Contact Manager Guide

The Contact Manager is one searchable list of every person and organization you work with, with a record of every call, email, text, and meeting. It is the answer to the question that used to require three tabs and somebody's memory: when did we last talk to these people, and what did we say we would do?

What it is

Most organizations end up with the same problem. Partner agencies live in one place, donors live in a donor database, volunteers live in a volunteer roster, and the record of who spoke to whom lives in somebody's head or a notebook. When that person is on vacation, the organization forgets.

Added October 14, 2026: members join the same list. Anyone on the Membership roster appears here once, matched by email with their contact, donor and volunteer records, with a Member pill that names their level and a link to open them in Membership.

The Contact Manager fixes that without forcing you to move anything. It shows one list over three sources, and it adds the layer none of them had: a shared log of interactions and follow-ups that any team member can read.

Where to find it

• On your My Apps page at app.allinonenonprofit.com, under Fundraising and Development.
• Directly at www.allinonenonprofit.com/contact-manager/.
• From the Technology app, where the older Communications contacts form now carries a banner pointing here.

Where the people come from

Everyone in the list arrives from one of three places, and a colored badge on each row tells you which.

A person can carry more than one badge. If the same email address appears as both a donor and a volunteer, they are one row with both badges, not two rows. That single detail is usually the first thing people notice, because it answers a question the separate apps could never answer on their own: how many of our volunteers also give?

How two records become one person

Matching is by email address, lowercased. Two records that share an email are the same person. Records with no email stay separate, which is deliberate: guessing that two similar names are the same human is how contact lists quietly corrupt themselves. If you want two records joined, give them the same email address in their own app.

Added October 14, 2026: you no longer have to go to each app to do that. Possible duplicates, at the top of All people, lists pairs of records that share a phone number or a name but sit under two different keys. Choose Same person, use one of the two emails (click it twice; the second click confirms) and both records take that email and fold into one, with the history of each kept. A pair with no email on either side cannot be merged until one of them has an address.

On any person's page, Edit this person everywhere changes their name, email, phone and city in every record the row is made of at once: the contact, the donor record in Donor Management, the volunteer record in Volunteer Management and the member record in Membership. The other apps pick the change up the next time they load; a tab that already has one of them open should be reloaded. The Membership card on the same page shows their level, join date, renewal date and last payment, beside Giving and Volunteer hours. And from a donor, volunteer or member record in those apps, Everything about this person opens this page.

The one list

The All people screen is the front door. It opens with everybody, a count of how many came from each source, and a search box.

• Search matches name, the contact person, email, phone, city, type, and tags, so you can find a row by any of the details you actually remember.
• Filter chips narrow the list to Everyone, Contacts, Donors, Volunteers, or Due for follow-up.
• Each row shows the badges, the contact details, when you last touched this person, how many interactions are logged, and a red chip if a follow-up is due or overdue.
• Where a contact is an organization rather than a person, an Ask for line names the human to speak to.

Click any row to open that person's record.

A person's record

The record puts everything about one person on a single screen: their details, a place to log what just happened, their open tasks and appointments, their giving and volunteer history where they have one, and the full interaction timeline. Where a person came from another app, buttons take you straight to Donor Management or Volunteer Management to edit the underlying record.

Logging an interaction

This is the part that changes how an organization behaves, and it is deliberately fast. On any record, choose what happened, confirm the date, type a note, and save.

• What happened: called them, emailed them, texted them, met with them, or a plain note.
• Date defaults to today, so a call you log right after hanging up needs no edits.
• Follow up on is optional and is the single most valuable field on the screen. See the next section.
• Notes should say what was said, what they need, and what happens next. Write for the colleague who reads it in four months, not for yourself tonight.

Saved entries appear in the timeline on the same record, newest first, stamped with who logged them. Anyone on your team sees the same history, which is the whole point.

Follow-ups

Set a follow-up date on any logged interaction and that person lands on the Follow-ups screen until somebody marks it done. The screen lists everything you said you would come back to, oldest first, with overdue items flagged.

The Due for follow-up chip on the main list does the same job from the other direction, so you can work either from the list of people or the list of promises.

This is what separates a contact list from a contact manager. A list tells you who exists. A manager tells you who is waiting on you.

Tasks and appointments

A follow-up is tied to something that already happened. A task or an appointment is something you plan.

• Tasks are things that need doing, with an optional due date.
• Appointments are meetings, with a date and a time.
• Either can be attached to a person or stand on its own for work that is not about anybody in particular.

Add them from the Tasks and appointments screen, where you pick the person from the unified list, or add them straight from a person's record with the quick-add row. Everything open appears on the one screen, soonest first, with overdue items marked. Mark done or delete when they are finished.

When you send an appointment, the calendar invite carries the time zone, not just the hour. You enter the time the way you think about it, in your own zone, and someone in a different zone sees the correct local time on their own calendar. The confirmation email spells the zone out as well, so a person reading on a phone in another state can see at a glance which hour is meant.

Giving and volunteer hours

When the person you are looking at is also a donor or a volunteer, their record pulls in the history the other apps already hold.

• A Giving card shows how many gifts they have made, their lifetime total, and the most recent gifts with method, appeal, and notes.
• A Volunteer hours card shows total hours, how many entries, and the most recent ones.

These are read-only summaries. The complete history stays in the app that owns it, and each card links you there. The point is that you can see whether the person you are about to call has given four times and volunteered eighty hours, without opening anything else first.

Partners (October 10, 2026)

A nonprofit gets stronger when it stops doing everything alone, and most of the pieces of a partnership were already on the platform: a sponsor in Fundraising and Development, a business donor and an in-kind gift in Donor Management, a corporate volunteer day in Volunteer Management, a provider and a referral in Case Management, the host of a talk in Speaking Engagements. What was missing was the relationship. Partners in the sidebar is that: one page for the organizations you work with, and a Partnership panel on each one's record.

Who counts as a partner

Any contact whose Type is an organization: Partner agency, Community partner, Faith community, School, Government, Business, Sponsor, Funder, Foundation, Media or Vendor. Individuals and board contacts never carry the panel. Open a partner's record and the Partnership panel sits under Details.

The Partnership panel

• Type of partner (choose any that fit): Community, Business, Referral, Resource. One partner can be several; a church that sends families to your backpack drive and lends you its van is a Referral partner and a Resource partner.
• What they give us and What we give them, in plain words. The second box is the point: a partnership written only around what you need reads as empty.
• Who owns this relationship, a Status (Prospect, Active, Dormant, Ended), and the Agreement: None, Handshake, Letter, MOU or Contract, the date it was signed, the date it renews, and a link to the document in your Document Library.
• Log a touch: a call, a meeting, an email or a visit, with a one-line note. It sets Last touch and lands in the interaction history below, so the two never disagree.
• The year together: what the other apps hold about this partner this year, rolled up: sponsorships committed and paid, gifts and in-kind gifts, volunteer days and hours, referrals to you and from you, talks they hosted, with the most recent items listed. Referrals you cannot count anywhere else go in by hand with +1 to us and +1 from us.
• Matched in your other apps: records that look like this partner, matched by email, by name (spelling differences, "Inc." and "(sample)" ignored) or by email domain. Press Yes, that is them once and the record counts from then on; Not them keeps it out for good. Nothing is counted until you confirm it.
• Partner summary: a one-page document (Copy, Word, Text, Print, Email) with the fields above and the year's figures, for the board or for the partner's own file.

The Partners page

Partnership review comes first, worst first: an agreement renewal that has passed or is inside the warning window, a partner with no contact inside the dormant window, a sponsor from last year with nothing this year, and a Referral partner where referrals run one way only. Then All partners with chips for the four types, Needs attention and No type yet, each row showing the year in one line, and Download CSV. Not yet a partner counts the organization records in your other apps that match nobody here, so you can add the real partners as contacts. Partnership settings at the bottom sets the dormant window (120 days to start), the renewal warning (90 days) and whether a lapsed sponsor is flagged.

Waiting for you, and the year-end thank-you

An agreement renewal inside the window and a partner past the dormant window both appear on Waiting for you, linking to the partner's record. In December, a year-end thank-you note is prepared for every active partner with something in the year's roll-up; approving it marks it reviewed and sends nothing, so you copy the note or use Email on the Partner summary.

What stays private

Case Management contributes counts, never a name: how many people a provider took from you this year, how many a referral source sent. Those counts appear only for a member your organization has already admitted to Case Management, the same rule as the open-case indicator on a person's record. Everyone else sees the partner without the referral counts.

A business on All In One For Profit has partners too, and the panel reads the same there: Customers where a nonprofit has donors, revenue where a nonprofit has gifts.

Drafting the next message with AI

Every record in this app carries something most contact software never has: what was actually said. The Draft a message with AI card on a person's record turns that into the next message. Choose what the message is for (follow up on the last conversation, reconnect after a quiet stretch, thank them, make an ask, confirm a detail), choose whether you want an email, a call plan, or a text, and it drafts from their log, their open tasks, and their giving or volunteer hours if they have any.

The same drafter sits on the AI Automations screen in the sidebar, where you pick the person from a list instead. The output opens in an editable window with Copy, Word, Text, Print, and Email, so you can change anything before it leaves the building. Nothing sends by itself.

When you choose Email in that window (October 21, 2026), the Send to line already holds the person's email, and Send me a copy is ticked so the message lands in your own mail too. The platform sends it, and a reply comes back to you, the person who sent it, not to a platform address. The send is logged on the person as Emailed, so the next draft knows about it. If you would rather send from your own mailbox, Open in Gmail opens the message in your Gmail so it is in your Sent folder, and Log it as sent records it here.

The rule it follows is the one that makes it safe to use: it writes only from what you logged. It will not invent a meeting, and it will not thank somebody for a gift or a shift the record does not show. Where a detail is missing that only you can supply, it leaves a [bracketed] placeholder, so search the draft for a square bracket before you send. If a person has nothing logged yet, it says so and writes a short first note rather than pretending to a history you do not have.

Which means the drafts are exactly as good as your notes. "Called Alicia" gives it nothing. "Alicia can take an extra pallet on Thursdays now that the second cooler runs, wants a week of notice" gives it everything. The full detail is in the AI Automations Guide.

Adding and editing contacts

Add a contact creates an organization contact. Donors and volunteers are added in their own apps and appear here on their own, so this form is for everybody else: partner agencies, funders, vendors, schools, faith communities, media, and individuals who are none of the above.

The fields

• Name is the person or the organization, and it is the only required field.
• Type is a dropdown covering partner agency, funder, foundation, business, sponsor, government, school, faith community, media, vendor, community partner, board contact, individual, and other. It drives the badge on the list and is searchable.
• Contact person is who to ask for when the contact is an organization. It shows on the list and the record.
• Email is optional. Many real partner organizations are reachable only by phone, and the app does not pretend otherwise.
• Phone, address, city, state, and ZIP are the ordinary details.
• Website is the web address, typed as you like (www.example.org is fine). It shows as a link under Details on the person's record.
• Tags are comma-separated labels of your own invention, such as pantry, west county, or pickup. They are searchable, so tags are how you build any grouping the fixed Type list does not cover.
• Notes hold whatever else matters, such as the hours a pantry is open.
• Also add to my YouSpot appears above the save button once you have connected your own YouSpot (on Scan business cards). Tick it and the contact goes into your YouSpot too.

Editing a contact loads the full stored record first, so saving never blanks a field the form does not show. The same contacts appear in the Technology app's Communications screen, because it is one shared list; edit either place.

Scanning business cards (October 21, 2026)

Scan business cards in the menu turns a photo of a card into a contact. On a phone it opens the camera; on a computer you choose photos you already have. One photo can hold one card or several laid out together.

• Fill in Met at (optional) and Follow up on (optional) first if you like. Where you met goes into each card's notes and tags, and the follow-up date puts the person on your Follow-ups.
• Press Take or choose photos. Each card comes back with its fields filled in beside its picture: name, title, organization, email, phone, other phone, website, address and notes. Check each one against the card, correct anything wrong, and press Save checked cards. Nothing is saved before that.
• For cards printed on both sides, tick Two-sided cards: I will photograph each card front, then back before taking the photos, or press Add the back of this card under a card already read. When the back disagrees with the front you see The back says and choose with Use this.
• A card whose email is already on file shows Already in Contact Manager; saving it adds only what is new.
• After saving, each saved card has a Draft a follow-up email button. It opens the person and runs Draft a message with AI with where you met filled in. It only drafts; you send it yourself.
• A person's card is saved as type Individual, with their title and organization at the start of the notes and the tag Business card. A card with only a business name is saved as that business.
• Each person can also connect their own YouSpot on the scan screen (Also send cards to your YouSpot) and then tick Also add to my YouSpot. The key is stored encrypted, and cards go only to the YouSpot of the person saving them.

The photos are made smaller on your device, read by AI and thrown away; no picture is stored. An organization can read up to 100 photos a day. Saved cards count toward your contact limit like any other contact. The step by step help page is https://www.allinoneforprofit.com/help/scanning-business-cards/.

Contacts on your phone (October 22, 2026)

Your organization's Contact Manager list can sit in the contacts on your own phone, so the name shows when a supporter calls and you can text a volunteer without opening the platform. Open Contacts on your phone in the sidebar and press Create a contacts password. The password is shown once; put it into your phone right away, using the steps on the same page (on an iPhone: Settings, then Apps, then Contacts, then Contacts Accounts, then Add Account, then Other, then Add CardDAV Account, with Use SSL on, Port 443 and the Account URL https://app.allinoneforprofit.com/carddav/ under Advanced Settings). Your phone then keeps the list current by itself.

• Read only. Changes are made here, never on the phone; a change made in Contact Manager reaches the phone the next time it checks.
• Contact details only. Each card carries the name, organization, emails, phones, website and address of your contacts, donors, volunteers and members. Notes, giving and case records never leave the platform.
• Keep off phones. On a person's record, tick Keep off phones and they are left out of every phone in your organization, for example a protected client or a donor who asked for privacy.
• Who can. The owner, Admins and members with Contact Manager, each with their own password. Viewers, interns and consultants cannot. A password stops working by itself if the person's seat changes or they leave the organization, and Turn off stops it at once.

Logging an email by forwarding it (October 24, 2026)

Open Log an email in the sidebar to see your organization's private address. Forward an email you received to it, or add it in BCC on one you send, and the message is filed on the other person's record as an activity marked Sent or Received, with the subject and the first lines, so everyone in the organization can see the last conversation with that person. If the person is not in Contact Manager yet, a record is made for them.

• Who can write to it. Only messages sent from the email address of someone with a seat in the organization are accepted; anything else is ignored.
• The address. A nonprofit's address ends in @allinonenonprofit.net and a business's in @allinoneforprofit.net (receiving live since October 25, 2026). The owner or an Admin can replace it if it gets passed around.
• Also on Connections. The same address is listed at https://www.allinoneforprofit.com/team/connections/.

Vendors and Form 1099 (October 3, 2026)

Add a contact has a Form 1099 section. Tick Gets a Form 1099 (paid for services, not incorporated) for a person or unincorporated business you pay for services, and enter W-9 on file (date received) when the W-9 arrives. Only the date is kept; the W-9 itself stays in your files. In January, Financial Management totals everything paid to that name from Paid to on expense lines and shows the vendor on its Form 1099 payees card, flagged when the total reaches the reporting threshold. Contractors who are people on your team are marked in HR Management instead.

Funders from Find Grants (September 22, 2026)

A foundation you find in Grant Management can be added here without retyping anything. On the Find Grants page, every foundation card has an Add to contacts button, and it works on every plan, because this app comes with AIONP Essentials.

The contact arrives with its Type set to Funder and its name as the foundation's legal name. The note carries the EIN, what the foundation paid out in grants and the tax year that figure comes from, its assets, how many individual grants are on file, links to its filings and its Form 990-PF, and the date all of it was copied. Every figure is from the foundation's own IRS Form 990-PF, and none of it is a judgment about the funder: read the filings before you approach anyone.

The city, state and ZIP arrive too, so the contact sorts and searches with the rest of your list. There is no email address, because a foundation's filings do not carry one; most are approached in writing at the address on the return, and the application procedure is in Part XV of the 990-PF.

Going back to the same foundation later, the button reads Already in contacts rather than adding it twice. If your contact limit is full, or your own access is view-only, the button says so in plain words.

Once the funder is here it also reaches Donor Management and Fundraising and Development, so a foundation you found on Monday can be a prospect you are cultivating by Friday.

Importing contacts

Import contacts (CSV) brings a spreadsheet in. Save your file as CSV, make the first row column headers, and upload it.

• Headers are matched for you. Name, organization, agency, and company all map to the name. Contact person and ask for map to the contact person. ZIP, zip code, postal code, and postal all map to the same field. Website, web site, web, URL, web address and homepage map to the website. Anything unrecognized is listed so you can see what was skipped.
• You get a preview before anything is written: how many rows are new, how many will update an existing contact, and how many have no email.
• Rows are matched to existing contacts by email. Matched rows update, new rows are added, and rows with no email are always added as new.
• Every import can be undone in one click. Added rows are removed and updated rows are restored to what they were.

Imported contacts appear in the Contact Manager and the Technology app immediately, because they are the same records.

Your first session

If the list is empty, the app opens with four suggested first moves. If you would rather work from a plan, this is the shortest useful path.

1. Get your people in. Import the spreadsheet you already have, or add three or four contacts by hand. Donors and volunteers you already track will appear on their own.
2. Log one real interaction. Pick somebody you spoke to this week and write down what was said. One entry proves the loop to you faster than reading about it.
3. Set one follow-up date. Then open the Follow-ups screen and watch it appear. That is the habit that makes the rest worth doing.
4. Tag as you go. Do not stop to build a taxonomy. Add a tag when you notice you want one, and the groupings you actually need will emerge in a month.

Access and privacy

The Contact Manager is scoped to your organization. Every team member sees the same list and the same interaction history, which is deliberate: a log only one person can read is a notebook, not a shared record. Members with view-only access can read but cannot log, edit, or import.

The people it shows come from records your organization already holds, so the usual care applies. Log what your organization needs to remember to do its work, keep notes professional, and remember that anyone on your team can read them.

If you are an intern

If your seat is an Intern seat (October 17, 2026), you can read this app and draft in it, and nothing you save changes the organization's records until someone approves it. What you can draft here: a contact, a contact log entry, or a follow-up task. Imports are not available to an intern. Your Save button reads Submit for approval, a banner at the top of the app says so, and each save tells you it was sent. Follow your drafts on Waiting for you at https://app.allinoneforprofit.com/waiting: each one shows whether it is waiting, approved or returned, with the note from whoever returned it, and you can withdraw one that is still waiting. The owner, an Admin, or anyone who can already make changes in this app approves or returns it; a draft with no decision expires after 30 days. How the seat is set up: https://www.allinoneforprofit.com/guide/.

Looking for help beyond the platform?

See our Helpful Resources page for vetted external resources on legal and tax filing, funder research, governance training, insurance, technology discounts, and more.