders, document how they work, and bake those habits and views into the build. The deliverable is not only features, but an interface arranged for the way staff actually does their job.

When the solution is ready, we run hands-on testing and training so users learn their own workflows, surface issues, and build confidence long before go-live. After launch, we keep a clear support path open. For projects where we're asked for ongoing change management and adoption support, we always add the HubSpot User object so we can track logins, activity, ownership, and data cleanliness. Monitoring from an adoption dashboard allows us to coach where needed and celebrate quick wins.

What does a phased rollout look like if we are migrating CRM, email, and CMS together?

TL;DR: Map dependencies, ship urgent wins first, bridge as needed, and phase by business value and contract timing.

Despite the fact that organizations often want to get all of their CRM work done in one fell swoop, there are plenty of good reasons to phase a project. Usually it's budget/fiscal timing or urgent needs that just can't wait. Often there are legacy system contract and license expirations that come into play, as well. The important thing is to be explicit about why you are phasing and what success looks like for each slice or the project.

Start by inventorying your current tools, what each one does, and how they depend on one another. That tells you what can move alone and what must move together. If your email platform relies on your CRM for triggers, you either migrate both at once or keep a live connection between the new email tool and the old CRM until the CRM move to HubSpot is done.

Here's a common example: you want to leave Marketo for HubSpot Marketing Hub now because the Marketo contract is ending, but you're also planning a Salesforce to HubSpot CRM migration that will certainly take longer. than the marketing piece. In that case, we'd want to connect HubSpot Marketing Hub to Salesforce with the native integration, ship the marketing win, and take the time you need to plan the CRM migration properly. Of course, if the Salesforce move is a straightforward one, you could also elect to accelerate it using proven migration tooling rather than build a temporary bridge.

A solid phased plan is one that weighs imminent needs, budget, contract realities, system dependencies, and whether a temporary fix is worth the cost and effort. Any migration partner worth their salt will be asking these questions, mapping the dependencies, and documenting a sequence that keeps operations stable while you modernize.

Comparisons & Competitors

How does HubSpot compare to Blackbaud (Raiser’s Edge/NXT) and when should a nonprofit choose a platform over a donor database?

TL;DR: Blackbaud is a solid donor database, but HubSpot wins as a modern platform for automation, marketing, and integrations.

Blackbaud is one of the oldest tools in the nonprofit toolbox, and longevity definitely counts for something. It does core donor-database work and, if we're talking about the strict definition of CRM, it does indeed manage constituent relationships. Our experience, though, is that it behaves more like a set of tools than a platform. Marketing and segmentation capabilities lag what modern teams need to personalize, test, and meet supporters where they are. The interface and usability also feel dated.

The biggest gap, though, is optionality. The data model is hard to bend and integration paths make true bidirectional sharing difficult compared with open platforms (like HubSpot, but also Salesforce and others). This creates friction for moves you should be able to make easily: unifying data across fundraising, marketing, ticketing, memberships, and programs; swapping in a best-fit tool without a rebuild; or standing up clean cross-object reporting without a detour into a data warehouse.

If you need a donor database for gift entry and receipts and can live inside a fixed model, Blackbaud can fit. There's a reason it's stuck around this long. But if you need a platform that centralizes data, runs modern marketing, integrates cleanly with the rest of your stack, and gives you room to grow, we tend to recommend HubSpot as the better choice.

Should nonprofits choose HubSpot or Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack?

TL;DR: NPSP is powerful but admin-heavy; HubSpot is easier to run day-to-day, especially as Salesforce shifts toward Nonprofit Cloud.

Salesforce NPSP is highly customizable but you’re likely going to need significant admin resources and ongoing maintenance. HubSpot is easier to implement and manage, with a stronger marketing and automation core. For orgs without dedicated Salesforce admins, HubSpot is often the smarter choice.

On top of that, Salesforce is phasing out the Nonprofit Success Pack in favor of the Nonprofit Cloud (NPC). The transition process from NPSP is something that a lot of NPSP orgs are not looking forward to, since it means extracting, transforming, and loading your data into a brand new data model, plus adopting new features (person account model vs. household model). It’s all doable, to be sure, but deprecating NPSP certainly has more organizations pondering a switch to HubSpot.

Is HubSpot better than Bloomerang for small nonprofits?

TL;DR: Bloomerang is simple and donor-focused, but HubSpot scales better when you need automation, reporting, and cross-team ops.

It’s hard to assess one tool over another without knowing the specific use case. But in our experience, Bloomerang is lightweight and donor-focused and works well for small teams. Where we have seen limitations is when those teams need automation, advanced reporting, or cross-team collaboration. In that regard, HubSpot outpaces it. For that reason, we come across plenty of orgs who started with Bloomerang and switched to HubSpot once their complexity grew.

Read more:

👉🏽 Boost Your Nonprofit’s Impact with Smart Tech Solutions
👉🏽 HubSpot Keeps Donor Engagement On Track Without The Overwhelm
👉🏽 8 Great HubSpot Automations for Museum Marketing
👉🏽 Ready to Rethink Fundraising? Start with HubSpot
👉🏽 One Data Loop to Power a Movement

Why Work with Nonprofit Tech Shop

Why should a nonprofit work with an agency like Nonprofit Tech Shop for HubSpot?

There are a lot of excellent HubSpot partner agencies out there. But in the world of HubSpot partners, the vast majority of agencies focus on for-profit companies because that’s where the incentives are. The truth is that HubSpot offers nonprofits a significant discount (40%!) which is great for you, but it also means agencies earn less when working with nonprofit clients. For many partners, that makes nonprofits a “less attractive” fit.

We’ve never seen it that way. We’ve worked with nonprofits of every size and sector for over a decade. Museums, advocacy orgs, higher ed, healthcare, community-based, you name it. We built a dedicated team whose only focus is nonprofits, because that’s where their passion is. We enjoy working with impact organizations, and we believe in solving problems that are bigger than maximizing shareholder value.

We know the tools in the nonprofit ecosystem, we know the players, and honestly, we’ve seen it all. From legacy systems like Blackbaud and Tessitura to emerging fundraising platforms like Fundraise Up and Givebutter to proprietary systems built for one org and one org only.

Most importantly, we understand the nonprofit lens. If you work with a partner that only knows for-profits, they’ll try to squeeze you into a sales pipeline mold. We don’t. We know what donor stewardship looks like, what grant reporting requires, and how your board thinks about impact. Yes, our expertise is technical. But it’s also cultural. We’ve built Nonprofit Tech Shop so that nonprofits know they’re working with people who understand their world.

What types of nonprofits has Nonprofit Tech Shop helped implement and customize HubSpot?

We work with all kinds of nonprofits to help them maximize their use of HubSpot, from museums, advocacy orgs, higher ed, healthcare, membership associations, and community-based organizations. Each sector brings unique needs, and we’ve configured amazing HubSpot-centered solutions for them all.

Do you provide ongoing HubSpot support and optimization after implementation?

Yes. The majority of our clients rely on us long after go-live. But it’s not a necessity that you stick with us long-term. For those that do, we generally craft custom packages that have us handling some combination of ongoing support, training, integration maintenance, change management, and optimization as organizational strategies evolve.

Explore ready-to-go software solutions:

HubSpot Guide to Nurturing Donor Relationships

Master Donor Attribution and Forecasting with HubSpot

FAQs: Nonprofits + HubSpot