When I lead tours or teach classes, one of the most common refrains I hear from organizations is that they feel as if FundRaiser Software can do so much more than they’re currently using it for and they’re not sure how to tap into that potential. They’re not alone. So the question becomes, how can you utilize the software to its potential?
It’s very likely you may have more than one person within your organization who can view or work in FundRaiser. During certain times of the year, volunteers may be entering in data and gifts or pledges. One of the useful features of FundRaiser Software is the ability to be able to control the information that someone can see, or even if they can edit or delete items from your database.
When you upgrade to a new version, such as the recent new release of FundRaiser, it is good to familiarize yourself with the new features. A great way to do that is to read the update notes, which are easily available through the Help menu after you update the software.
Just click on Help and look for the selection that says “Read Update Notes”. Click on that to bring up the document. The Update Notes are a snapshot of the changes that were made to FundRaiser since the last update. Focus on the column marked “New.” These are the new features for this release. If you don’t understand a feature or how to use it, please contact support. We’ll be happy to help you.
A common question that we receive in Technical Support is that if an organization has an IT department which creates backups of the server computer which holds FundRaiser, is an actual FundRaiser backup necessary?
The answer is yes. When an IT department backs up a server that is different from a FundRaiser backup.
As most of you know, in FundRaiser there are a multitude of ways and places in which to store this data. The one complaint I've heard about this is that it can be difficult to remember where you've put each different type of information. Is it in the Name Details? or Preferences? or Spare Fields? And why should I have to jump all over the place to see the information that is important to MY tasks in this organization, anyway?
Enter the "Custom Page" concept. Have you noticed the Custom Page tab (normally found to the left of the Master List tab) in FundRaiser? If it doesn't exist, you probably have Spark. If you have Select or Professional, it may have been moved to the right of the Master list (Options | Change Tab Order). The Custom Page is, at first, a blank space just waiting for you to design your perfect information layout. What information about donors do you want at your fingertips? Where is that data normally kept? You can "mirror" that field (or table) of information on the Custom Page. You can have, for instance, not only the donor name, phones, email, age, and so forth, but also the table showing their entire Giving History, or the table showing all of their Category Codes, or any specific Preference settings that are important, or... whatever you wish.
So you’ve downloaded an evaluation trial of our software or setup an online trail, and you’ve opened the program. Now what? Or maybe you’ve stepped into a new position and need to get up and running quickly. Whichever the case, here are some tips for getting started quickly with FundRaiser software.
First, if you are working with a trial copy, don’t be afraid to experiment. The sample data is already in the program for you to work with. Feel free to change the data, add gifts, etc. When you are ready to use the program with your data, it’s simple to remove the sample data.
The Volunteers module in FundRaiser Select, and included in Professional, allows your organization to track much more than the names of your volunteers. With the ability to set up projects and teams, you can create work schedules and get detailed information about the work your volunteers accomplish.
The Volunteers module comes built into FundRaiser Professional; it’s an add on for FundRaiser Select. Within this module is the ability to track as little information (Volunteer names and contact information, for example) or as much as you need. When looking at big projects, such as a group for outreach or a specific event, you may want to establish a team or a project. This is easy to do within the module, and it allows you to group various volunteers together and track their hours.
When offering sponsorships, you may wish to be able to record a commitment to sponsor and then accept payment for it later. By doing so, your organization can keep track of the numbers of sponsorships sold and project income for an event. However, there’s the problem of sending an invoice and recording later payment.
The good news is that no matter what version of FundRaiser you’re using, there are ways to record these circumstances as a later promise to pay. Instead of a “thank you” letter, the invoice could be sent. By using gift motivation codes, and possibly gift notes, you could document the gift as a sponsorship and event information.
The Households module comes with Select and Professional versions of FundRaiser Software and it allows you to group families or organizations together so you can see overall giving for an entire group. Although the module is called Households, it isn’t limited to families. It also works well for organizations, for example to see the giving patterns of a group of people related to a single organization.
So why would you want to create Households?
FundRaiser Software has the ability to track the non-giving aspects of your donors as well as donation information. A great way to do this is to use the category codes features. Each version (Spark, Select, and Professional) of FundRaiser offers unlimited category codes. With an ability to create codes up to eight characters in length, your organization has a nearly unlimited (there’s a limit, but it’s in the billions) to create as many codes as you require.
So in what ways can your organization use codes?
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.
Sending your year-end appeals doesn’t mean rushing to the post office or worrying about running out of stamps. With FundRaiser, you have the option to send your correspondence through email. This means your organization will save paper and postage and your donors will hear from you more quickly.
Inside FundRaiser the process for sending correspondence through email is much the same as printing the letters. The options you select on the printing window are different.
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.
There’s nothing more reassuring to a computer user than to have a good backup of data. This is no less true when it comes to your FundRaiser data. As an organization, there’s a good bet that you keep a large amount of information about your donors. To know that you can restore it in the sad event of a computer failure, is good news indeed.
FundRaiser makes it easy to do backups, by putting the command in an easy to locate place. Under the FILE menu in FundRaiser, choose CREATE A BACKUP. To complete your backup hit the “backup” button. The process will run and once it’s finished, you can choose Exit. Your backup has completed.
However, you may have questions about backups and the process. One of the most common is: where do you want to place your backup?
FundRaiser conveniently places backups in a default location. (For clients using FundRaiser Hosted, always accept the default location. To receive a copy of the backup, give our technical support team a call and we’ll gladly send you a copy of the files.) Since the restore screen automatically goes to the location of the last backup, you don’t have to worry about where you saved your backup.
It is a good idea to backup before doing a major operation such as an import or export. Regular backups can also keep data safe in the event of a computer failure. Set a schedule within your organization and stick to it.
It doesn’t take a lot of time to do a backup of your FundRaiser data. Keeping your backups current will save you, and your organization, a lot of time and trouble. Plus, the peace of mind is priceless.
Many FundRaiser users also work as the bookkeeper for their office or interface closely with their organization's bookkeeper. FundRaiser makes this as simple as possible with its integration features for QuickBooks and Peachtree accounting programs. Good people plus good software make an office run well. In our office, the people part of our bookkeeping equation is Mary Badiny and we all interface with her most happily.
She's worked as a bookkeeper all her life, starting during college as a way to support herself. “While I was going to school for a business degree, I got my first bookkeeping job. The woman who interviewed me for that first job said, 'I really need someone with experience, but I'm going to give you a chance.' She became a kind of mentor to me, and we were both happy with how it went. I've been a bookkeeper now for 41 years," says Mary. "You'd think I'd be burned out, but I found the perfect office de-stressor. It's my garden. Of course there is stress, like no rain for 3 months, but it’s a totally different kind and it gives me the right balance."
You still have time to catch them... and it's easier to do it while they are still in sight, than later when they are totally gone. That's lapsed donors I'm talking about.
One of the most important groups to send letters to are Lapsed Donors - those who have given in the past, but not in the most recent 9-24 months. It’s much easier, and less expensive, to win a donor back than to find a new one.
Lapsed donors have indicated that they are interested enough in your organization to donate at least once. This makes them highly qualified as potential future donors. For some reason they have not felt the incentive to donate again recently. That may be for reasons beyond your control, but it might also be because you haven't asked.
The internet has developed so quickly over the past decade that it’s hard to remember how things looked even just a short while ago. With FundRaiser going live with a new website this week, I began to wonder what our earliest websites looked like. I talked to Gene Weinbeck, founder of FundRaiser, and he was happy to share some memories and a few images of earlier websites.
When did FundRaiser first go online?
Gene: Our earliest website went up about 1994. It looked like a DOS program. It was done in Times New Roman only, and for sophistication, it used bold and underlining. We don’t have any screenshot of that… no one thought to save it!
What made you go online at that time?
Life Radio Ministries needed to update their donor management software. "We were using something that had served us well enough over the years, but it was becoming extremely expensive to maintain, as well as being outdated. We decided to look for something that was more reasonably priced and which had stayed up with technology," says Joe Emert, General Manager of Life Radio Ministries.He was looking for features that allow him to create a personal, 'high touch' connection with donors...
Read more ...
The Volunteer features of the Donor Portal integrate volunteering scheduling features on your website with your desktop version of FundRaiser.
If you are a current FundRaiser user and are interested in being a beta tester for Volunteer features of the Donor Portal, let us know. Beta testing is starting soon. Now is your chance to give input into development as well as test and use the new features.
Contact Autumn Shirley at 800-880-3454 ext 302
