Five years ago, it would have been common for a UK charity to have a donor database system, an accounting package and an email marketing system that all worked brilliantly well independently. But the CRM these charities were using was not interoperable, and they were losing time and money to data islands.
This stands in contrast to today. The modern third sector organisation demands a technology ecosystem that is unified, integrated, and puts the constituent relationship at its core.
At present, the operational environment for UK charities is arguably more complex and challenging than it has ever been. At one level, there is the impact of Brexit, changes in consumer and data protection legislation, and heightened regulatory scrutiny. On another, there are expectations that donors – who have become used to a seamless commercial online experience – now bring to their engagement with the sector. On yet another level, there is the on-going pressure of having to show impact with shrinking resources.
It is in this context that technology is having an increasingly important role to play in a charity’s efforts to deliver on its mission. In the technology stack, integration has ceased to be an optional bolt-on, instead becoming a strategic necessity that directly impacts organisational effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability and ultimately mission delivery.
Fundamentally, this means that the role of the CRM has changed. It is now the central nervous system of the organisation. The CRM must function as a hub for data flow and orchestration, it must break down silos and create a single source of truth, and it must empower every department from fundraising to finance, from communications to impact reporting.
The main question a UK charity must now ask is not simply
“What CRM can we get that tracks donations?”
but rather,
“What system(s) can we put in place that will connect together and give us maximum value across the board?”
This post will explore some of these topics in more detail, focusing in particular on the key integration points that define the value of a CRM system in 2025-26.
CRM integration points and tech ecosystems in 2025-26
In 2025-26, a well-built tech stack for UK charities will need to cover at least the following areas, all of which must interconnect to realise value. The diagram below maps some of these areas as interconnected components.
- CRM Hub
- Digital CRM Features
- Xero integration
- Stripe Integration
- GoCardless Integration
- Mailchimp integration
- Dotdigital Integration
- Website Integration
- Payments Page Integration
CRM Hub, Software Demo – 2025-26
In this section we go into some detail about how these key integrations contribute value to the UK charity ecosystem, with a focus on CRM systems. First of all we need to look at why the concept of the CRM system hub is so important.
CRM: a best of breed hub, not a best in class CRM
The key value driver for a UK charity CRM system in 2025-26 is integration, so the first thing we need to consider is what “best” means here.
In days gone by, charities often looked for the “best CRM for charities UK”. In other words, what CRM system has all the bells and whistles and can do the most things. This was important. It is still important to some degree. But the best CRM system in 2025-26 is one that is a “best of breed” hub for other, possibly better tools that do specific things better.
Why does a CRM need to be an integration hub?
The answer here is data silos. When the finance team is using Xero, the fundraising team is using a CRM and the communications team is using Mailchimp (for example), then these systems are in silos. This can lead to significant inefficiencies: data needs to be exported from one system and imported into another, so the marketing team knows which constituents have given how much and to which projects, and the same data will need to be exported and imported in the other direction, so the fundraisers know whether or not Gift Aid was claimed.
This is error-prone, creates manual data entry, and makes it very difficult for the CRM to be the true single source of truth about the constituent.
The alternative is to integrate these systems so they talk to one another automatically, data flows in one direction and each system knows what’s going on in the others. The CRM in this ecosystem becomes the single source of truth. When a constituent donates, that data flows to the CRM and from there to Xero and Mailchimp. The Mailchimp account is automatically created in the CRM. GoCardless subscription data is pulled into the CRM.
The CRM becomes the central nervous system of the organisation and by being the natural home for the constituent relationship, it starts to deliver value across the organisation, in areas such as:
* fund accounting,
* donor segmentation,
* engagement scoring,
* peer-to-peer campaign creation,
* reporting and dashboards,
* automated transactional and strategic communication,
* coordinated digital and offline activity
While the default position for most organisations will still be an entirely cloud-based solution for their CRM system (there are just too many benefits for that not to be the case), a well integrated ecosystem can also include robust offline integrations for those special cases where they are needed.
CRM system integration ecosystem in 2025-26 Here is a breakdown of the key CRM system integration points within a UK charity ecosystem, in more detail.
Financials: Xero is the starting point for accounting
Xero is by far the most popular accounting platform for UK charities at present. It is particularly well liked by the sector because it is an organisation sized product, not an enterprise product that has had to adapt to smaller organisations, it is cloud-native, easy to use and it has a fully developed and extensive integration ecosystem.
The integration point that drives most value here is the connection between the charity CRM and Xero. The ideal result of this is a seamless, automatic flow of donations data from the CRM into Xero as income, properly categorised and attributed to the right fund/project. Gift Aid status is also mapped.
When this is in place, the finance team has real-time data, fundraising can see what they have raised without having to export/import, and there is no manual reconciliation of giving data to be done at month-end.
The technical means of this is an API integration, usually over OAuth2, with a proper inbound and outbound data model.
Payments processing: Stripe and GoCardless
Stripe and GoCardless are the two main platforms in the payments ecosystem for charities at present.
Stripe is increasingly popular with charities in the UK that do one-off donations and online giving, because it is a developer friendly API, has transparent pricing, and offers a sophisticated set of payment features that cover complex scenarios like recurring donations with variable amounts, matching, tribute gifts, multi-currency payments, and more.
Stripe and CRM integration means that when a supporter donates through the charity’s website (Stripe processes the payment), that data flows to the CRM as a real-time donation record. The individual gets an automatic thank you, their giving history is updated, and it can kick off any automated workflows such as welcome onboarding for first time donors, recurring gift upgrades, or upgrading engagement for a warm prospect.
GoCardless, on the other hand, is the most popular Direct Debit provider for UK charities and remains the preferred platform because it is the most cost effective and reliable way to do recurring giving in the UK. GoCardless has modernised this traditional payment method by simplifying the setup process and providing an API that enables a powerful and integrated recurring giving management system. GoCardless and CRM integration means that payments succeed/fail, and subscriptions are cancelled. This data flows back to the CRM in real-time, so the organisation has up-to-date visibility and can trigger follow up actions like mandate cancellation workflows and churn analysis.
The connection between Stripe and GoCardless and the CRM in most cases will be via webhooks which are basically automated messages the payment processor sends to the CRM to tell it about events that have happened.
Digital communications platforms: Mailchimp and Dotdigital
Email is the most important digital communications channel for UK charities, which means integration between CRM and email marketing systems is usually the highest value connection in the stack. Mailchimp is the most popular platform for smaller charities and those that have started digital from a standing start, because it is accessible and the free plan is generous. Dotdigital on the other hand is popular with medium to large charities that want advanced automation features that work well for programme-based and transactional messaging.
CRM and email integration means much more than just syncing contact lists. When done properly, it creates a closed loop communication system where every interaction informs future communication. From the CRM, segmentation is based on giving history. When integrated with Mailchimp, email engagement data flows back into the CRM to enrich the constituent record and inform future engagement with that person.
Mailchimp integration is done via the Mailchimp Marketing API to keep audiences, track performance and trigger automated campaigns based on what is happening with that individual in the CRM.
Dotdigital has an even more sophisticated integration model, with the system working seamlessly with Mailchimp to power many advanced scenarios. Here the API is used for everything, with dynamic content driven by level, interests and engagement history, that changes as a supporter moves up and down the ladder.
Integration: the big three In short, for a UK charity, the top three integrations to consider are with:
1. Xero
2. Stripe/GoCardless
3. Mailchimp/Dotdigital
The reason for this is not that other integrations don’t matter (there are many others we haven’t mentioned), but rather that these three drive maximum interoperability between the main business areas and key systems a UK charity uses to work with their constituents.
CRM systems act as an integration hub for best of breed purpose-built tools
This is not the end of the integration story. There are many more points of interoperability to consider. Website integrations, for example, are important when it comes to social media. And for marketing communications, there is integration with a payments page solution.
The key point to take from this post though is that a UK charity CRM is not a stand-alone proposition in 2025-26. Integration is its key value driver for the best CRM for charities in the UK, and the real best is a CRM as an integration hub for the right mix of software in the UK charity tech ecosystem.
Fundraising Platforms: JustGiving and the Peer-to-Peer Ecosystem
JustGiving and other peer-to-peer fundraising platforms fall into an interesting category. They are partially both outside the charity’s direct management—the supporters set up their own JustGiving page, share it with their networks, and donate there—but they also are central to creating the constituent data that the stack uses.
This presents both a data challenge and an opportunity. The challenge with peer-to-peer is that donations don’t include the constituent data that comes along with a regular gift, directly to the CRM. The opportunity with peer-to-peer is that it opens up new supporters and introduces you to people that would otherwise never hear about or give to you, so the data integration challenge is partly one of attribution.
Crucially, with the most modern CRM-JustGiving integrations, the API is used not only to capture the gift data, but the full context of the peer-to-peer activity. When the supporter creates the page, that activity is captured in the CRM. As gifts go to that page, they are attributed both to the page creator (the fundraiser) and the individual gift donors, creating a relationship record for each.
The CRM system that is best at peer-to-peer integration has a sophisticated algorithm for matching fundraiser and donor data to the CRM. This is complex because a single fundraising page can have hundreds of fundraisers and thousands of donors, many of whom are in your CRM already, so matching and creating duplicate rules is complex.
The Technical Standards Enabling Integration: APIs, Webhooks, and Middleware
Technical standards may sound like they have little relevance for charity professionals, but understanding the modern standards that enable system integration is a crucial lens through which to evaluate and choose systems.
APIs
APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, are the foundational building block of modern integrations. When we say a CRM “integrates with” Xero, or Stripe, or Dotdigital, what we mean is that those systems expose an API (application programming interface), a set of rules and data structures, that the CRM can use to send and receive information.
Modern APIs tend to be RESTful (Representational State Transfer) and use the standard HTTP methods GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE to create a CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, and Delete) interface. They return data in a standard JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format. This is what allows such integration patterns to be transferrable across systems. A RESTful POST to Xero is the same process as a RESTful POST to Stripe; your developer or integration partner needs to know the specific data and auth models for each system but doesn’t need to learn a new way of working for each integration.
For charities and those evaluating CRM systems, a key differentiator between options should be the quality of their API and the developer documentation that they make available. A good best CRM for charities UK must offer not just integrations with the common CRM, accounting, communication, payment, and fundraising platforms, but also offer a well-documented API that allows further custom integrations with specialised systems or newer platforms that come to market.
Webhooks and Event-Driven Architecture
Webhooks, and event-driven architecture, are a key feature of modern integrations. APIs allow one system to ask another for information or actions, but with webhooks, one system can tell the other that something happened. If a new donation comes into Stripe, rather than the CRM asking every few minutes “has anything new happened in Stripe?” Stripe can send a webhook saying “Hey, a payment just succeeded, here’s the data.”
This event-driven architecture is what enables a near-real-time, much more scalable, and more efficient integration than was possible previously. It’s what enables the immediate thank you emails, the real-time dashboards, and the automated flows that most modern charity tech systems expect.
Integration Platforms and Middleware
As charity technology stacks become more complex, a number of organisations are starting to use integration platforms or middleware systems. Integration platforms like Zapier, Make (formerly Integromat), or more full-blown iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) platforms like Workato provide a user interface to build integrations between systems without much or any coding.
The advantages of such platforms are many: they can reduce reliance on technical resources, provide pre-built connectors to common platforms and systems, and include error handling and monitoring logic. Perhaps most importantly, they provide a central location to manage and document integrations in one place.
Strategic Implementation: Building Your Integrated Stack
Knowing about the components and technical foundations of an integrated stack is one thing, implementing one in your own organisation is another. Implementation needs to be strategic, with appropriate planning, phasing, and ongoing governance.
Assessment and Planning
An integrated stack needs to start with an assessment of your current systems, data flows, and any organisational pain points around these. Map out the current data flows in your organisation. Where does your donation data start? How does it make its way to finance? How does your communications team access or add data to supporter records? Where do your manual processes, double data entry, and reconciliation challenges currently exist?
Involve stakeholders across the organisation in this audit and the planning process. Finance, fundraising, communications, programmes, and leadership all have a role to play in interacting with constituent data, and they all have different requirements for this data. The integrated stack needs to serve the needs of all these parts of the organisation, so involve them in designing and planning.
Phased Implementation
Try not to implement all integrations at once. This is overwhelming, risky, and doesn’t allow people time to adapt to new workflows. Integrations should be rolled out strategically in a prioritised sequence that enables learning and iteration between each step.
Typically, the first integration to implement will be CRM-accounting, as this creates most immediate value with significant reductions in manual reconciliation and errors and much improved financial visibility. The next integrations should be to your payment processors to enable near real-time processing of donations. After that would typically be the communications integration, to enable the sophisticated segmentation, multi-channel engagement tracking, and journey-based communications. Finally, add in the peer-to-peer and any other specialised platform integrations.
Data Governance and Quality
Integrations and API connections amplify the value of having good data and the problems of having bad data. When systems are siloed, poor data quality is contained within that silo. When systems integrate, bad data quality propagates throughout the whole stack.
As a result, before you start to implement integrations you should have a clear set of data governance policies in place. Who owns constituent records? What are the standards for adding and maintaining data? How do you identify duplicates and merge records? What validation rules are required for data entry? How are you handling data privacy and GDPR across systems?
Modern UK charity CRM systems have a lot of useful data quality tools, but your organisation still has to configure and enforce those. Duplicate detection, validation rules and required fields, standardised formats, all these tools exist but your CRM won’t protect you from poor data quality if your staff members can ignore the rules with no consequences.
The Strategic Advantage of Integration
The integrated technology stack, enabled by the modern standards and technologies described here, enables several strategic advantages that directly support the mission of the organisation.
Enhanced Constituent Experience: When all the systems integrate, each supporter has a consistent, higher-quality experience with the organisation. Their preferences are recorded once and apply across all communication channels. Their giving history is accessible to every team member and informs every communication. Their engagement is seen, known about, and valued across channels.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Integration creates a single version of the truth and a much more complete view of organisational performance. Modern real-time dashboards can combine financial data from Xero, donation activity from your payment processors, engagement data from communications platforms, and campaign performance from fundraising tools. Leadership can make informed decisions with a current, complete, and accurate view, rather than relying on manually assembled reports.
Scalability and Growth: Systems that integrate more closely are far more efficient at scale than disconnected systems. As volumes of donations grow, supporter bases increase, campaigns and projects multiply, integrated systems can handle increased complexity without an equivalent rise in overhead. The automation and data flows that integration enables allow your organisation to scale your impact without equivalent growth in administrative overhead.
Innovation and Agility: Most importantly, a stack built on the technical standards and capabilities described in this chapter means your organisation is well-positioned to adopt new technology and approaches as they become available. If a new fundraising platform, communication channel, or analytical tool comes to market, a charity with a modern integration-ready stack can experiment and adopt. A charity with legacy technology that was purchased without integration standards in mind faces many months of custom development to connect a new tool—or may never be able to connect at all.
Conclusion: Integration as an Organisational Strategy
The technology landscape in the UK charity sector in 2025-26 demands a complete reconceptualisation of how we talk about systems and data.
The CRM: The CRM is not just a database; it’s a hub. That should be the first question when evaluating and choosing a CRM: Is this a hub for the rest of the technology stack or just a CRM? Integration is not a technical decision; it’s a strategic one.
The Stack: The technology stack is not a set of individual tools; it’s an ecosystem that must be well-designed and managed to work together as a coherent whole.
The Organisation: In this future landscape, integration is not just an operational challenge; it’s an organisational strategy. To meet the demands of the future, the technology stack needs staff, governance structures, and data policies that support it and integration between systems needs to be an ongoing organisational priority.
In an era where every charity is under pressure to demonstrate value and impact, to prove that every pound donated to them or pound spent in Gift Aid is making as much difference as possible, to operate more efficiently with limited resources and infrastructure, the integrated technology stack is no longer a nice-to-have. It is the foundation on which modern, high-impact, mission-driven organisations are built.
The question is not whether you will need an integrated stack. It’s how quickly and how comprehensively your organisation can embrace integration as a strategic imperative.
