FundRaiser Blog

No matter which version of FundRaiser (Spark, Select, or Professional) you use, there are features that can help you track events.  While Professional has a Campaign Management component, it's not necessary for simple tracking, as I'll explain.  Using gift- and name record-based codes, along with TIckles, you can keep a better handle on planning of events, as well as their results.

For years I've been letting users know that Category codes are a perfect way to show non-giving aspects of peoples' lives.  I've said "non-giving" because gift records have their own coding aspects, as we'll see next.  You can create 6-character codes, with longer descriptions.  The codes are alpha-numeric, so 10 numbers and 26 letters can be used, as well as the underscore ( _ ), giving us (I did the math) over 2.5 BILLION possible codes.  According to various sources, that's about the number of heartbeats one can expect during one's lifetime, so no one will ever run out of code possibilities.  So, how can we use these for tracking events?  Codes are unique identifiers.  Need to know who is on a particular event planning committee?  Code them.  Need to print that list with phone numbers?  Create a Grouping and use the Master Report.  Need to know what codes are already in use?  Print the Code Listing report, selecting just category codes, including the inactive ones.  Are you getting the gist?  

Menaul School has turned its fundraising downslide around. They've worked as a team to do it, combining in-person fundraising with strategic changes to what they record in their donor database and backed up by meticulous data entry. Each of these jobs is accomplished primarily by a different person, who excels at it. The data entry work is entrusted to a special volunteer.

Through steadfast attention to detail, volunteer Jim Hodges makes sure that correspondence goes out in a timely fashion and accurate data is in place when reports are needed for evaluation and planning.

With FundRaiser's Volunteer module (available in Select, standard in Professional), you can better track several aspects of your volunteer base, which will allow you to better utilize their talents.My wife, Nanette, volunteers as a "site steward" for a local non-profit that visits archeological sites in the area and records new disturbances from pot hunters, among other things.  She is quite passionate about her involvement, but, at first, after having taken some initial training, it seemed she was on her own to figure out what she should be doing, and where, and with whom, and when, and on and on.  Later she discovered she was not alone, and that there were other volunteers who had languished with no direction provided by the organizers, and no real records of who was assigned to what regions.  So she set out to correct some of that by organizing some of the information available.  After all, volunteers do so because they want to help, not because they want to be called "volunteer".

Once you have a volunteer, make certain you develop that relationship in a positive way, by, first of all, thanking them for taking the time and effort to volunteer, and, secondly, to thank them every time they volunteer their time to your cause.  

This has been quite a week for disastrous and heartbreaking events in the news-- first the Boston Marathon bombing, then the explosion of the chemical plant in Waco, Texas. How does your nonprofit organization handle these kinds of events in your social media outreach?

You might have planned to make a post about some event or topic that seems out of step with the reactions that flood the newsfeeds when such well-publicized tragedies occur. Do you stay the course and make the post? Do you pause the post? Do you make a brief comment of condolence, or use the opportunity to offer some help if the crisis relates to your mission?Some FundRaiser users quickly went into action with posts related to their mission. Here's how a few of them handled it:

Most folks want guidelines that will help them get their work accomplished with a minimum of drudgery, mistakes, backtracking, etc., and an established work flow will help with that.  Entering gifts and name data after a fundraising event is mostly what is done within donor management software, and should be a regularly scheduled task.  The frequency of the task, whether daily or weekly, will depend on the volume of gifts, of course, but it should be a part of the office routine.  If written down as a task outline, it will help when the person who normally does the data entry is out sick, or is promoted to another position, or is otherwise taken out of the data entry picture.  The person who takes over will appreciate having those steps in logical order, with hints, tips, and tricks in their appropriate places along the way.

Having the steps laid out in a logical order is important, and the first thing that will need to be in place, even before any gift entry occurs, is a thank you letter template.  You may need several templates available, if you have different sources of giving, or different events happening during the same time period, but the main point is that you must have your letter templates in place BEFORE you begin the gift entry process.  Remember that you will be associating a letter template with each gift as you enter them, so, rather than having to go back and change a lot of gifts later, just have the letter template(s) ready to go.

It's been used to describe the design process, retail service and repair businesses, and it's just as true for data conversion.  You can have it cheap, fast, and good, but not all at the same time.  Most of the time, you can only pick two.  And that's really a part of the decision-making when it comes to how you want to convert your data from an old system into FundRaiser.  

The rare exception to the "pick two" logic is when a current FundRaiser user is moving up to another FundRaiser product, like from Basic to Spark or Select, or from Spark/Select to Professional.  In these cases, you get all three:  cheap, fast, and good, because the products have all been developed by the same teams, and there are no hidden stumbling blocks to worry about.  In these cases, there are special import features and functions in the File menu to facilitate bringing in old data to the new system, without a lot of hassle, but with quite a few choices as to how to treat the incoming data.  

Part 3 How to move data In part 1, we talked about the reasons you might need to move your data.In part 2, we showed how you can evaluate how easily your data move will be.

Now, let's look at the nuts and bolts of actually moving data.

Part 2 How easy will moving my data be? In part 1 last week, we talked about the reasons you might need to move your data. Now, you probably want to know how easy that move might be. The answer may decide whether you do the work yourself, or decide to go with professional data conversion.

Moving data from one program to another may be amazingly simple or extremely complex. If you are considering such a move, the answers to the following 4 questions will reveal to you just what the case will be for your organization and data situation:

When considering data conversion from an old system into FundRaiser, there are opportunites to re-think your use of the data you store, and even what data are relevant to your fundraising efforts.  If you take some time to learn more about how FundRaiser stores and uses information, for instance, you'll have a better understanding of how your data can best be "ported" over to the new system.  For this reason, I recommend taking the time for training, even before initiating conversion processes.

The FundRaiser Overview class is available in both video form and as a live webinar which does not count against training credits.  While most live classes require one credit per class (no matter the number of attendees you have for that class), the Overview can be attended multiple times, if needed, at no cost of credits.  The Overview serves multiple purposes, in that you learn some simple data entry (entring name and gift information), as well as the general layout of the program, and some of the broader points regarding codes as they are used in FundRaiser.  Another purpose of the Overview class is to give you a better idea of which other classes you may want to attend (or view, in the case of the videos).  There is no "set" order for viewing, so it becomes a matter of what your priorites are, and what you feel you need to learn, and when.

In a survey of FundRaiser users, 50 percent of respondents have moved data from one donor-management software program to another. Of that 50 percent, most have moved data more than once.

The most common reasons for moving data are:

The Ignatian Volunteer Corps was facing a donor data tragedy. Their data was in a custom program which was no longer updateable. “We couldn’t upgrade or get support, so we started looking for a new and improved system,” says Tamara Zavislan, Director of Development.New software meant that  she was going to have to move all her data out of the old program and into the new... often a painful and difficult process, like moving into a new house. For IVC, preserving all donor data was a high priority, and she knew that wasn’t going to be easy. “We had 4,000 records. With import tools, we couldn’t have saved the gift history. We would have had to enter it all by hand. In the past, we’d had experience with volunteers moving data by hand, and that hadn’t worked well,” says Tamara. “That’s why we decided to go with the professional data conversion.

Tamara had previous, unpleasant, experience with professional data conversion and this time around she was determined for it to go better. She succeeded, finding three things, in particular, that helped make the move go well.

FundRaiser Professional and Select (with the optional Premium Module) have the ability to track your inventory of gift premiums, print labels and packing lists for shipping them, record the cost and value of the premiums, and showing the net value of a gift that involves a premium.  I wrote an article several years ago that covers that module (find it here) in detail, and it's still pertinent today.  This blog, however, is not to tell you how to do it, but to get you to thinking about whether or not you want or need to consider giving away items to donors.

First of all, as pointed out in the case study this week in Sasha's blog, giving away premiums for donations, no matter the amount of the donation or cost of the premium, will take money away from the primary mission, and has to be weighed against the amount of additional donations those premiums will generate.  In the case of a public TV or Radio station, the public has many choices, generally, in what they can tune in on their sets.  Often the same sort of broadcasting will be done by multiple stations, so the competition for donations can be stiffer than it might be for other types of non-profit organizations.  Are you under the same sort of pressure for donor dollars, with other similar organizations in your area of influence?  If so, premiums may help.

Like many public radio stations, WBJC-FM uses premiums to encourage people to make donations. Also like many organizations, they are ambivalent about using premiums.Yvonne Allen, Membership Director for WBJC-FM,  states the dilemma clearly: "public radio stations are trying to get away from premiums because they cost money and stations need that money for operating costs," she says. "But we get a lot of contributions and without premiums, I think we wouldn’t get as many."

WBJC-FM has been running a success premiums program for years, and has just  finished another successful fund drive that used 'thank you gifts' to help boost response. They have found that there are 5 key factors to creating a good balance between the costs of the premiums and the incentive they provide to donors. Yvonne shares  those tips here. WBJC-FM is an all classical, user supported station. They use FundRaiser Professional to help manage many details related to their premiums program. 

Keeping your data safe from others is easy in FundRaiser.  Files are automatically encrypted so that only those who run the program can see the contents, and you can strengthen that encryption further in the Options section.  Usernames and passwords can be established to prevent unauthorized people from running the program.  Authorized users can be limited in their access to the program to prevent accidental misuse (i.e.,  loss or change of data).  Keeping your data safe from a computer crash is almost as easy, since you can make backups directly from the File menu in FundRaiser.  Keeping up to date with backups can be another issue altogether, however.

The biggest problem with making backups, for me, is remembering to make them.  In FundRaiser Select and Professional, the Staff Tickle feature will help with this.  If you have FundRaiser Spark (no tickles), you'll need to use your appointment calendar system (like within MS-Outlook) or some other program to remind you to do your backup.  To set a "tickle" (named that way because it's designed to "tickle your memory" that something needs attention), simply go to the Windows menu within FundRaiser, then to the Staff Tickler choice.  Inside that window, click on ADD, and give the tickle a name, like "BACKUP DATA".  Then put a "DO" date on it.  If you want to backup weekly, then make it Friday's date.  You'll be incrementing this each time you make a backup, by the way.  If you plan to backup every day, then you might want a separate tickle for each day of the week (titled "Monday Backup", "Tues...", etc.).  You can have as many as you need, but the point is to be reminded when you need to go make a backup.  When the backup is complete, set the "DO" date on the Tickle for the next time you'll need to back up data, and that's it.

Yesterday morning (Thursday, 2.21.13) was one of those unusual scenes in Southern Arizona (location of the training office), with 6 inches or so of snow on the gound at our 4300 foot elevation.  Even low-lying areas, like Tucson and Phoenix, got a bit of the white stuff.  A pretty day, and I, with no scheduled classes or pre-sale tours, was getting ready to work on my latest video project for FundRaiser Software:  task-oriented training videos.  I've been working on them for a while now, with the expectation of debuting in a month or so.  Task-oriented videos will show you the basics of, say, putting out a mass mailing, or sending out thank you letters, or creating a grouping of all your donors, or simply entering a new name record.  And then my video computer crashed.  And I found myself in the position of not having practiced what I preach.

I've expounded before on the necessity of keeping backups of data, both as insurance against computer failure as well as fail-safe when about to try something new in FundRaiser, like mass deletions, duplicate merging, or importing data.  My secondary work computer, the one used to create all the training videos, crashed hard, and no amount of cajoling, tinkering, recovery disk techniques, nor swearing at it was able to bring it back to life without losing all the data on the hard drive.  That's right:  ALL the data.  Training scripts, old videos, new videos, graphics for openings and closings, music, and all the programs used to create them... simply gone.  And the worst part of it all is that I had no backups, even though I preach the importance of them to all our users.

Looking for new donors is vital to any organization that depends on donations. Could you be overlooking some of your best potential donors? If your aren't asking the people who have benefited from the paid services that your organization offers, then you are missing a great source of donations. For instance:

These people who have already shown that they value your organization offer fundraisers the equivalent of low-hanging fruit, says Laurie Anderson Mann, of DramaBiz.

According to the US Census Bureau, over 10% of the population will move during the year, and while this figure has been much higher in the past, it still represents a significant number of changes that will, most likely, occur in your donor database as well.  If you rely on your donors to inform you of their address changes, you will no doubt lose contact with many of them.  There are a few ways to take positive action on your own to keep in touch and retain donors who move without notice, however.  These include:  3 features available in FundRaiser Spark, Select, and Professional; 1 additional feature available in Select and Professional; and 1 other feature exclusive to Professional.

In this modern age of electronic communication, email addresses can prove to be more stable than physical addresses.  Consider, even if you don't regularly email, that you could use email to ask donors to verify current mailing address information.  If you've identified bad mailing addresses, either through the postal service or some other means, and you have email addresses recorded, it can be a cost-effective way to obtain those new physical addresses.  More and more donors are accepting a "green" solution for thank you letters, too, and it's certainly less expensive to send email than to send hard-copy letter these days.  Email capability is built into Spark, Select, and Professional.

Did you start a capital campaign and have to allow it to lapse before it finished? You are not the only one. Many nonprofits have had this happen-- maybe because of the economy, or unexpected changes within an organization.Just because you let a campaign lapse, doesn't mean you have to abandon it forever. You can revive a lapsed capital campaign, and your donor database can help. By keeping your contacts current, you will have the records there to start up again when you are able.

As the training manager here at FundRaiser Software, I often hear phrases similar to this from users who have inherited the responsibility of maintaining and utilizing an existing database in FundRaiser.  The challenges that present themselves in this situation range from learning what has already been done, and how it's been done, to making changes that will make it easier to do what is needed without having to start from square one.  To my mind, it's rather akin to buying a home, as I did just last month, and discovering that, while the structure is sound, and most everything is functional, there are a lot of small (and not-so-small) improvements to be made before it will be truly comfortable.

The "state in which" we find the situation, whether database or "new" house, is not very often the "as desired" situation we would prefer, so how do we go about changing that?  There are different approaches, of course, and some people will jump right in and work with what exists while being on the lookout for ways to improve.  Other folks will take the road of thorough examination, planning, and restructuring before trying to do anything more than the basics.  At our house, it was a matter of necessity to move in, work with what we had, and, step by step, identify and change those things that we can, as we can afford the time, expense, and effort.  And, even though we love our house, I'm sure we'll be doing this for a long time.  Here are some steps that may help when trying to figure out the current state of affairs and a path to the desired outcomes for your FundRaiser database.  Keep in mind that you will, most likely, be constantly finding new ways to use the database and "tweaking" the way you currently use it to make it easier, better, etc.

When you think about the things that you are proud of achieving in your organization last year, what do they include? Take a moment to ponder before you read on.

After the start of the New Year, one of the things I enjoyed most was hearing from some of our customers about the things they were proud of having achieved in 2012. That got me thinking how good it feels to achieve something and to hear how people you care about have done so, too. Then I started wondering what staff members here at FundRaiser are proud of achieving.The answers cover a lot of territory. Two things they have in common though; every achievement required learning new things; and people felt good about whatever they had done.  Feeling good ('subjective well-being') has been substantially linked to better health, so it stands to reason that when you learn something new, or want to generally strengthen the health and morale at your organization, a powerful way to achieve that is to give yourself and staff the opportunity to stretch and learn.