Institutional · $5M+ raised / yr
The $5M+ fundraising stack
- Annual revenue
- $5M+
- Staff size
- 8+ development staff, often with a researcher
- Line items
- 5
The stack, line by line
| Category | Tool | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Donor CRM | Neon CRM System of record with memberships, events, and team permissions | ~$2,400-$6,000/yr (revenue-scaled) |
| Prospect research & wealth screening | Kindsight (iWave) Continuous screening for a real major-gifts operation | ~$5,350/yr (Professional, reported) |
| Grant research | Instrumentl Grant research at team scale, integrated with the pipeline | ~$5,988/yr (Pro, $499/mo) |
| Donation processing | Donorbox High-volume online giving with recurring support | ~$1,800/yr (Pro) + fees |
| Events & auctions | OneCause Dedicated auction machinery for a six-figure signature event | ~$2,995/yr + ~5% of event funds |
| Total | ~$18,000-$28,000/yr |
At $5M+ the stack is a full operation: continuous wealth screening, a system-of-record CRM, team-scale grant research, high-volume processing, and dedicated event software. Budget roughly $18,000-$28,000 a year. Every line supports a role, and the cost is small against the salaries it makes productive.
Why these picks
CRM: Neon CRM (revenue-scaled). At this size you need permissions, membership handling, and event integration in the database of record, and Neon’s breadth covers it. Take the demo with your real workflows: membership renewals, event registration, and the board reports you run quarterly. Price the add-on modules you’ll actually use, and run a full test export during the trial, standard diligence with any system at this scale. The alternative is a Salesforce build, which can be excellent when a named admin and an implementation budget come with it; without those, teams inherit more system than they can maintain.
Prospect research: Kindsight (~$5,350/yr Professional, reported). Screening runs continuously now: new donors screened as they arrive, portfolios refreshed on a schedule, a researcher who owns the output. Kindsight’s transparent scoring is why it tops category satisfaction ratings. The discipline that makes it pay is unchanged: capacity is not inclination, and visits convert scores into gifts.
Grant research: Instrumentl Pro ($499/mo). Twenty-plus active projects across a team is Pro-tier volume. Instrumentl manages the pipeline; pair it with desk access to Candid when a single funder deserves a deep workup.
Processing and events. Donorbox Pro protects a large recurring file with failed-card recovery and donor portals. For the signature event, OneCause turns a six-figure gala into a managed production, from mobile bidding to checkout. If your gala is under about $100k, Givebutter runs it free; size the tool to the event.
What to cut first when the budget gets cut
Cut the event platform first (run the gala on Givebutter for a year), then drop screening from continuous to annual. Past that, look hard before cutting software at all: these lines total under half a percent of revenue, and trimming the tool that makes a $90k gift officer productive is a false economy.
When you’ve outgrown this stack
Past this point the decisions go bespoke: enterprise CRM builds, data warehouses, integration engineering. The stack stops being a shopping list and becomes an architecture question for a systems hire.