Tech Tip: FundRaiser's Custom Page

This month’s case study, with WJIE’s Calvin Bader, mentions an under-used feature of FundRaiser Software, called the “Custom Page”, and this article will help familiarize you with it’s intended design and purpose. First of all, let me point out that, originally, the Custom Page was created in order to allow you to put all of the data fields YOU consider important to view at a single glance on a single page. This, as Calvin points out, prevents you from having to switch from tab to tab looking for the information you consider pertinent.  Calvin has taken it a step further, by using it as a single page into which WJIE volunteers can INPUT information, rather than simply viewing it, but this can have certain difficulties, as I will explain.

Let me start by pointing out that you can have any number of separate Custom Pages, and that you can easily switch from one to another at any time.  In the Multi-User versions of FundRaiser, one user could be using one page while another uses a completely different page.  This allows each person to view the information that is important for her/his purposes.

Custom Pages are created in the Options menu, under Custom Page > New, which, when selected, will switch your screen to a blank Custom Page tab, with the following window popping up:

This window pretty much says it all. In order to create a Custom Page, you will begin a process of locating the field or field label on some other tabbed page that you want to appear on the Custom Page, copying the item, and then arranging it on the Custom Page.  When you say “OK” to this window, it closes and you can then find the first item you want to copy. You’ll notice that, as your mouse pointer moves over an item, a label or field will take on a “highlight” to indicate that it can be copied. In some cases, such as the Giving History page, or the Category Code list, you may be highlighting multiple items (called a “table”). When you click on any highlighted item (or table), a small “COPY” window will appear, and when you click that, the item will be dropped onto the Custom Page. Before finding another item, you’ll want to go to the Custom Page and place the dropped item as near to where you want it as possible. You’ll repeat this process item-by-item until you have all the fields and labels and tables that you want to view.

As you do this, you’ll notice a “Properties” window that floats over all windows, and you can move it out of the way, as needed.  This window shows the properties for the most recently selected item you’ve dropped, and you will normally not need to make any adjustments in the window itself.  Notice, too, that each individual element, or item, that you place will have moveable “borders” that allow you to change the shape of the item, so that you can shorten or lengthen a field as needed, or make a table fit within a certain space, etc.
You can always edit a Custom Page, to add or delete items, or move them around, so just create a simple one at first, and progress as you become more comfortable with the process. When you are satisfied with your layout, use the “Save as” button to save your layout with a name of your choice. As with other names (groupings, letter templates, etc.), try to avoid special characters, using numbers and letters only (spaces and dashes are okay).

And now let me caution you about using the Custom Page for data input. It was not originally designed for that purpose, but it can be done, if you are very careful about one thing in particular:  Add and Save buttons are NOT CREATED EQUAL.  There are many different areas in FundRaiser, as you’ve noticed, and many of them have their own, unique, individual (get the idea?) add and save buttons. If you want to use the Custom Page to input information about a gift, for instance, then you’ll need to make certain you also place the GIFT page Add/Save buttons on the Custom Page. You can use the Properties window to change the “caption” from simply “add” or “save” to “Gift add” or “Gift save”, if you like, but the important thing is these buttons are not the same as the buttons used for Adding or Saving a Name in the Name Details section of the program.

If you have the Pledge Module, as WJIE does, and want to enter Pledge information on the Custom Page, then make sure you also copy the Pledge area’s Add/Save buttons. The same is true for other areas of the program, too, so the best rule of thumb is that, before you rely on your Custom Page for data input, you MAKE SURE to TEST the functionality so you don’t have unwelcome surprise results later on. Of course, if you are using the Custom Page strictly for viewing information, you’ll not need any Add or Save buttons, and you’ll have more room for data, too.

So, if you are tired of having to skip around the program to see what you consider to be important, Custom Pages can be your best friend, just make sure that you follow the few precautions outlined above, and let us know how you use your Custom Pages, so that we can continue to improve them. As always, if you have problems, or need some help, just call 800-543-4131 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Resources

WJIE

Case Study:Siloam Family Health Center

Why FundRaiser Professional?

This month’s case study of WLMB – TV40 illustrates not only the versatility that FundRaiser users can tap into, but also some of the features that can be found exclusively in FundRaiser Professional.  For many organizations, FundRaiser Select, with its “optional” module features, will fit the bill nicely, but if you really want the power of Campaign Management, or the flexibility of Rapid Gift Entry, then you’ll want to explore FundRaiser Professional more closely. 

WLMB- TV40 uses the Campaign Management features of Professional to give them more precise reporting on things such as ROI (Return On Investment), percentages of response (positive, negative, or none), and net income on particular events.  Of course, even with Select you can work out those figures on your own with a little bit of math and using reports limited to particular events, but FundRaiser Professional’s Campaign Management section allows you to set up your events individually, plugging in a total expense figure, and to track many aspects of each event, such as:

• Overall Response
• Attendance
• RSVP Responses and Reservation Counts
• Paid Ticket Counts
• Complimentary Ticket Counts
• Sponsorships

Special Summary and Detail reports allow various level of detail, from a campaign overview to detailed, event-by-event descriptions of gifts, pledges, and the above aspects, too.  If you want this detail without having to “do the math” yourself, then Campaign Management may be what you need.

Another Professional-only feature is the Rapid Gift Entry, which can be used with a check reading machine to really speed up data entry.  If your organization deals in a large number of small gifts, then data entry of those gifts can be labor-intensive, eating up those dollars by way of staff time.  With Rapid Gift Entry, the flow of gift entry is greatly improved, and with the addition of a check reader, it’s almost effortless.

Some of the features WLMB are using are available as optional “add-on” modules in FundRaiser Select, of course, including the Pledge module, and the Premiums module.  In FundRaiser, Pledges are considered to be “promises to pay a certain amount of money in increments over a given period of time”.  The program can not only record a Pledge, but it can generate a suggested payment schedule, which can be adjusted at any time, and will give you reporting capabilities on amounts paid, amounts due, current status, etc., making the whole process much less time-consuming.  Another thing this module helps automate is the correspondence associated with Pledges that are not a part of other types of gift-giving:  a “thank you” for having made a pledge; reminders that payments are coming due; reminders that payments are past due.

Premiums are almost unique to radio and television situations.  They are incentives offered for donors who give at a particular rate, usually.  So a donor at one level might receive a T-shirt or CD, for instance, while another donor giving at a much higher level may receive a book or DVD.  Offering Premiums for giving can increase the workload in other ways, too, such as keeping track of inventory and backorders, printing shipping labels, or recording when something is picked up and doesn’t need shipping.  FundRaiser helps with all of that, including the costs of items and their value to your donors.  It can even show those “benefit” amounts as not tax-deductible, which is very helpful for end-of-year statements.  You and your donors will know exactly where you stand.

• FundRaiser Professional includes all modules that are extra-cost items with FundRaiser Select, including:
• Memberships (expiration dates, “member since”, unique coding for types, benefits, etc.)
• Pledges (payment scheduling, reminders, overdues, status reporting, income projections)
• Tributes (“in honor/memory/celebration of” gifts, acknowledgements, listings, etc.)
• Volunteers (track projects/tasks, hours, value equivalencies, and more)
• Premiums (incentive items tracking, shipping labels, simplified inventory control)
• Product Sales (sales tax, inventory control, shipping/packing/backorder notices)
• Phonathon (for “real-time” information, challenges, etc.)

If you need more than a couple of these, or you just have to have Campaign Management or Rapid Gift Entry, then you’ll definitely want to look at FundRaiser Professional.  If  you already have FundRaiser Select, keep in mind that we give you credit for what you’ve paid to purchase Select, so you only pay the difference, not the whole price.  We can’t make it much more fair than that.

Resources

WLMB- TV40

Making your own “high touch” connections through FundRaiser

by Larry Weaver

In this month’s case study with Joe Emert of Life Radio Ministries, several of FundRaiser’s built-in convenience features are mentioned, and each of them illustrates how you can be personally involved with your donors and contacts while maintaining a high level of efficiency in your communications with them. Joe also points out how the staff here at FundRaiser tries to maintain the same sort of personal involvement with you, our users, and we certainly appreciate his kind words. So let me expand a bit on some of the areas Joe touched on, so that you might be more comfortable fitting them into your donor management strategies.

There are two different places in FundRaiser to record notes that you want to “merge” into letters as they are being printed (or emailed, for that matter). They both work in a similar manner, and it will depend on your style as to which you prefer to use.

Using the Notes Tab to add a personal P.S.

Joe uses the Notes tabs’ “Merge Text for Form Letters” area, and probably uses the check box that tells FundRaiser to erase the note once it has been used in a letter (so you don’t say the same thing in a subsequent letter).

This works by using the Word Processor function called “PSMergeNote” found on the “Functions - %” tab of the Merge Fields window when creating or editing a letter template. This can be placed in any position within the letter template you like, and can be preceded by a “P.S. :” or some other introductory phrase to set it apart from other text within the letter. The function is smart enough to NOT use any space if there isn’t a note in the letter recipient’s “Merge Text…” area, so you can place the note virtually anywhere without worrying about spacing differences. This note function will work for EITHER automated correspondence (primarily gift thank you letters) OR mass mailings.

Using the Gift Tab to add a P.S.

The other place you can record notes would be on a gift record, under the “Edit Notes” tab, in the box marked “Letter Notes for Merging”. Since it is tied directly to a gift, it is designed to be used only with gift thank you letters, and will not work effectively through Mass Mailings. Another difference is that the note can stay with the gift indefinitely. You never have to delete or erase the note, because only one thank you letter will be sent for that particular gift with that particular note. This, in my view, is an advantage over using the Notes tab section, since we will have a permanent record of the personal notes included in the letters sent. It works the same way, but uses a different Merge Function, found in the “Gifts – G” tab of the Merge Fields window, and is called, simply, “GiftNote”. You still have the option to use a prefix, like “P.S. :”, or another of your creation, and you have the option to have FundRaiser put in a blank line after the note, if you like. It won’t take up any space in a letter to someone who had no gift, similar to the PSMergeNote function.>

A little effort that goes a long way

Your donors realize that you need to be efficient in your communications, but they also realize that the personal note means you took the time to respond to them, individually. Just as Joe sees our staff as made up of people who care, these personal touches which can be added so easily by you, can make a big impact in giving your donors the same experience.

Grouping people with similar interests together for mailings

Joe also touches on an important aspect of any donor management software, and that is being able to group people together based on criteria that make sense for the purpose at hand, whether that’s sending appeal letters, invitations to events, or creating labels for newsletters or other pre-printed materials.

Gift-related information comes in through the gift recording process, and involves setting up codes that will readily identify gifts in unique ways. The main gift codes are as follows:

• Motivation Code: answers the question “Why did they give this particular gift?”
• Fund Code: answers the question “Where did we put that money?” (what bank account)
• Purpose Code: answers the question “How are we going to use the money?” (designated/restricted use)
• Solicitor Code: if a major donor or donation “Who is responsible for their having given this gift?”

Remember that there are no practical limits to the number of each of these codes that you can have on hand. You can be date-specific or not, depending on what’s comfortable for your style. You can always pull reports or groupings of people based on gift information, limiting by dates, codes, amounts, and so forth, so the information you put on gift records takes on significance beyond the mere numbers.

With people, there are several ways to code records. Some, like the Donor Type, Donor Source, and Donor Solicitor codes, are 1-to-1 relationships, meaning you can have one of each of these codes per name record (just as you can have only one of any code per gift record). Another type of code, the Category Codes, are much more flexible, in that they are a many-to-1 relationship. You can assign as many different category codes to a single name record as you need. Think of category codes as non-giving aspects of peoples’ lives, and you’ll realize you can show what people are interested in, their hobbies, their vocations, their association with your organization (board member, volunteer, etc.) or another organization. Virtually anything can be recorded as a category code.

You can also assign a category code EN MASSE to everyone in a grouping. This can be very helpful if you want to keep a permanent record of having sent a particular communication (letter or email) to a group of folks. Let’s say you create a grouping of people to whom you send a particular event invitation, and you want that to be recorded. Well, simply open that grouping of people, go to the Groupings menu, and select “Assign Category Code to All”. You’ll be prompted for a code, which you can create “on the fly”, and once you assign it, everyone in that grouping will have that category code. This means, no matter what the criteria used to create the original grouping, you’ll always be able to see who got that particular mailing. I like to code my letters in similar patters, with two letters for the type of letter, two characters for the year, and two characters for the month, so that my November 2011 Appeal Letter (the description of the code) would have a code of “AL1111”. Of course, your codes can vary to your own tastes.

As Joe points out so well, personal caring is the right thing to do, and it can increase your fundraising dollars, but it doesn’t have to interfere with your efficiency. Check out the videos in the customer portal on Coding & Spare Fields, Groupings, and Word Processing / Mail Merge, for more information on related topics.

Resources

Life Radio Ministries

Tracking your most important constituencies

by Larry Weaver

Keeping a handle on exactly what you need to know about donors and prospects, and staying consistent and complete with data entry will enable you to view and use your information in more ways.

The schools mentioned in Schools increase donations by focusing on their most generous donors use a lot of the features of FundRaiser in order to make their fundraising as efficient and effective as possible. Reading the article, you’ll see that they track people in ways that go beyond donor gifts. Of course, they also use gifts and gift coding effectively to see why, when, and how people give, and they place a great emphasis on accurate data entry.

Nearly all the things that these schools do within FundRaiser can be done using either Select, Professional or Online, but it requires a little bit of study to learn how best to do them.

Tracking specific constituencies

In order to focus on particular segments of your donors and prospects, plan on using non-gift-related codes to uniquely identify donors and prospects in ways that are meaningful to your organization.That’s all codes are, really: unique identifiers. They attach either to name or gift records, generally speaking. And the ones that attach to name records are found on the Codes tab of each name record. Donor Type, Source, and Solicitor codes are restricted to a single code per name record, but Category codes are a “many-to-one” type of code, in that you can assign as many of them per name record as you need. It makes them ideal to track most of the “constituencies” mentioned: Parents; Alumni; Churches. These are all non-giving aspects of the name records, and some may be more appropriate for organizations than individuals. And some name records will fall into multiple divisions or segments, which is exactly why Category codes work so well. Vocations, hobbies, interests, life situations, affiliations, and much more can be identified through Category codes.

Focusing in on specific donor groups

Groupings allow you to divide your donors/prospects for purposes of analysis and evaluation. Your interests may be along slightly different lines, but the idea is the same: identifying and viewing donors and prospects based on criteria that you choose. Groupings are simply gatherings of records that have one or more things in common with each other. That commonality might be based on gift codes, gift amounts, non-gift codes, information stored in spare fields, demographic information, or virtually any other information stored in the database. In order to get good results, of course, you need to be consistent in data entry and upkeep, but Groupings allow you to focus on one or more aspects of your data to pull people (and organizations) together so that you can run comparisons, evaluations, etc., to more fully understand your donors.

Keeping track of relationships

If you need to track relationships between donors/prospects, or need to store a lot of information in spare fields, then you may need FundRaiser Professional, as Menaul School uses, since it contains unlimited spare fields as well as the Relationships functions (along with all modules that would be optional in Select). If you’re currently using Select, remember that you can upgrade without having to re-purchase, because what you’ve paid for Select will be applied to the purchase of Professional.

Putting constituent tracking into effect yourself

You know what types of information are important to you, so it’s just a matter of determining how to record that data, recording it consistently and accurately, and then having the ability to pull the information out again for specific segments of your donors and prospects.The knowledge you need to put this into effect is waiting for you in video format through the Customer Portal. All the basics of the program are taught there, including Groupings, Coding & Spare Fields, Word Processing and Mail Merge, Reports, and several more subjects. And live training webinars are available on all “module-related” or “Professional-only” subjects, such as Tributes, Pledges, Campaign Management (Pro only), Relationships (Pro).

Use the videos and/or live webinars to get the training on how to use FundRaiser most effectively, and make sure that more than one person knows how it all works, if possible. And never hesitate to call with questions, for suggestions or help, or to offer us ideas on how we can make the program work better for your situation.

Resources

Alumni Tracking in FundRaiser Software by Larry Weaver

Bishop McDevitt School

The Mariemont School Foundation

Menaul School

Schools increase donations by focusing on their most generous donors