FundRaiser Blog

Facebook has been a remarkable tool for those involved in saving horses from the kill buyers. For those lots that want to see a horse in a good home rather than shipped to Canada or Mexico for slaughter, there are pages and Facebook Groups devoted to getting these horses visibility, donations, and even a good home. Which brings me to Thanksgiving weekend, when a very pregnant mare, skinny and in dire need of a good home, came across my Facebook newsfeed. I knew I had enough money to pay the deposit required to ensure she wouldn’t suddenly be shipped off...but for the rest of the money, and the cost to ship her from Kansas to Missouri? I wasn’t sure how to raise it. I decided to try crowdfunding.

I hear about crowdfunding successes all the time, but could I do it? Could I raise the money necessary to save this horse and bring her to my place? Her story reminded me so much of my own mare (now 19), whom I rescued as a 3 month old colt, a “surprise” for the mare had been through so many auctions that no one knew or disclosed that she was pregnant. I had to try.

If you are receiving gifts for #GivingTuesday (or any other occasion) in another system, you’ll most likely be entering them into FundRaiser. (If you haven’t inquired about our Donor Portal, which can put gifts directly into your FundRaiser database, now is a great time to do so.) Instead of entering your gifts one-by-one, you can import them.

To import your gifts, save your file of exported gifts into a CSV (comma separated values) format. Most programs export into CSV files automatically. Then, go to File > Import and follow the prompts to match up the fields and import the gifts.

Parkesburg Point is going for it this year for #GivingTuesday. Although it isn’t even Tuesday yet, they have already succeeded at reaching their goal. Now they are moving with confidence into their total year-end fundraising. “We were involved with GivingTuesday last year, but didn’t have an effective strategy in place,” says Debbie Shupp, development director for The POINT. “We really wanted a strategic approach this year and Sarah has successfully done that. Sarah created a full strategy and social media campaign.” Parkesburg Point offers extensive services to youth in the area with the help of volunteers, many drawn from local churches. They are FundRaiser Select users. 

Sarah Daniels, the new grants and communications manager who joined The POINT in May, says that the most important aspects of this success were:

On this Giving Tuesday you may receive donations through PayPal, an online payment service, and wonder how you can code them in your FundRaiser Software. When entering gifts, either through importing a spreadsheet or entering them manually, the mode code is used to designate in what form the gift was received. Adding a code for PayPal will allow you to note that those gifts came in through that service.

To create a new mode code go to View > Codes to open the Codes Maintenance Window. Click on Add. Type in the code and a description. In this case, both of them can be "PayPal". Click on Save. This will add a new mode code for PayPal gifts.

Dear Kim, We're a small group with limited staff and resources, but we know that properly welcoming new donors to our organization and thanking them for their gift will greatly increase the chances of them giving again. What do you recommend including in donor welcome packets that is not too labor or resource intensive? ~Small but mighty Dear Might...

Dear Kim: What is the best method for determining where to split the levels of donor giving as far as recognition is concerned? This is for the purpose of recognition in a quarterly newsletter. Thank you for your common sense approach to fundraising. –Death by Detail Dear Detail: Generally, the split is at these intervals:Less than $100$100-$499$50...

As we come into the fall and winter giving seasons, it’s important to take a few moments to talk about giving levels. A giving level is a benchmark of giving that you’d like to have your donors reach, whether that’s through a one-time contribution or ongoing monthly contributions. For example, our local NPR station has the “Leadership Circle”, which means the person donated at least $1000 during the year. NPR makes this more manageable by encouraging people to make a recurring donations of between $80-100/month. 

Giving levels don’t have to be something you share with your donor. While many organizations use them as suggested donation amounts or levels, others simply generate internal reports with them. When you use giving levels within FundRaiser software, you can track these levels regardless of whether they’re advertised to your donors as suggested donation amounts, or levels you use for internal reporting, but never share with the donors.

Dear Kim:

I have recently been appointed a development director and I am looking forward to developing this new skill (which I don’t have right now). One of the first things I must do is establish “levels” of donations. We are a pediatric facility that is part of a large organization. Is it appropriate to designate levels of giving that are related to kid themes, or do you suggest sticking with tried-and-true levels such as platinum, silver, gold, President’s Circle, etc?

 
Although the total Eclipse in August is a thing of the past, funds and volunteers that the 37th Judicial CASA group raised are even now fueling forward  progress. The group exceeded their campaign goal by $5,000 raising a total of $25,000. Perhaps equally important is that a large amount of the money was raised from  new major donors who have a higher likelihood of becoming repeat donors. 

The "Eclipse Child Abuse campaign" had two parts:

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.

Dear Kim,

I have tried to follow the advice in the Grassroots Fundraising Journal and from you, Andy Robinson, Stephanie Roth, and other grassroots fundraising experts. What you all say makes sense. Having said that, I hope you don’t find my question rude: where do you find the time to really implement all this advice? I am a relatively efficient person and I already work my 40 hours and then some every week. Being in touch with more donors, doing research on prospects, keeping our social media presence vibrant? Something is always not getting done. Any tips?

In addition to our technical support and training departments, FundRaiser Software also provides an extensive library of how-to documents and training videos through the Customer Portal. The Customer Portal is available to customers with a current Annual Maintenance Plan. To log in visit http://www.fundraisersoftware.com and click on the “Customer Login” link in the upper right-hand corner.  If you don’t have your login information (It will be unique to the customer portal), call or email our support team and we would be happy to reset the password for you.

Once you’re logged in, the Contact Info tab allows you to update and change your organization’s contact information. There are bulletins and news available. And the Training Videos tab takes you to the library of training videos. On the Support Tools tab, there is a link to view support document and downloads, including several “how to” documents. 

Dear Kim:

We are a 50-year-old social service agency mostly supported by government grants.  We do have about 600 donors who help us every year and we do a reasonable job keeping in touch with them.  We also have about 300 people who give us in-kind gifts and I have tried all kinds of solicitations to encourage them to give money as well as stuff, but I have had a really poor response. Someone said that you said in-kind donors often don’t become money donors. Is that true?  Should I stop trying to convert them? 

When inputting donations into your database, it’s important to differentiate in-kind gifts (which are usually goods, services, or time) from the financial gifts you receive. You get help doing this through the GIFT MODE code, which allows you to indicate the way the gift was received by your organization. With that code, you’ll notice that there are four default modes in the program: cash, check, charge, and in-kind.

For this month's total eclipse, Missouri is one of the prime viewing spots. Local media are in love with the eclipse, and one nonprofit group is using that to boost their fundraising campaign. The 37th Judicial CASA, who are FundRaiser Select users, have created an entire campaign around the eclipse, called Eclipse Child Abuse with Child Advocacy.

The campaign has three efforts tied to it:

1.  Mode Code Denotes In-Kind or Monetary

When entering a gift in FundRaiser, the Mode Code is used to differentiate not only between methods of payment (cash, check, charge, etc.) but also between monetary or in-kind donations. When you create a Mode Code you must specify whether that code will be monetary or in-kind. A Mode Code is always one or the other, and each gift requires a Mode Code. You may have multiple codes, as is usual in FundRaiser, which allows for specific types of in-kind donations. For instance, one of our users is a diaper bank, and, while they accept many infant-related types of in-kind donations, they need to keep diaper donations separated from others. The easiest way was to have, simply, a "diaper" Mode Code. When running various reports, you can specify to include monetary, or in-kind, or both types of donations. Use these codes to your advantage.  And check out the Coding & Spare Fields training video in the Customer Portal section of our website.

2.  Use the Merge Notes for Descriptions

On each gift record is a "Letter Notes for Merging" section. It is primarily used for notes that will then be merged into thank you letter templates. And for monetary gifts, these are usually personal greetings, of sorts, like "Gee, it was great to see you", or "Glad to see you've recovered from surgery", or something else to more personalize the thank you letter. For In-Kind donations, this is a great place to put a description of the items (or services) that were donated. It makes a permanent record as well as an easy way to pull that description in to a thank you letter.  More information on entering gifts is available in both the FundRaiser Overview and Recurring Gifts training videos available in the Customer Portal section of our website.

Every year for more than 2 decades, FundRaiser staff get a day off at the beginning of August to celebrate Happiness Happens Day. In the tradition of the founders of FundRaiser, Gene and Marcy Weinbeck, at least once a month, the company has a three-day holiday weekend. In August, when the US has no official holiday, Happiness Happens Day creates that 3-day weekend. The week before Happiness Happens Day, it was fun to speculate about what each one of us might do to celebrate. Here's what we intend... 

Autumn Shirley, CEO- I'm going to visit Crystal Bridges Art Museum. I was there last month and I want to go again. I loved the Chihuly Glass Exhibit. 

In a capital campaign it's important to know how much money you raised and from which donors. You can do this by coding the gifts. Within FundRaiser there are several places you can code your capital campaign donations.

The MOTIVATION CODE is what motivated a donor to give. Most often this is a specific campaign, and this is a great place to create a specific code to use with these gifts. If you are using our Campaigns Management Module available in FundRaiser Professional, you can set specific codes for each event of the campaign, as well as the overall campaign.

Dear Kim:

Our church needs make a number of renovations.  These are not cosmetic—the roof leaks, the basement floods and many of the pews are falling apart and have splinters.  The congregation is small, but the church is historic and right downtown.  Of course we would rather wait until the economy improves, but we simply can’t. We are in danger of being shut down for being unsafe.  Everyone says you can’t launch a capital campaign right now, but what else can we do?

Tony Poderis suggests that, in a capital campaign, fully one third of your goal should be met by only 10 to 15 donors, and that the next third will be met by another 75 to 100 donors.  While you may have a good idea who those top donors are, it would be asking a bit much that you also, off the top of your head, know who those next hundred top donors might be.  So here are a few ideas that can help:

1.  Use the Donor List Report in Amount Order

The Donor List report can be set up to list donors in order of their giving amounts, with the largest donors always at the top of the list.  You can limit the range of gifts in many ways, to consider only monetary gifts, for instance, or to look at just a certain time period in the recent past.  And, when you are previewing the report, you can choose to print only the first few pages (or whatever number you need) to get the top 115 or so donor names, based on your selection criteria.