Nonprofit · vertical overview
The Nonprofit vertical adapts SellioCRM to an organization that raises money and serves people: the same person can be a donor, a volunteer and a board member without becoming three records, a gift to a restricted fund never pays for anything else, the receipt deducts only what exceeds the benefit the donor received, and the people you serve sit behind a wall that separates their data from donor data. It is optional and ships turned off: an administrator has to turn it on under Settings · Verticals.
What this vertical solves
A nonprofit organization has two databases that cannot be handled the same way. On one side, the people who support you: donors, volunteers, board members, members, alumni, funders. On the other, the people your programs serve. Mixing the two is the gravest mistake in the sector, because it turns a person in a vulnerable situation into a mailing list entry.
The vertical settles this with four decisions that live in the system rather than in the team's good judgment: one constituent with several roles, fund restrictions enforced at allocation, receipts with a calculated deductible amount, and the beneficiary wall, which physically separates the two worlds.
How to turn it on
- Sign in as an administrator and open Settings · Verticals.
- Find the nonprofit vertical and turn it on.
- The Nonprofit menu appears in the side navigation.
- If you open the screen while the vertical is off, you will see the message saying the vertical is off and, if you administer the workspace, the Turn on nonprofit button right there. Everyone else sees the message asking them to talk to an administrator.
The four tabs on the screen
- Constituents: the list of people and organizations that have a relationship with you, searchable by name, e-mail or organization, with each one's giving history and their possible duplicates.
- Funds and campaigns: the funds with their use restriction, the campaigns with their goal, the appeals with their channel, and the revenue raised.
- Receipts: the receipts issued, with the amount given, the benefit received, the deductible amount and the country.
- Beneficiaries: the cases you are authorized to see, with the program, the date opened, who is on the wall of that case, and the access trail.
This screen is for reading. It shows what exists and explains every number. Creating and moving records (adding a constituent, recording a gift, allocating it to a fund, issuing a receipt, opening a beneficiary case) comes in through your organization's integration with the system or through whoever administers the workspace, not through forms on this screen.
The constituent: one person, several roles
A constituent can be a person or an organization, and carries several roles at once: donor, volunteer, member, alumnus, board, prospect and grant recipient. Roles have a start and an end, and closing a role does not erase the history, it just marks that it ended. That is how the same Maria shows up as a volunteer since 2019 and a donor since 2022, in a single record.
One role is deliberately missing from that list: the person you serve. That role lives on the other side of the wall, and the reason is explained on the beneficiaries page.
Direct giving and soft credit
When you open a constituent, the What this person gave block shows three numbers: direct giving, soft credit and total. Direct giving is what the person actually gave, and it is what counts as revenue. Soft credit recognizes whoever brought the gift in without signing the check, such as the board member who opened the door at a company. Adding the two together as if they were the same thing would distort both the revenue and the recognition, so they appear separately and only direct giving is revenue.
A restricted fund is not a suggestion
Every fund carries a restriction: unrestricted, temporarily restricted or permanently restricted. An unrestricted fund pays for whatever the organization decides. A temporarily restricted one only releases when the condition or the date is met. A permanently restricted one, the endowment, never spends its principal. When a gift is allocated across funds, the allocations cannot add up to more than the gift, and that refusal happens on save, not in a reconciliation later.
The receipt deducts what exceeds the benefit
When a donor receives something in return (a gala dinner, an auction item, a piece of swag), the deductible part is not the amount given. The system calculates the deductible as the gift minus the fair market value of the benefit, floored at zero, and shows the three columns side by side on the Receipts tab. Numbering is sequential and restarts by country and fiscal year, because different jurisdictions count different series.
The beneficiary wall
The Beneficiaries tab shows only the cases you are authorized to see, and that filtering is done by the data store itself, not by the screen. Anyone who is not on the wall of a case gets an empty list, with no error and no hint that something is hidden. Every access is written to a trail, and emergency access from outside the wall is highlighted as a break-glass entry.
Anonymity and the purpose of a message
A donor can ask for anonymity or for limited recognition. Someone who asked for anonymity does not appear on a donor wall, in an export, in a recognition report or in an answer from the AI assistant. With no stated preference, the system treats the record as restricted, which means it does not expose anyone by default. The purpose of a message, in turn, separates transactional from fundraising: a receipt and a thank-you are operational and are not blocked by a marketing opt-out, while an ask respects the consent on file.
Permissions and limits
- Turning the vertical on or off is an administrator action.
- With the vertical off, no query in the vertical returns data, even to someone who knows the address of the screen.
- Beneficiary visibility does not depend on being an administrator: it depends on being on the wall of that case or having been granted emergency access.
- Each organization sees only its own constituents, funds, gifts and cases.
- The amount of a gift is never edited over the top. Corrections are made with an offsetting entry, so the history stays reconstructible.
Common questions
- Does turning the vertical off erase my data? No. It stays stored and comes back when you turn the vertical on again.
- The Beneficiaries tab is empty and I am an administrator. That is the expected behavior when you are not on the wall of any case. The wall does not open for seniority.
- Why does revenue not match the total I added up? You most likely added soft credit into it. Only direct giving is revenue.
- Can I use the regular marketing campaigns instead of the ones here? You can, but the campaigns in this vertical are what tie gift, fund and appeal together for reporting.