FundRaiser Blog

The FundRaiser Software Blog is an excellent resource for nonprofit organizations looking to learn more about fundraising, donor management, membership management, and much more.

When your spreadsheets aren't enough: import options in FundRaiser donor management software

Many non-profits began their data management using spreadsheets.  Yours may still use them, but there are many reasons to move away from them and into donor management software, as you may be aware.  If you're having trouble convincing others of this, you may want to use one or the other of these linked articles as good examples.

Why NOT convert?

One of the big stumbling blocks to converting to a better system seems to be the old argument of "we would have to re-enter all that information, and no one has time to do that!".  Well, in FundRaiser there is a file menu option that allows you to import from other file formats.  Here are some quick tips and tricks on how to do that efficiently and successfully:

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5 steps to creating tax summary letters for your donors in FundRaiser


It's almost time to produce Tax Summary letters (End of Year Letters).  Usually sent in January, after the last donation for the year is in, end of year letters are a perfect way to re-establish your relationship with all your donors.  Here's a coherent plan of attack for FundRaiser users to breeze through this important time.

Step One -- HOW do you want to display their donations?

You'll obviously want to thank them for the year's donations, but do you want to list donations individually, or as a total dollar amount?  Do you want to mention the number of gifts they gave?  Would you like to encourage them to give again?  FundRaiser has merge fields and functions to help with all of this, with the most often used being the GiftList and GiftTotal functions.  GiftList can show a listing of the gifts you specify in a mini-report format, while GiftTotal simply adds up all the gifts you specify to print out the total dollar amount.

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How your nonprofit can keep up to speed on memorial giving letters with the help of FundRaiser


Tribute Gifts (In Honor/In Memory/In Celebration)

Tribute gifts are in a class by themselves when it comes to fundraising.  They give you the opportunity to acquire new donors that might otherwise not be involved with your organization, while offering existing donors the opportunity to show their respects by giving to a cause they already deem worthy.  Tributes can be "in honor of", "in memory of", or "in celebration of" something, whether person, pet, event, or otherwise.

For each tribute gift we keep track of three categories of people:

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Part II of How your non profit organization can record campaigns and associated events for clear ROI data

Part II - Campaign Management

In the Gilda's Club case study talked about in my last blog entry, Debra mentions using the “code set up feature” for events. She is referring to the capability in the Campaign Management section to have Gift codes directly associated with events, so that the codes can be automatically applied to gifts.  In the Coding & Spare Fields training, we learn that there are 3 primary Gift Codes:  Motivation, Fund, and Purpose. 

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How your non profit organization can record campaigns and associated events for clear ROI data


Campaigns are groups of events

In the blog about of Gilda’s Club, Debra makes some good points about events and sub-events. This is important to understand, so here is bit more detail.  In the Campaign Management console in FundRaiser Professional, Campaigns are comprised of Events. Events may be standalone affairs, or they may be comprised of Sub-events. This is how it looks

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Tips for helping several people share the work in your donor database

 

What happens when you begin to have more than one person working simultaneously in your donor database? For one thing, new situations arise that weren't there when only a single user was accessing the database. There may be questions about data integrity, work flow, or coordinatiing usage of the program.

This article will shed some light on these common questions and concerns about coordinating more than one user working in FundRaiser. I'll suggest ways to make FundRaiser even more helpful in keeping your information secure and accessible.

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Keeping on Top of Grant Deadlines

Okay, so we're not going to travel back in time to keep tabs on Ulysses, here, but in tracking grant proposal progress, it is important to make sure that each step of the process is done in a timely manner. There are usually deadlines that must be met to be considered for grant monies, so it is imperative that we have some method of reminding ourselves when those deadlines are coming near.

Tickle Your Memory

In FundRaiser Professional and FundRaiser Select, the "Tickler" system fills this need. Tickles are date-sensitive reminders that can be associated directly with a name record, such as a Foundation from which we are seeking a grant. There is a Tickle tab for each and every name record. In this tabbed page, we can keep multiple tickles, with "Do Dates", notes, and more. In the case of a grant application, you would set up separate tickles for each stage of the application process, and later for the reporting deadlines. If different staff members need to be involved, you can assign tickles to the responsible staff members to accomplish. Once they have completed their portion of a tickle, they can pass the tickle along to the next staff member, or when completed, can give it back to you.

Automatic Tickle RemindersWhen FundRaiser is started, it will remind you of all tickles coming due in the next "X" number of days that pertain to you. You get to tell it how many days that "X" should be, whether it is "0" to show only those due today, or "7" for a week's advance notice, or "30" for a month, and so forth. This is set in the Options > Personal > Tickles section of the program.Print Tickle ReportsOnce in the program, you can view all tickles for a specific donor by looking on their Tickles tab. You can view all tickles that pertain to you by going to Windows > Staff Tickler. And, you can print a variety of reports in Print > Tickle Reports.Assign Tickles to FundRaiser UsersTo allow tickles to be assigned to certain users, each person must be given a program password. To do this go to the Options menu and click on User List/Security. In this window, you set up the passwords with which each user will login to FundRaiser. After that, tickles can be designated for a specific user, by name, or can be for all the staff. The "supervisor" of FundRaiser will be able to see all tickles for everyone, if you choose, and will be able to limit others to see only the tickles that apply directly to them and/or those assigned to "all staff members". As always, if you have questions on how best to use these features, drop us an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  or give us a call at 800-543-4131.
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Keeping Data Clean

Clean data is good data, that's for sure, but how can we insure that we're getting clean data, or that we're keeping data clean, and what, exactly, IS "clean" data.  

First of all, from a data entry viewpoint, clean data is information that is entered in a consistent way, with every data entry person adding things in the same way, using codes in the same way, and so forth.  For instance, if we use mailing labels, we want to insure that all of our mailing labels are consistent in style, both with names of donors and street addresses. 

City, State, and Zip (Postal Code) fields usually take care of themselves in FundRaiser, using the US Postal Code Lookup feature: i.e., entering the 5- or 9-digit US postal code will automatically (and consistently) fill in the corresponding City and State.  So far as the style used for the names on a mailing label, the Name Defaults section of the Options menu can help with that.  

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To Code or Not to Code


What is the question?  What should we code or not code?  And why?  In FundRaiser we have the option to use a lot of different types of codes, and sometimes, in a well-meaning effort to document as many aspects of our donors as possible, we end up duplicating our efforts and making things more confusing by creating unnecessary codes.  And what, exactly, ARE “unnecessary” codes?? 

 

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The Heat is On... C/S Upgrade Special

Cool car with large engine

It's scorching hot here in the Southwest (training office is in Arizona), and the monsoon rains just haven't been as heavy or as often as we'd like to cool things down or build the water table up.  This is the time of the year when many of us become lethargic and just don't want to do much more than sit and think.  And I was thinking of the impending deadline most all of our users have in the near future.  It's just around the corner:  the deadline for getting the best upgrade pricing for Client / Server.  And some folks may be wondering how much change this will make in their use of the program.  Most of us are used to routines in entering data, creating reports, sending thank you letters, and so on, and ANY change can be a bit intimidating.

How much will you need to re-learn once you've upgraded to the Client / Server version?NOTHING.

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Coding is a good thing...

When it comes to using codes in FundRaiser, MaineShare (this month's Case Study organization) has as good a handle on the process as any user, and better than most.  And they are using codes to their advantage in a rather intricate pattern of donations to keep everything straight in their records and aboveboard in their dealings with donors.

The whole idea of codes is that we can uniquely identify things with codes, and each code can represent something a lot larger than itself.  There are codes that are applied to the donor record and codes that are applied to each gift record.  So this means that we can uniquely identify both gifts and donors through codes.  The number of gift codes are limited, and many of them are pretty limited in their application, such as the gift Mode code, which represents a method of payment (cash, charge, check, inkind, etc.).  There isn't a lot of leeway in the use of this particular code field.  But then there is the Motivation code, to tell us WHY a person gave, the Fund code to tell us WHERE we put that money, and the Purpose code, to say HOW we are going to use that money (restricted or designated funds).  With Professional, there are a couple of extra gift codes, for even more ways to break out gift reports.

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Does it fit?

The past few years I’ve noticed that clothing just doesn’t fit the way it once did.  I’ve become less active (read “lazy”) and my physical mass has begun to shift around on my body.  I’ve always been an “off-the-rack” shopper, boringly average in run-of-the-mill sizes, until recently.  Last weekend, while having some tires replaced at one of our local malls, my wife and I were browsing the stores and happened on a great sale at one of the stores we rarely shop.  I followed her advice and tried on some jeans, and was pleasantly surprised to find some that fit perfectly, shifted mass and all.  I bought two pairs, at 20% of their original list price, feeling like a million bucks.

I got to thinking about this in relation to our latest product offering:  FundRaiser Spark.  One size doesn’t fit all in the world of software, and sometimes extra features impede the use of a product, rather than promoting it.  This can be especially true in software when the people using it are not necessarily computer “geeks”, like myself, and don’t have the time, inclination, etc., to fully explore all the functionality of a program.  And the reverse side of this coin is software that doesn’t do quite enough.

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Revolutionize your thinking about groupings

This month is the celebration of independence for the USA, and it seems appropriate to try revolutionizing your thinking about creating segments of your database, or Groupings, and, hopefully, turn an otherwise onerous task into one that gives you more freedom and choice. Groupings help you to pull out a sampling of people (or organizations) from your full database in order to treat them as a separate group. Why would you even want to do that? Well, the most common answer is to “target” an audience with a specific message from your organization, whether for an appeal letter, an invitation to an event, or a special “thank you” newsletter at the end of a particularly successful campaign.

Sometimes you may just want to see how many people fit certain criteria (how many people gave this year? Last year? How many gave more than X dollars all time? During the previous 24 months?). You may not even need to look at the records individually, but just need the number of records involved. You may want to take one of those groupings, and use the records in a report so that you can see their individual giving, or to list out their contact information, and so forth.

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How FundRaiser helps you take vacation

Today being the first day of summer brings to mind the smell of swimming pools and the feeling of camping out for me, good memories that I cherish. It is also vacation season for many of us. Taking a break from work is something that the founders of FundRaiser, Gene and Marcy Weinbeck, both valued highly and which is interwoven into the culture of our organization. Every month, the office is closed one day to honor a holiday. When there isn’t a ‘common’ holiday, we find one. That is not to give the impression that hard-work isn’t highly valued here, because it is. It just means that there is some wisdom woven into that work ethic that impacts what FundRaiser is more than you may realize. Just like we sometimes forget how important silence is to the overall beauty of music, time-off is sometimes seen as detracting from work, while it is in fact just the opposite.

Time off refreshes, re-energizes, and allows that willing spirit to revive. FundRaiser was created to make your work easier. We want you to work smarter and more efficiently, not longer. Everything piece of coding in FundRaiser has that aim, as does the special emphasis we give to high quality tech support and training. We make FundRaiser as intuitive as possible, but when you have trouble, please call for help. And then, in the time you save because you got some help, take a little time off

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Just a Spark...

I live in Arizona (not Missouri, where our home office is located) and sparks are not normally welcome at this time of year, due to dry conditions and fire hazards that, each year, cost millions of dollars in loss of habitat and homes. So when our CEO, Autumn Shirley, told me about a new product we’re releasing, called “Spark”, with a tag-line of “Start something big”, my first thoughts were of some rather large wildfires that we’ve had here in the West.Well, I came to grips with my regionalized knee-jerk reactions, and took a look at this new arrival, and now I see what all the hoopla is about.

Many FundRaiser users are with organizations that have modest database needs, and a tight budget. That is, after all, why we released FundRaiser Basic (www.fundraiserbasic.com), originally: to have an “entry-level” offering that would help small nonprofits grow to a level that allows them to step up to FundRaiser Select or Professional (www.fundraisersoftware.com) when Basic’s abilities are no longer enough. And it’s that same thinking that prompted us to a modular approach, allowing customers to start with Select, for instance, and add modules for functionality as needed (like Pledge, Membership, and Volunteer management modules).

Over the years, one of the problems we found with that approach was that the cost of even Select was too much more than that of Basic. It was just too big a step for growing organizations to make all at once. And, for some, even Select has more functionality than necessary, like too many codes, too many data fields, too many options, etc.

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The dance of change

Having been associated with FundRaiser (and its founder, Gene Weinbeck) for more than a quarter century is, frankly, rather difficult for me to consider without thinking of the myriad changes (personal and professional, local and international, physical and metaphysical) that have occurred during that time. Some reflections bring out nostalgic yearnings for a return to a simpler life, while others evoke a sense of gratitude that “it” isn’t what “it” used to be. Change, in itself, could care less about how I view what was, and change will continue regardless of what I think.

In the mid-80’s my brother asked me to come to Missouri to help with his business, where, he assured me, I’d get the chance to learn computers while earning “Ozark” wages. With not a little trepidation, I agreed, packed everything I owned, including my best pal, Harry S Trudog, into a VW microbus (remember those?) and drove from Louisiana to the sleepy south central Missouri town of West Plains. I quickly learned that “Ozark” wages consisted of $50.00 per week and a place to stay, and that my education in computers was to be in the form self-education, using a then-new IBM PC with both the MS-DOS and BASIC manuals, and a single software program called Lotus 1-2-3. And, while it seemed a rude awakening in one sense, I’ll be forever grateful to my brother for the introduction to my mentor, and friend, Gene Weinbeck, who not only taught me about computers, but also about what it means to care about other people, the value of supporting others’ endeavors, and the ability to adapt to change.

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Client/Server: A GeekSpeak Analogy

A couple of years ago I wrote an article about the differences between our Multi-User versions of FundRaiser and the Client/Server versions of FundRaiser.  And you may want to visit that article for a more technical explanation of things, but in this week's blog I'll attempt to give you the short version.

Client/Server versions can allow more than one person to use the program simultaneously, like Multi-User versions, but that's not their real purpose and strength.  Speed with safety is the real benefit to Client/Server versions, speeding up processes while insuring that no data becomes corrupt or lost.  Most "regular" versions of software are installed directly to the computer at hand, and that computer does all the work, so it's called a "stand alone" setup.  On networks of computers, it can be advantageous to have the program installed on a special computer called a Server, and allow other computers (Clients) to run the program over the network.

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Personally Speaking

This past weekend I volunteered to play guitar as a part of the Earth Day activities at Oracle State Park, where my wife, Nanette, volunteers on a regular basis.  The park is about to close for the summer, since the state is not providing funds any more, but a group has formed, called Friends of Oracle State Park, to coordinate volunteer efforts and raise monies to keep up the trails and structures and all that's required even for a small (4,000 acres) park.  I was happy to spend an hour doing something I love to help folks maintain what they (and my wife) love, and it's something I'd readily do again.  I must admit that, for someone who works almost solely with non-profits, I don't give of my time as much as some others, but, then again, I'm rarely asked.  This little glimpse of myself is offered in order to illustrate some uses for FundRaiser, of course.

From the little personal information in the previous paragraph, one could reasonably assign several category codes to my name record in their FundRaiser database.  Remember that category codes are used, for the most part, as non-gift-related aspects of a person's life.  This means that codes with descriptions such as "guitar player", or "music interest", or others, might be created and assigned, in order to have the ability at a later date to pull names of people with similar interests.  And, although it doesn't mean that I'll play at your event if asked, it does mean that you'll have the facts you need to pull a list of people you want to ask to volunteer services or talents when the time comes.

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Plans with Codes

Okay, so we know we should plan ahead: for events, for gift-thank-you letters, for change, forever.  But in order to make the best plans, we have to know how to use the tools at hand.  And one of the least understood “tools” of FundRaiser may be “Codes”.  There are many different codes; all different, all similar, most editable, some mandatory.  Is there an easy way to get a handle on them all? 

From my perspective, a code is nothing more than a “unique identifier”.  You might think of a code as a tag, a flag, an attribute, a descriptor, or any one of many nouns, but, in the end, a code is nothing more than a way to mark records in a special way so that you can easily gather together similar records.  

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Time Spent Learning Saves Time


I'm a guitar-player, former percussionist, and vocalist, and some folks would call me a musician, but I can’t honestly make that claim.  Although, as a teenager, I worked to pay for my drum lessons and learned rhythm notation, I never really learned to read or write music notation.  And in recent months I’ve been feeling the need to correct this 50-year oversight and finding that it isn’t so easy as it once seemed to be, and a lot of that difficulty is directly related to having picked up a lot of “bad habits” while teaching myself.

Many of our users have expressed a desire to learn but have difficulty taking time away from other important duties, but I'd like to encourage each of you to learn as much as you can about the program, even if it means taking a bit of time away from something else to do it.  In the long run, time spent early on learning the software will be regained many times over by avoiding simple time-wasting pitfalls later on.  Some of you might think, as I did about music notation, "well, I know just enough to do what I have to do, so I'll leave the rest for later”, not realizing how much easier your fund-raising life might be with just a bit more knowledge.

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Wait a minute, while we are rendering the calendar
In-Kind gifts new features password protection planned giving disaster relief personalizing letters online donations updates merge notes tech tip custom page announcements fundraising targeted mailings donor slip motivation code donor targeting customer service annual campaign appeal letters foundations building donor relationships membership programs email donor profile user spotlights volunteers Thank You Facebook End of Year Letters new version backing up data thank you letters operating systems correspondance features the Ask community supported gardens arts membership benefits reports publicity materials Reminders Crowdfunding Campaign new nonprofit letter mailing data analysis alumni happiness tribute gifts how-to videos support government grants understanding giving trends board members donor retention rate Facebook campaign small donations fundraising letters legacy giving donor relations technical support giving levels repeat donors donor source Company culture lapsed donor volunteering banquet annual maintenance plan ticketsales user interface donation history holiday training tip Personalizing donor loyalty role of nonprofits appeal corporate sponsors donor preferences New Year upgrade National Change of Address word processor donor attrition rate PayPal LYBUNTS on site training Reporting to IRS overview phoning donors passwords donor engagement Alternative Addresses endowment campaign relationship tracking holiday letters donor advised funds solicitors adding personal notes to letters change of address updating community arts nonprofits holiday giving add ons memorial giving SYBUNTS Groupings in honor of donations gift entry budget data conversion recurring gifts Codes pledges gift acceptance policy Donor Portal FundRaiser Spark tax summary letters transparency office #GivingTuesday anonymous donors giving history donor recognition membersip benefits look and feel operational costs new donors Importing Data follow up merge fields campaign management general new leadership increasing giving amounts event management moves management donor attrition letter templates segmenting donors case study online donations Task List spare fields how to handle auction gifts correspondence charity golf tournaments texting donors training development director capital campaign Tickles planning major gift prospects large donations welcome packet raffle major donors social media ticket sales grassroots campaign brick campaign security monthly giving vacation accounting software Cloud ROI grants campaign Snow Birds donor retention Volunteer module spreadsheets mission driven Excel data entry premiums prospects community broadcasting auction customer portal GivingTuesday salutation direct mail flash sales Thanksgiving donor contact information Constant Contact GoFundMe project product news donor motivation Network for Good Congratulations FundRaiser Basic Resiliency donor prospects NCOA processing FundRaiser Hosted upgrading donors animal rescue mode code communications advanced tab importing csv pictures entering auction gifts nonprofit fundraising gift notes field

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