With the start of the new school season, my mind is on donor management for schools. One of the things I've learned most clearly from talking to school organizations about their successful donor management strategies is the key importance of knowing by constituent group who your most generous donors are. FundRaiser Software is created to help you do this as one of its core tasks. Organizations thrive who do it well, whether they are schools or another type of organization.
The three steps that make it easy to see your donations by constituent group start with the most basic donor management task.
1. Enter your donation amounts into your database
The first step to locating your most generous donors is easy. “It’s a simple matter of entering your checks into FundRaiser. Then all that information is there,” says Ellen Bouye, Administrative Assistant of Oklahoma Christian Academy and a FundRaiser Select user.
2. Code gift entries by constituent group
This is most easily done at the time you enter your checks, but you can go back and code older donations, too.
Troy Williamson, Director of Institutional Advancement at Menaul School has found that their most generous donors are parents. “Lately, we’ve been bringing small groups of them into the president’s office for coffee parties and telling them what needs to happen,” The parents are responding with increased donations.
Larry offers some tips in his blog for coding gift entries in a way that lets you focus in on donations by constituent group.
3. Regularly look at reports to identify most generous donor groups
Once you have entered and coded donations by constituent groups, you are ready to see the trends. Create reports that show the total amount given by separate groups and compare them. Do this on a monthly basis and you will get a clear grasp on who is giving, by group. Then follow up with personal contact.
Larry offers tips in his blog about reporting by constituent group.
Some schools have increased donations by coding alumni as to their graduating year. By doing so they discovered that some years are more generous. For instance, Menaul School has discovered that the most generous alumni class years are from the 1940’s – 1960’s. Bishop McDevitt School has discovered that their most generous alumni are from the 1960’s – 1970’s.
Learn more about how FundRaiser can help your school increase donations
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