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.
Managing your donor database is not the favorite part of your job, most likely, just as writing down notes was never as much fun as playing them, for me. But now I find it difficult to share what I've written, musically, with anyone else, because I failed to learn those basic skills early on in my musical life. And just like me, all those years ago, you have a choice about your education in this area, now, today. There are videos in the Customer Portal section of our website you can watch at your leisure. There are “live” sessions you can attend (which require training credits) that are regularly scheduled. There is a Help section in the program with a large “How-To” section of instructions you can print and/or read for information.
Give yourself a chance to excel by getting more education. We’ve all heard it. Many of you have degrees that show you believed in that idea at some point. And it is applicable to learning software to help you accomplish your goals, including (but not limited to) fund raising and donor management. And, just as early education helps throughout life, early training in FundRaiser Software helps, not only in using the software to the fullest advantage to you, but in reducing time, energy, frustration, etc., spent in managing your donor database. If you want it to be easier, you have to take the time to get the training, whatever form works best for you.