FundRaiser Blog

The FundRaiser Software Blog is an excellent resource for nonprofit organizations looking to learn more about fundraising, donor management, membership management, and much more.

3 Tips for Appeal Letters

68

We’re into the end of the year giving season when many organizations are sending out appeal letters. This is a busy time for many nonprofits between Thanksgiving, Giving Tuesday, and then Christmas and last minute donations before the New Year rolls around. Yet, it’s important to give as much thought, if not more, to the appeal letters you send during this time of year. Your donors will most likely receive more of them and each one has to stand out.

Here are three tips to get you started.

Continue reading
3508 Hits

Producing End of Year Tax Summary Letters in FundRaiser

Producing End of Year Tax Summary Letters in FundRaiser

It's time to produce Tax Summary letters (also called End of Year letters) again. They are usually sent in January after the last donation for the year is in. To help you breeze through this process, here's a coherent plan of attack for FundRaiser users.

Step One

First, start by deciding how you want to list the donations in your letter. Two merge functions found in the FundRaiser word processor are used specifically for this type of letter.

Continue reading
5732 Hits

The Who, What, and When of Tax Summary Letters

The Who, What, and When of Tax Summary Letters

What is an End of Year letter? Usually it is one of two things:

a letter which contains a summary of all donations that a donor has made to your organization in the past year. This is sent in January, to help donors with their taxes.an appeal letter which is sent in November and December to solicit donations.

This article will go more in depth about tax summary letters. You might be surprised at the return you get from this simple and helpful correspondence.

Continue reading
25982 Hits

Beyond End of Year Letters

Beyond End of Year Letters

Now that January is coming to a close and end of year letters have been printed and mailed, it’s time to think about other ways in which you can prepare for the upcoming year. Performing some general maintenance tasks will help keep your FundRaiser running smoothly and your donor management process easy.

First, think about the letters you send. With the change in the calendar, you can update the accomplishments or perhaps highlight special stories from the previous year that would resonate with your donors. Updating the letters with new codes will help staff and volunteers alike use the correct letter. And don’t forget to mark your old letters inactive to keep them from being repeated.

Continue reading
31926 Hits

Prepare for sending end-of-year letters to donors for tax season

Prepare for sending end-of-year letters to donors for tax season

Now is the time to start thinking about what information you need for your End of Year letters for tax season.  Start with a few simple decisions and complete your data entry for 2015 in order for the process to go smoothly. Questions to answer are

Will you send out letters to all donors, just to donors who will be required by the IRS to have written proof of their donations, or skip sending them altogether?Do you want to include a fundraising appeal with the tax summary letter? What is a tax summary letter?

Tax Summary letters, often called End of Year letters, give donors information on what they have donated to your organization that year. These statements differ from the holiday appeal, in that they are sent after the holidays. Their primary intention is to give information to the donor for taxes; however it is not uncommon to combine them with another appeal.

Continue reading
7216 Hits

Flexible Emails Within Fund Raiser

Flexible Emails Within Fund Raiser

One of the things I receive questions on as I’m hosting training classes is email through FundRaiser. How does the program know that someone can get emails? What can be sent via email? Is there a copy? The convenience of email, not to mention the cost savings, makes it appealing to use. So let’s talk about emailing within FundRaiser.

For each record within FundRaiser you have complete control over the communications preferences. If someone prefers email—and many people do these days—then the customer’s record can be set to email only. Additionally, with each correspondence that is sent, you can choose if it will be sent through the postal mail or via email where appropriate.

Continue reading
4610 Hits

Beyond End of Year Letters

Beyond End of Year Letters

Now that January is coming to a close and end of year letters have been printed and mailed, it’s time to think about other ways in which you can prepare for the upcoming year. Performing some general maintenance tasks will help keep your FundRaiser running smoothly and your donor management process easy.

First, think about the letters you send. With the change in the calendar, you can update the accomplishments or perhaps highlight special stories from the previous year that would resonate with your donors. Updating the letters with new codes will help staff and volunteers alike use the correct letter. And don’t forget to mark your old letters inactive to keep them from being repeated.

Continue reading
4071 Hits

Making Great Groupings

Making Great Groupings

One of the most attractive features about FundRaiser Software is its ability to hold a lot of information on your organization’s donors. By the time you utilize category codes and handle such things as Campaigns and Events, Memberships, and Pledges, you can have a lot of donor-specific information. Gathering this information into meaningful groups is the power of groupings inside of FundRaiser.

Let’s say you want to see who attended your events, but hasn’t given a donation. You can make a grouping for that. How about someone who is a monthly donor who has never attended any events? That’s right. You can make a grouping for that.

Continue reading
5200 Hits

5 Things To Be Thankful For With FundRaiser

5 Things To Be Thankful For With FundRaiser

It’s the time of year when my thoughts turn toward thankfulness and gratitude, though I try to keep them tuned in that direction year round. There are many things that I think we all can be thankful for, but I wanted to take a few moments this week and share with you the five things I’m thankful for in FundRaiser Software.

1) An intuitive interface. FundRaiser holds a lot of data on your donors and organization, which is a good thing. It can also get overwhelming, too. The intuitive way that you can move through FundRaiser allows you to access, sort, and filter, all that data so you can make the best contacts you can with your donors.

Continue reading
4750 Hits

What's in a Greeting, Personally?


In a recently (Oct. 3, 2014) posted blog by Kim Klein, the question of how to greet donors and prospects in letters and emails is addressed.  While the article seems to favor erring on the side of formality, when in doubt, it also recognizes that there are times to be informal, and even quite casual, during correspondence.

In FundRaiser the word processing is built into the program, allowing access to all fields of data for merging into letters as needed.  This enables you to write "form" letters that have the personal look and feel that used to be possible only through individually crafted letters.  The way you greet people in a letter can be personalized for each name record in FundRaiser, as well.

Continue reading
5833 Hits

Personal Form Letters: Oxymoron?!

 

oxymoron

(NOTE:  originally published 9/11/2013)  It sounds like an oxymoron:  “personal” form letters.  How can a form letter be personal at all?   Well that’s really a big part of what donor management software is all about, whether it’s FundRaiser Basic, Spark, Select, or Professional.  In the old days, when everything was done with typewriters and people power, some organizations would get pre-printed letters with gaps or spaces in the areas that needed to be filled in with the “personal” information.  Now, though, with the power of the computer and well-designed software programs, we can do essentially the same thing, but resulting in letters that are not obvious “fill-in-the-blanks” forms.  Each letter is individually fitted, printed, and contains information specific to the recipient.

Continue reading
5664 Hits

LYBUNT? SYBUNT? OMG LOL


What's in an Acronym?

In Kim Klein's blog article this month, she explains what the term LYBUNT means, which is a good thing, but there is another that is used in FundRaiser we need to know, too:  SYBUNT.  SYBUNT is similar to LYBUNT, but reaches further into a lapsed donor's past.  A SYBUNT has given "Some Year But Not This".  You can find both of these terms scattered throughout FundRaiser:  in the "WHO" section of reports and mass mailings (in the "MasterFile" dropdown), the "Common Patterns" section of creating a Grouping, and elsewhere.  They are just easier ways to describe certain donor situations.

Precisely, Generally Speaking

Once you know the definitions, you may run into another situation due to the business world view that there are two distinct types of years:  calendar and fiscal (which FundRaiser calls "Reporting" year).  FundRaiser's Reporting year is, by default, set to the calendar year, but can be changed to coincide with the fiscal year your organization uses for accounting purposes.  It's changed in the Options, General, Printing menu, and requires that you set the beginning month of the yearly period you want to consider for your Reporting year.  Be aware that, if you make a change here, you will need to run the Rebuild Statistics Page Data utility (in the Utilities menu) in order to make certain all the yearly totals reflect your reporting year, and that people are able to be put properly in their LYBUNT and SYBUNT places.

Continue reading
16710 Hits

5 steps to creating tax summary letters for your donors in FundRaiser


It's almost time to produce Tax Summary letters (End of Year Letters).  Usually sent in January, after the last donation for the year is in, end of year letters are a perfect way to re-establish your relationship with all your donors.  Here's a coherent plan of attack for FundRaiser users to breeze through this important time.

Step One -- HOW do you want to display their donations?

You'll obviously want to thank them for the year's donations, but do you want to list donations individually, or as a total dollar amount?  Do you want to mention the number of gifts they gave?  Would you like to encourage them to give again?  FundRaiser has merge fields and functions to help with all of this, with the most often used being the GiftList and GiftTotal functions.  GiftList can show a listing of the gifts you specify in a mini-report format, while GiftTotal simply adds up all the gifts you specify to print out the total dollar amount.

Continue reading
5041 Hits
Wait a minute, while we are rendering the calendar
donor prospects In-Kind gifts SYBUNTS overview correspondance PayPal operating systems nonprofit fundraising Importing Data motivation foundations technical support community arts nonprofits fundraising donation history change of address updating large donations annual maintenance plan grassroots campaign role of nonprofits merge notes new nonprofit arts direct mail social media donor slip endowment campaign Personalizing brick campaign salutation holiday Cloud major donors government grants announcements follow up Thanksgiving budget how to handle auction gifts ticket sales product news user spotlights GivingTuesday adding personal notes to letters building donor relationships training customer service gift entry New Year Facebook campaign new features donor recognition grants mode code on site training Snow Birds gift acceptance policy texting donors premiums donor advised funds email event management relationship tracking upgrading donors appeal letters donor loyalty FundRaiser Basic volunteering FundRaiser Spark legacy giving Reminders alumni gift notes field fundraising letters donor relations campaign management disaster relief data conversion prospects solicitors operational costs Thank You development director Resiliency donor contact information publicity materials lapsed donor Task List reports animal rescue backing up data data analysis NCOA processing tax summary letters Groupings targeted mailings how-to videos donor source Volunteer module pledges phoning donors increasing giving amounts repeat donors donor profile Congratulations corporate sponsors upgrade tribute gifts add ons annual campaign appeal letter National Change of Address custom page online donations memorial giving giving history happiness data entry letter templates Constant Contact security Donor Portal community broadcasting updates banquet recurring gifts support major gift prospects ROI donor engagement Company culture thank you letters office anonymous donors campaign segmenting donors features donor Codes donor retention rate mailing importing csv Tickles ticketsales mission driven membersip benefits new version new donors Crowdfunding Campaign customer portal tech tip giving levels pictures look and feel volunteers donor retention user interface membership benefits case study general understanding giving trends spreadsheets membership programs welcome packet Reporting to IRS LYBUNTS personalizing letters in honor of donations new leadership Network for Good monthly giving communications merge fields holiday giving donor targeting capital campaign training tip donor attrition planning flash sales GoFundMe project password protection holiday letters Alternative Addresses motivation code Facebook End of Year Letters auction moves management passwords donor preferences planned giving online donations vacation transparency community supported gardens Excel spare fields entering auction gifts raffle #GivingTuesday donor attrition rate advanced tab correspondence FundRaiser Hosted small donations board members word processor accounting software the Ask charity golf tournaments

Connect With Us

  800-880-3454 ext 3
  Email Us
  Request More Information
  Monday-Friday
      8:30AM-5:30PM CST

Customer Portal Login Form

User Name:
Password:

If you are not sure about your Customer User Name, please call 800-543-4131 and we will be able to help you.

Or you have lost your password, Request Password