The functions describe the kind of work nonprofit software is built for, so systems can be found by what an organisation does rather than by what the vendor calls itself. A domain is recorded only where a system does that work properly, not where it has a feature pointing at it. Eleven domains are used, covering everything from fundraising and membership through to compliance and enterprise capability.
- Fundraising: the solicitation and recording of gifts, for example recurring donations, tax-efficient receipting, donor stewardship and campaign attribution.
- Membership: the administration of formal belonging, for example tiered categories, dues billing, renewal workflow and member portals.
- Case management and service delivery: an individual’s contact with a service, for example referral tracking, safeguarding workflow, outcome measurement and funder claiming.
- Events and ticketing: the administration of attendance, for example booking management, waiting lists, seat-map management and box-office point-of-sale.
- Grant-making: the funder-side activity of distributing money, for example application intake, panel review, disbursement and portfolio analytics.
- Volunteer management: the recruiting, scheduling and tracking of people who give time, for example role records, hours logging, vetting and shift scheduling.
- Congregation management: running a congregation as an organisational unit, for example giving processing, congregant records, service scheduling and volunteer rostering.
- Compliance: an organisation’s own statutory obligations, for example entity-status tracking, regulator-format reporting and governance minute-keeping.
- Advocacy and campaigning: mobilising supporters around an issue, for example action-tracking, reach measurement and issue-based segmentation.
- Enterprise: the structural capability needed once complexity outgrows a purpose-built product, for example multi-entity operation, data warehouse integration and cross-system automation.
- Configured on implementation: systems with no fixed domain of their own, where functionality depends entirely on what is configured on top of the platform.