In June, I tried my hand at my first fundraising campaign. I started with a basic mailing to loyal donors. You can read about my beginning efforts in my blog post here.
After I sent the letters out, I didn’t have to wait long before our first donations came in. Loyal donors replied rapidly, and it was great fun to open the envelopes and see their notes and checks.
Having read so many times the advice, “Thank before you bank,” I quickly wrote thank you letters, and entered the donations into FundRaiser. What I didn’t do, was make a careful note of which donors I’d thanked. As the replies continued to come in, I began to understand why people like to handle their thank you letters through FundRaiser. Before long, I wasn’t absolutely certain if I’d sent a thank you to every donor. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful by missing one but I also didn’t want to look disorganized by sending a second note! I realize now, that I need to establish a clear routine for entering the donations into FundRaiser and then printing out labels for the thank you notes from the list that is automatically generated by FundRaiser. That way I can still hand write the thank you’s, and also be certain that every donor receives a response.
After the first rush of responses, things slowed down. It was in this period that I remembered another basic fact about fundraising. I’m embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t set an actual dollar amount for our campaign goal!
A few emails to other members of the organization established what had been raised last year, and how much of that had gone towards putting on the event I was fundraising for (an ecological gathering called OACC). With that information, I set a goal and added up what we’d raised so far. We had not yet raised enough!
A quick grouping in FundRaiser gave me a list of donors who had given last year but not yet this year. Calls to these donors gave us what we needed. With this success, I pulled a list of donors who had given two years ago and not yet this year. Although calls to the donors on this list didn’t receive as a big a response, we did receive one more donation. As a result of the calls, we went over our campaign goal!
The ease of pulling the call lists was amazing, and far easier than when the data had been spread over several spreadsheets. It was a matter of just a few minutes to pull the lists and pass them along to another member of the fundraising committee for her to make the calls. Also comparing the amount we raised from donors who gave last year and those who haven’t given in two years, it is clear how important it is to follow up quickly with lapsed donors. FundRaiser made this so easy to see.
With the success of the basic campaign, our fundraising committee is eager to continue with outreach. We expect to be able to increase attendance at the event, itself. We'll set a goal and start work on it soon.
We’ll be using Fundraiser to help us keep track of a few details regarding our outreach, and I’ll keep you posted on how that goes!
To learn more about using donor management software
Take a look at this short overview of how FundRaiser Software helps with your fundraising activities