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Karani Docs

Welcome to Karani

Karani is a cloud-based CRM for anyone who fundraises as part of their job — not as all of it.

Most fundraising software is built for development departments: teams of full-time professionals with a database administrator down the hall. Karani was built from the ground up for the other people — missionaries, church planters, campus staff, program directors, artists, researchers — who have to raise their own support alongside the work they were actually called to do.

The Karani dashboard, showing upcoming tasks, giving progress against goal, a notepad, expense chart, pledge totals, and groups
The dashboard — what's due, where you stand, and what to do next, in one screen.

What “CRM” means here

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CRM stands for Constituent Relationship Manager. Strip away the jargon and it means one thing: Karani keeps track of your relationships with the people who support your work, so you don’t have to hold it all in your head or in a spreadsheet that only you understand.

Concretely, Karani stores:

  • Contacts — the people and organisations you’re in relationship with, whether they’re prospects, active donors, or lapsed.
  • Tasks and interactions — what you need to do next with each person, and a permanent record of everything you’ve already done.
  • Pledges and gifts — what people have committed to give, and what has actually arrived.
  • Groups and tags — the ways you slice your list for newsletters, mailings, and bulk actions.

And then it does the arithmetic: how far you are from your goal, who’s behind on their pledge, who you haven’t thanked, who you haven’t spoken to in six months.

Who these docs are for

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Everything here describes Karani as an individual fundraiser or a small team uses it. If you’re an organisation administrator managing many staff accounts, your organisation has separate documentation — talk to whoever set up your Karani access.

How to use these docs

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Brand new? Start at the beginningSign up, sign in, get the tour, and set the two settings that make everything else work.
Migrating from something else?Get your contacts, gifts, and history in — from a spreadsheet or another CRM.
Looking for one specific thing?Press Ctrl K or ⌘ K to search every page, or browse the FAQ.
Building an integration?REST API, webhooks, Zapier, and embeddable lead capture forms.

A note on the name

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Karani is a Swahili word for a clerk or a majordomo — as we see it, someone who takes care of everything for you. That’s the goal: bring some joy back into fundraising, make you effective and efficient at it, and then get out of your way so you can get back to the work.