Meta Peace Team are happy to be working with FundRaiser Software again. Last year, they decided to give another donor database a try. “We attempted to move to Network for Good. It was a frustrating experience. As the process unfolded, I thought, ‘maybe we shouldn’t have done this,’ says Melody Arnst, Administrative Assistant, who does the donor database work at the organization.
“The decision to move to Network for Good was made just as I was coming on board a year and a half ago. It appeared when we first went into Network for Good, that it would be easy to use. In some ways it was, and it really looked good. But when we started the transfer from FundRaiser to the new platform, another side appeared,” says Melody.
Melody says her specialty is diving in and figuring out how to make things work better, primarily in the office. “That’s why I am working in the database. Things need to work and be streamlined there,” says Melody.
The first issues showed up with Melody tried to get some help. “Network for Good’s support systems left a lot to be desired. It was a recurring problem. Every time I was trying to learn something, they referred me back to a video. I took their classes and it didn’t get into the nitty-gritty of how to work with the database and use it to do what I wanted,” says Melody.
“Trying to get someone to really truly help was almost impossible. I said, ‘I’ve watched the video, and it isn’t clear with what is going on. I need someone to walk me through it,’ but no one was available for that,” says Melody.
The final straw came when Melody began to prepare for a big mailing. “We found out that all our members marked as deceased or inactive in FundRaiser had been imported into Network for Good as active. I was extremely unhappy. Their technical support said they could create a field for deceased and inactive… but I was going to have to get the information out the previous database myself in order to use the field they were going to create. If I hadn’t still had the old installation of FundRaiser, I’d have been in trouble,” says Melody.
As a result of this experience, Melody started looking back at FundRaiser and saw that Meta Peace Team could do what they wanted with it. “I am not an expert and have a ton to learn. I began working at the organization when this change had already started. I wasn’t previously familiar with FundRaiser, but as I started looking back at FundRaiser, I kept finding that it could do what we needed. I was saying, ‘yes, it can do this… and it can also do this. It can do the things that we moved to Network for Good to do.’ So, we started making the change back to FundRaiser. Now we are using even more of the FundRaiser capabilities.”
Working now in FundRaiser, Melody says, “There is so much in FundRaiser that we haven’t tapped in to. I’m trying to learn that information now. We’ve taken a couple of the classes, and I plan to start taking some of the virtual classes on the donor portal.”
“FundRaiser Support has been so great to work with. Having great support to call on is amazing. Recently, I was trying to sort my data in FundRaiser. I called FundRaiser Technical. I thought it was going to be complicated, but they said, ‘oh you just click here and then do this’… They explained the whole thing. I actually was told how to do it by a person and not told to go to a video,” says Melody.
Your nonprofit can participate in #GivingTuesday, even if you don’t have much time. Cindy Hassil, Development Director of Ijams Nature Center, quickly created a campaign even in the midst of other year-end fundraising plans. Using resources she adapted from the Giving Tuesday website and some new and existing photos of the nature center, she created a personalized effort that raised awareness and brought in additional funds and new donors.
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“The Giving Tuesday website has almost everything you’ll need to create your own campaign, from various logos and images to sample news releases and a planning calendar,” Cindy said. “We used our website, weekly e-newsletter, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to let people know about our campaign, and used graphics I created in Publisher by adding the Giving Tuesday heart image and several hashtags to photos. You don’t have to have graphic design software; you could use PowerPoint or just keep it simple by using hashtags with your own photos and the images you download from the Giving Tuesday website.”
#GivingTuesday is a day to give money, time, goods or your voice to help a nonprofit, so part of the Ijams campaign was to get people thinking of ways they could volunteer. Cindy took an UNselfie sign available on the #GivingTuesday website, personalized it and asked “What will you do?” She also asked Elizabeth Newman, Ijams Development Assistant, to create her own UNselfie for something she planned to do as part of #GivingTuesday.
One of Ijams’ donors had told Cindy and Elizabeth about an old TV he saw on one of the trails, so Elizabeth wanted to clean up that trail. They recruited the donor and another Ijams member to help them tackle the TV and other trash they found under it during their lunch break, posted photos of what they did on social media to emphasize the volunteer aspect of #GivingTuesday. After #GivingTuesday, Cindy also posted a photo of several staff members holding the #GivingTuesday heart to thank everyone who participated.
Ijams raised a little more than $6,000 on #GivingTuesday. Of that, $1,000 came in from many smaller donations, plus a large single donation of $5,000, which the donor already had committed to Ijams but didn’t say the gift would be made on #GivingTuesday.
“If I had known our donor planned to make that gift on #GivingTuesday, I would have asked if we could use it as a dollar-for-dollar match to encourage others to give,” Cindy said. She said she hopes to find a potential donor to be able to employ this approach on #GivingTuesday 2018.
One of the benefits of #GivingTuesday is that it helps bring your nonprofit to the attention of new donors, who might become regular supporters. Ijams’ campaign was shared on employees’ personal social media accounts, supporters shared the Ijams posts and several people created their own personal fundraising posts for Ijams. One person who became a member that day told Cindy that she couldn’t believe she had never donated to Ijams before.
Cindy said all the donors who contributed to Ijams on #GivingTuesday and their gifts were recorded in FundRaiser. This not only allows Ijams to personally thank these donors but also reach out to them during future fundraising campaigns, and the staff can pull reports to compare future #GivingTuesday efforts and calculate ROI.
Overall, Cindy said campaign was worth the effort. “The financial amount Ijams raised was relatively small when you subtract the $5,000 gift we knew was coming, and it happened at a very busy time, so I put the campaign together very quickly and didn’t do any real analysis. However, for a first-time campaign, Ijams was able to promote its nonprofit status using a new outlet that already was recognized by the public, and it encouraged new donors to support Ijams. The Ijams #GivingTuesday campaign was originally designed to be a community outreach/communications tool, and it raised some money, so it was a win-win for Ijams.”
Figge Art Museum website
Moving donors up the giving ladder was the goal foremost in Raelene Pullen’s mind as Development Director at Figge Art Museum. The Figge Art Museum actively serves the public by making real its mission of bringing art and people together. Like many fundraisers, she has a small staff and limited budget, so she needs to use resources wisely. To help her decide how to best do that, she turned to the donor database for information … and at first found the data she needed wasn’t there.
FundRaiser Professional was the database already in use at the Figge Art Museum when she arrived. “The previous development team didn’t use the software in a very dynamic way. I’d have a question and refer to the software. The answers weren’t there. So I had to ask myself why that was. Is this software not good? The software can only return information based on what was input,” says Raelene about her first experiences with the donor database.
Instead of giving up on FundRaiser, she sat down to figure out what information she needed and if FundRaiser could do the job. She went through each of the technical trainings offered by FundRaiser Training and spoke to FundRaiser Technical Support. When properly implemented, FundRaiser was able to provide almost all she needed. “Since then, we’ve revitalized and revamped the coding and campaign management processes. Now we are able to benchmark and track the differences in response for appeals, museum events, gifts, and engagement and have data over a number of years.”
“One of the most important things I’ve learned through this work and using FundRaiser is the need for data organization and entry. We use the coding in FundRaiser in a way that allows us to communicate with donors in a dynamic way. We have clarified what kind of information we need to record and maintain so when we need it, we have the information we need. Our intention has been to use highly specific information to target and move donors up the giving ladder,” says Raelene.
Moving Donors Up the Giving Ladder
Raelene is very deliberate about the steps she takes to move donors up the giving ladder. “We start with engaging people to attend museum events, then join and become members of the museum. Then we move them towards supporting programs and initiatives and hopefully on to sponsoring exhibitions and the endowment. This is exciting—members and donors can each support the museum in a way that truly matches their interests and involvement in the museum and community,” she says.
Amy Martens, Membership Manager at Figge Art Museum, and the other staff member who works in FundRaiser, is closely attuned to helping members make a bigger commitment to the museum. “After they’ve been members for a year or so we work at involving them more as donors. One of the ways that we use FundRaiser to move donors up is with data we merge into the membership letter. Now, we add a paragraph, “You are so close to the next level. Just give a little more and you will be there,” says Amy.
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| Amy Martens and Raelene Pullen at Figge Gala Event |
Using Data At Every Stage of a Campaign
The development team at Figge rely on their data to increase donations at every stage of their event work. “Data is really important in the planning of events and campaigns. We use data to help us know where our donors’ interest lie; to which events they have shown an interest; and to which people they are connected.
“The goal is to be able to speak to every donor as an individual and based on their relationship with the Figge Art Museum. We may target some with calling campaigns or letter campaigns or invitations to specific events.
“After an event, we use FundRaiser in a dynamic way to analyze and track people’s attendance at our events. We’ve done that through coding, reporting and the campaign module. It helps us stay engaged with donors who have been invited to an event.”
Small Events are Ideal
Raelene has focused in on small events as an ideal way to increase donations. “We do many small events in the homes of our donors. That allows us to explain one-on-one the importance and impact of our programs.”
Raelene uses the data in to create a harmonious list of invitees. “Let’s say a donor has a relationship with other donors and a trustee. We code those relationships. We then set up an event at the donor’s home and invite other donors that they are connected to. The trustee that they know attends and connects with everyone there,” says Raelene.
One of the key ways that FundRaiser has helped has been to make sure that no donor gets lost to appropriate follow-up. “If someone we invited isn’t able to attend, we can see that. Then we can follow up and invite them again. This means we don’t lose touch with people if they can’t attend that particular event,” says Raelene.
Evaluating ROI of Events
FundRaiser is also important in evaluating ROI (Return On Investment) of an event. “After an event, we are interested to see the relationship between donations received by the Museum and the donor’s attendance at recent events. How do the donations that come in from those prospects compare to the ones that come from people who haven’t attended? This makes visible the impact of the event and that way of cultivating these relationships. We have a unique report that we run to see people who attended those parties. Did the gifts come in at the event, after the event, or at another event? We run that report weekly to analyze those results.” As a result of her work, Raelene has discovered some key truths about giving that have helped her make good development decisions:
- People give when they want to give, and on their own schedule.
- The most important thing about an event is sharing time with our donors.
People give when they want to give
“We can ask the donor on our schedule but they will give when they want. They may be inspired to give during the annual fund drive if the timing of that drive is right. But, if they attend an event, even if they don’t give, that attendance has an impact on their understanding and support for our mission,” says Raelene.
“We learned that we can’t have an event and expect it is the right time for a donor to give. That’s not the trend of the donor, that’s our schedule. But when we make a connection that has an impact, we definitely show a correlation between size of gift in previous years before they had the relationship and contact, and the size of the gift after they have that contact and education," says Raelene.
Connection Between Outreach and Size of Donations
Although donors may not give at the time of the event, the event does have an important and positive impact on giving. “There is a direct correlation between the understanding a donor has for our programs and service to the community as a result of attending an event, and their support for the Figge. The event educates, informs and helps them to understand the important part they play as supporters, both internally at the museum and externally in the community. You expect people will know this, but they don’t if they don’t hear it from us. We don’t have the marketing budget to advertise our programs in the community, so these supporters that we educate are an important link in the communication chain. It’s important to tell people so they can tell others. Without that special time with our donors that sort of network is impossible,” says Raelene.
Campaign Management
The Campaign management module has been important to the work that Raelene and Amy are doing. “Since we really started implementing the campaign management module last fall, it has gone really well. We’ve been able to track well in it,” says Amy. “I enjoy working in it. It’s always fun when you have an event going on and you are playing in the campaign part. It is fun to look back and people do donate to that campaign and you can see right there how much is attached to them, where they are from, the demographic of that campaign in particular. I can select the event and can later see the ROI of a particular letter,” says Amy.
A helpful tip from Amy for using the campaign management module at an event is this: “When we have events, we print out everyone who has free tickets vs. paid tickets; and who says they are coming vs. who needs to pay still. It’s been very helpful. The first event I ever helped with at Figge, I did without it. It was a member event and I was still new, and I just printed an entire list of every member we had and didn’t know who was coming or not -- it was a mess, but I was also new. With this it is a whole lot easier.”
Making Decisions to Change Traditions
FundRaiser helps in figuring out the ROI of an event, says Raelene. “The data we use from FundRaiser was helpful when we considered changing the dates and duration of our annual fund drive. We’ve used the data to analyze that and help make a decision on the timing. It’s very helpful to know there’s a reason why we do things the way we do it. We are able to be more efficient.”
New to a database
From her experience, Raelene encourages others who inherit a database and aren’t sure if it is a good fit, to spend some time learning and talking to Technical Support. “Sometimes, coming in to a new situation, people might want to get new software. I remember feeling that it may be easier to start fresh than stick with the existing system. I learned that how my predecessors used the system was important. I took the time to learn about the software and how it could serve our needs, then made processes for my team to enter data in a way that the software could work to help us achieve our goals. Someone like me, just starting with FundRaiser, or who is inheriting a system that has been used before they came, will need to put time into it to get out what they want,” says Raelene.
Outstanding Technical Support
You don’t have to go through the process alone. Raelene and Amy have accessed FundRaiser Technical Support whenever they needed to. At first it was to learn, and then to get help in achieving with FundRaiser the tasks that were important to their data needs. Says Raelene, “If there is something important to your organization and you don’t know how to do it in the system, call Tech Support. Not only does it help us as the user to see new and innovative and creative ways to do things. It also helps Tech Support to understand us as users and our needs. That creates an opportunity for the developers to evolve the software. That relationship helps us both to get better.”
One way that Raelene has used Technical Support to achieve the museum’s fundraising goals is in clarifying how to track unusual donation situations. “Obviously, taht will automatically set up to cover every possible event of every organization. For instance, recently the FundRaiser team sat down with us and helped us think through how to track some special gifts we had coming in. The gifts had a community matching part. The way the donations were divided, between direct gifts and matching gift was unique. We were able to set things up so that the data was malleable for analysis and we could keep the information about donors for future reference.”
Training
Amy also encourages new users to take advantage of FundRaiser training. “When I started with FundRaiser, I took some of the training courses. That was very helpful. I don’t know what I would have done without it. Now, the things I do every day are easy, and I’m moving around in it quickly.”
On-Going Development
Fundraising is evolving and software needs to evolve as well. Input received from users like Figge is an important part of FundRaiser development goals. Says Raelene, “As a user, it’s important to have software that is being developed, growing, expanding. Giving in the last two to ten years has evolved. Development directors need to evolve too or be left behind. We are happy that FundRaiser’s development is ongoing and responsive to our input.”
Says Amy, “Tech Support is really good at figuring out what we are needing, working with us to help us do it. And if it isn’t currently in the software, they are really good about putting our requests on the list for the next release.”
Word FM website
Complementing a traditional capital campaign, “Positive, Uplifting Word FM” is trying a new kind of fundraiser – inscribed bricks listeners personalize to include in a pathway the nonprofit plans to install at its new facility. This Christian radio station has been growing steadily by offering positive conversations and uplifting music and recently moved to a larger, more functional ministry building. Bricks that listeners reserve now will be used next spring to transform the new location’s nondescript, concrete sidewalk into something much more meaningful: a “Pathway to Hope.”
“We’re not selling bricks,” qualifies Jean Otto Ford, one of Word FM’s main FundRaiser users. “We’re asking listeners to support this ministry at specific giving levels (at minimum) that then offers them a unique opportunity to create a lasting expression of what Word FM means to them – or of hope, love, inspiration, tribute, etc. Listeners often tell us that our station plays a huge role in their day-to-day lives, and this campaign provides a way for all of us to celebrate that connection.”
Jean continues, “Word FM wants to build a legacy of hope. We chose ‘Pathway to Hope’ as the campaign’s title because Word FM itself, through its music, stories and ministries, acts as a pathway to services and truths offering real hope in our community. That’s what donors are really supporting.” She quickly adds, “But the physical walkway is also becoming a pathway of hope as many brick orders are coming in with powerful words of promise, comfort and encouragement. That’s exciting!”
A brick fundraiser requires extra management but linking Word FM’s website to the brick company’s site, then integrating FundRaiser’s Donor Portal for payment processing, has made it quite manageable for this radio station – and its listeners. Donors first click a “to-order-brick” link on the station’s website, taking them to the brick company’s site. All brick-specific details (quantity, size, and inscription) are entered there; then donors are taken from the brick site to Donor Portal to pay. “It’s the first time we’ve done a fundraiser quite like this, and it’s working well so far,” says Jean.
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| Brick campaign studio window at Word FM |
“Pathway to Hope” kicked off strongly this spring with a live, on-air appeal. The goal is 700 bricks over a nine-month, multi-phase campaign. During the kickoff, donors committed to 115 bricks. “That was just the launch,” Jean explains. “We’ll also do one or two mailings yet this year, perhaps encouraging folks to reserve bricks as Christmas presents during our holiday or end-of-the-year appeals.” Donors giving $300 secure the opportunity to have a small brick (4”x8”) inscribed with something of their choosing; $500-or-more reserves the same opportunity on larger, square paver (8”x8”).
Integration with FundRaiser’s Donor Portal
Word FM not only likes how the brick company is handling listeners’ brick orders, but also how it merged its ordering system with Donor Portal for payment. “It’s a seamless partnership,” says Jean. “The donor selects which donation they’re pledging, then enters whatever he or she wants inscribed on the corresponding brick size (or ‘TBD’ to later decide the inscription). Once the brick site has that information, it automatically emails an order confirmation to the donor and then sends the donor over to Donor Portal for payment. Because donations are made through Donor Portal, brick donors receive the same ‘thank you’ and tax receipt we auto-email to any donor through FR, and FR’s gift-recording proceeds as it would for any donation.”
Additionally, Word FM decided the brick campaign’s requisite giving levels were large enough to justify the option of spreading pledges over two payments. “That’s one reason we chose to use Donor Portal to process the actual transactions and not the brick company. If a donor opted for two payments, we simply set up the donation in FundRaiser as a Recurring Gift Setup via credit card with semi-annual frequency and a specific next-process-date.” Most brick-order sites can’t accommodate installment payments.
Good Planning Is a Key to a Smooth Experience
When asked what suggestions she might have for other FundRaiser users interested in having their own brick campaigns, Jean mentioned how important it is to connect with the right brick company. “Do your research and compare brick companies. Think about how you want to handle payment, then partner with a company that can accommodate that process. Most brick-order sites can and will manage payment for you via PayPal or such – and that might seem easier in the short run – but doing so will likely limit donors’ payment options, you potentially lose out on capturing donor information, and all those donations would need to be entered into FR. By choosing Donor Portal over the brick site’s method to manage payment, FundRaiser could also track brick donations, eliminating duplicate data-entry. The company we chose was able to set it up that way.” Jean suggested these additional features to consider in a brick company: online ordering capabilities; free, customized, brick-order site design; and generous inscription parameters.
As the Campaign Moves Forward
The next step of Word FM’s brick campaign is a fall mailing. “FundRaiser will play a huge role in that upcoming appeal.” Jean explains, “The brick mailing will include elements typical of any fundraising mailing (letter with donation tear-off form, return envelopes, donation receipts, and ‘thank you’ letters) plus brick-order forms. As always, we’ll track all resulting giving and correspondence in FR. Additionally, we’ll again be driving donors to Word FM’s website to order bricks online, and our brick-order site will still link to Donor Portal for payment. We’re glad we set it up that way.”
At FundRaiser, we’re wishing Word FM continued success, and backing that up with support whenever they need it. We look forward to hearing the rest of the story and seeing the completed “Pathway to Hope.”
