FundRaiser Blog

Knowing the balance between incoming donations and outgoing expenses is vitally important at Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Center. The organization runs a large and historically rich facility on a tight budget. The facility serves as a spiritual center for the Catholic Church. Among the Center’s many activities this year, they have been hosting events and retreats for high schools students.Julie Nerl is currently a one-person development staff for the Center. “It’s a large place with few employees,” she says. “Like most nonprofits we all multi-task.” Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Center is a FundRaiser Professional user. Julie is the main user of FundRaiser. “I use the FundRaiser Software system daily,” she says.One of important things she uses the software for is to get a clear picture of event return on investment (ROI). This is one of the main challenges for any nonprofit, and especially crucial if funds are tight. For Julie, the Campaign Management section in FundRaiser has been particularly helpful in this regard. 

This year she focused on clarifying the cost versus income on the newsletter. “We insert a reply envelope in every newsletter, it’s not a formal ask but a reminder. I mark the envelope, so when it comes back, I’ll be able to track exactly where the donations come from and if we are receiving enough to cover the cost of the newsletter,” says Julie.“We send an issue every other month. In the Campaign Management section, I track each issue as a sub-event under the annual fundraising campaign. I enter the expenses of the newsletter and track the donations. That has let me report on the actual costs versus income. I can track and see what month we raise the most or least. We are using the information to determine if we should cut down on our newsletter mailings or replace one with another kind of mailing.”“It’s important to know where your donations are coming from and which fundraising events work and which do not,” explains Julie “That’s why I like Fundraiser Software, it’s easy to see the results.”

A capital campaign raises money that will be spent to acquire or improve a physical asset. The most common use of a capital campaign is for the purchase, construction, or renovation of a building (commonly referred to as “bricks and mortar”). However, an organization can conduct a capital campaign to purchase machinery, equipment, furniture, fixtures, or any physical asset that can be reflected on its balance sheet.

The purpose of a capital campaign differs from that of an endowment campaign in that the money raised will not be used to cover ongoing, operational expenses, or to fund special projects. Capital funds are spent on one-time or seldom recurring expenditures. The primary difference between capital and endowment funds is that capital funds are not retained and invested to yield income. However, capital and endowment campaigns are very similar in their planning and management.

When BRING Recycling began their capital campaign it was a big jump for them. Kara Brinkman, Administrative Assistant at BRING Recycling and a FundRaiser Select user, says "The capital campaign was a major change in mind set for our organization. We started out very grassroots in 1971 as a recycling center. As the community has become more aware and involved in our mission we’ve also evolved. Raising money and courting donors didn't come naturally to us, but we've done well. The community here in Eugene has been really supportive."

BRING’s capital campaign started with raising the money to build a “Planet Improvement Center.” The Center is a resale outlet for used building materials; and a community learning and action center. BRING has successfully finished Phase I of their capital campaign, raising over a million dollars in the process and built the building. Pledges have been key to the success of the capital campaign. "We had pledges ranging from $40 to $40,000. A lot of people wanted the option to make a pledge," says Kara.

Dear Kim:

We are a 50-year-old social service agency mostly supported by government grants.  We do have about 600 donors who help us every year and we do a reasonable job keeping in touch with them.  We also have about 300 people who give us in-kind gifts and I have tried all kinds of solicitations to encourage them to give money as well as stuff, but I have had a really poor response.  Someone said that you said in-kind donors often don’t become money donors.  Is that true?  Should I stop trying to convert them? 

Dear Kim:

What is a Lie-Bunt?  I have some pro bono consulting from this high powered direct mail and social media person and she told me we have a lot of lie-bunts we should be asking.  I already feel stupid around her and don’t want to ask her what she means.  Do you have any idea? 

It can be a bit confusing, trying to figure out which type of code really is best for tracking a particular aspect of your fundraising efforts.  But let's try to de-mystify the process a bit.  In the simplest terms, there are only two major types of codes in FundRaiser:  those that attach to Name Records, and those that attach to individual Gift Records.  So, really, the big question you have to ask, when you want to track some aspect of your donor base is this:  "Does this pertain to the person, or to the gift?"

For those things that pertain to the person (or organization), you have several choices of Code types, but the most flexible are the Category Codes.  You can have (practically speaking) an unlimited number of category codes from which to choose, and you can apply as many as you need to any name record you like.  If you want to show, for instance, that a person is concerned with environmental issues, or child welfare, or government policies, or anything else, you can use Category codes for that.  Donor Type, Source, and Solicitor codes are more restrictive, with only one of each code allowed per name record, and they are intended for more distinct types of references.  As with any information you hold on donors and prospective donors, these codes can help determine how you might approach people with some form of donation appeal, based on their interests.

I actually read that riveting question in the marginal notes of a proposal for funding an orchestra. The notes were penned by a trustee of a grant-making foundation during a meeting to review the proposal. Another trustee of the foundation, the one who presented the proposal on behalf of the orchestra, later showed them to me and asked what I could do help counter his colleague’s questioning remark.

Arts and cultural institutions are often forced into such defensive postures. They’re accused of only benefiting the elite. The needs of the hungry, the homeless, the physically, mentally and emotionally challenged are cited as so great that something as frivolous as the arts should not be drawing from the pool of available support for non-profit organizations. Those of us who work with and passionately support the arts are asked how we can justify "diverting" funds to the arts when such need exists.

When you create groupings, you need to have specifics in mind, to insure against overlap and exclusion.  In other words, you want to make certain you don't miss anyone, but, at the same time, you want to make certain that no one record will be in multiple groupings for the same mailing.  In Kim Klein's recent blog article, she talks about asking for specific amounts, or asking people to give within certain ranges of giving.  So before you can ask for the right amount, you need to know who gave what amount in the past.  And those are the parameters I'm talking about.  Do you want just major donors?  How do define that?  Is it a certain size gift during a certain previous time period, or a total of giving during a previous time period, or something else altogether.  You may end up needing several groupings, since you'll want to word your written appeal in different ways for different giving levels.  So make sure you set your parameters carefully in advance to get the best and "cleanest" groupings possible.

As you define your parameters, make sure that your ranges, whether date ranges for previous giving, or dollar amount ranges for separating donor levels, do not overlap.  If you have overlap, you may end up with name records that fit into more than one grouping, and, therefore, could receive multiple appeals instead of a single one.  This can be a turn-off for a donor, and it's certainly confusing for them, if not for you, too.  With date ranges, it's fairly straight forward.  With dollar amounts, however, it's a good idea to have distinct amounts for your range extremes.  In other words, if you are looking for people who gave more than $100, but not $500 or more, then that range would be $100.00 through $499.99, with the NEXT range starting at $500.00.  Otherwise, you might have a donor who gave exactly $500.00 falling into both the 100-500 and 500-1000 groupings.

Dear Kim:

I have often heard and others say that when you are asking for money, you need to name an amount or a range.  I feel uncomfortable doing this, and I think some of my donors do not like being asked for a specific amount.  I work with a lot of donors who are deeply religious and look to GOD to tell them what to give, not me.  Can I violate this best practice and still be successful?

Whether you have Spark, Select, or Professional, there are at least 3 spare fields available to you for entering extra or unusual information.  Spare fields can contain either text or numbers, or they can be code dropdowns, date dropdowns, or even logical yes/no checkboxes.  You can label them in any way you choose, too.  Best of all, whatever you put in a spare field will be available for use in correspondence, User-Defined reports, and exporting.  Create them in the Options | Spare Fields menu, and get a bit of training in them by viewing the Coding & Spare Fields video class found in the Customer Portal section of the website.

In both Select and Professional, the Tickles tab of each name record allows you to enter date-sensitive reminders about your donors.  Normally they are used to record (and remind you of) birthdays, anniversaries, and special occasions.  In the Overview class, I also instruct users that they can be used as a means of tracking personal contacts with your major donors.  Well, here's another place you can use, then, to record specific information about your corporate donors...

We should–and usually do–work hard to make our best possible case for support to corporations. We of course want them to know as much as possible about us. But what we know about them is just as likely to determine the outcome of a request.

I was recently thinking about the extent to which we need to know our corporate prospects in order to make the assessments, ratings, and evaluations that should precede requests for funding. That brought to mind the annual fund-raising conferences for our geographic area that I would attend each year. The conferences usually included three or four contributions managers from large corporations and banks.

Dear Kim:

A donor recently promised a donation of $2500 but hasn’t paid it.  How can I collect this money?  We could really use it but don’t want to be rude.

Mariemont School Foundation didn’t really want to move from their Excel spreadsheets to a donor database, but their new development director said they needed to if they wanted to be more successful. “The people who were on the foundation board didn’t want to learn something new, but then they hired a development director who said in order to be a successful group, donor management software was something we needed to grow our organization. You start out as a grass roots organization and then you need someone to say, ‘to grow your organization this is something you need to do’.” says Ann Pardue, who is a Trustee on the Board of the Mariemont School Foundation.

According to Ann, Mariemont has been able to:

Dear Kim:

We have thousands of individual donors and recently decided to stop sending thank you notes to people who give less than $15.  One of our board members heard you speak and said that you said everyone should be thanked, regardless of size of gift.  The cost/benefit of this eludes me. 

Recently, during a meeting at our Church, I talked to Alice, our pastoral associate, about my wife Joyce and I offering to give a special major contribution for a program she heads.

Alice is in charge of a group who regularly review the cases of fellow parishioners in desperate need of money to pay overdue bills for household utilities, rent, mortgage, medical expenses, and other critical needs.

With the proper template (and there is one for nonprofits included with Access), it's not too difficult for someone with a modicum of computer savvy to put together a program to handle the basics of fundraising using either Excel or Access. However, remember that the fundraising world is not static, and neither should be your fundraising program—continuing maintenance could become a drain on your time and resources.

In our opinion, there are two situations in which using Access or Excel (or similar products) might make sense.

In this modern technological age, even the smallest nonprofits are likely to use some type of software to help with fundraising. These fall into two general categories:

The homegrown varieties are most often constructed using Microsoft's Access or Excel because they are the most readily available products from which to create a database. In our many years working with small to medium-sized nonprofits in various capacities, many organizations have come to us looking for a solution to having outgrown their homegrown programs. This experience has taught us a number of lessons that may be helpful if you are thinking it may be time to purchase fundraising management software.

Recently, I was asked again what a non-profit organization should do about announcing that a fund-raising campaign is racing toward its goal at a record-setting pace. It’s a question asked more often than one might think.

If you’ve got a positive story to tell, especially one of community support, you tell it, right? The reality is that I have known many campaign leaders who have wanted to downplay their success during the campaign. Some have even wanted to under announce results. Why?

I've talked to some brilliant and inspiring fundraisers through my work at FundRaiser. Over time, I've noticed how they emphasize certain points about the interface between effective appeal letters and using their donor database.

These people have a heart-felt connection to their donors and they want to use their donor database to convey that.  They often have ways they think of their letters that help them feel their emotional connection, even through all the layers of distance, and technology. Some find this through envisioning letters as organizing tools. Others experience letters as a way touch someone who has touched them. It depends on the purpose and personality of the organization. But whatever that may be, there are some consistent ways that they use their donor databases to make that connection.

When you receive gifts of products, time and services, be aware that your organization can be held in even greater regard by donors of such In-Kind gifts, should you express your gratitude in a meaningful way—in a manner far and above how these contributions are usually acknowledged by non-profit organizations. This can be accomplished in strict keeping with the applicable IRS rules and regulations, which are especially explicit when it comes to In-Kind gifts and how non-profits handle them.

By law, non-profit organizations cannot provide a donor with the dollar value of an In-kind gift. Such valuations when applicable, relative to "fair market value" of In-Kind gifts, need to be professionally assessed and certified elsewhere—if they can be—and that is the responsibility of the donor. This certification subsequently needs to be resolved with the professionals and others who prepare the donor's tax forms—whose work in turn will need to be reconciled with IRS regulations. In instances where time and service are donated, no tax break whatsoever is allowed, as the IRS Publication 526 clearly states, "You cannot deduct the value of your time or services…"