FundRaiser Blog

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.

Dear Kim:

We are in the middle of a debate in our organization regarding the next step to take. What are the clear differences between monthly giving and membership programs? Does one favor a different demographic?

-Comparing Apples and Orange Juice

Dear Fruity:

Monthly giving is a strategy that allows people to give bigger gifts by spreading the payment of the gift out over several months. People who want to do more for an organization often love a monthly giving program, as it is a fairly painless way to become a significant donor. A monthly giving program can be offered to members, to donors, to major donors, and it is not at all in opposition to membership. They complement each other; in fact, one is usually a strategy for promoting the other. The idea of membership appeals to people who want to have a feeling of ownership in the organization. In some membership groups, such as unions, the members are involved in all the decisions that are made (or should be, anyway.) In others, a member is largely a name describing a donor. (What a member means is established in the by-laws of the organization.)

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.

So my family had that conversation this weekend. The one that usually happens sometime at the start of November. My mother asked me, “so what do you want for Christmas?”. There’s a good chance similar conversations, centered around any number of the winter holidays, are happening in your donors’ households too.

I’m also hearing from a lot of organizations that are working to send out their holiday appeal letters.

If you've called FundRaiser Technical Support recently, you may have heard a new voice on the line helping you. We are happy to introduce Mary Lenker and Joey Patten who have just joined the FundRaiser Support Team. Both have extensive experience in tech support and customer service.

Joey Patten comes to FundRaiser after working in the Navy as the Administrative Assistant for the commander of a submarine squadron. His job was to do computer work and interface with IT. He joined the FundRaiser staff recently after moving back to West Plains, his home town. He loves working with computers and got started when he was 6 years old. He likes working in the friendly ambiance of the FundRaiser office.

Outside of work Joey enjoys hiking, fishing, hunting, being outside, and, being with his son, Emmett.

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.

Dear Kim,

We have been advised to start asking our donors for three to five year pledges.  The consultant advising us says it will save us a lot of time because we do ONE ask and then the payment is spread over five years.  Our executive director likes the idea because she and the Finance Committee will be able to project income more accurately if they know people are bound by a pledge agreement.   I like the idea of saving time and not having to deal with the donors every year—it seems like I will have more time to find new donors.  But someone who heard you speak recently said you were opposed to multiyear pledges.  Can you talk about the pros and cons?

When you set out to learn any new software, it’s like learning to dance where the steps seem familiar, and yet new at the same time. As I begin my second week at FundRaiser Software, I find that the dance becomes more familiar and I can really appreciate the nuances of the program.

One of the things that first impressed me about FundRaiser’s software program was its versatility. My background in nonprofits is with small organizations—really small. For a while back in the 90’s, I worked with our local cage bird club to do rescue for aviary birds like finches and canaries. Eventually we educated those in the area about the smaller birds and the local club was able to pick up the work of finding new homes for any birds in need. It was a me-myself-and-I operation, with help from a few friends. Even for a nonprofit as small as we were back then, I think FundRaiser’s membership function would have been very helpful. That would have been so much easier than the Excel spreadsheets I was using to track renewals and to print labels for the newsletter mailings.

Dear Kim:

We have an ongoing debate about the use of formal (more traditional) vs. informal salutations. Historically, our default was formal unless we knew the individual(s). My question relates to how this is trending in the non-profit sector. For example, our ED is suggesting that our default be informal, e.g.: Tom and Susan Mitchell…Dear Tom and Susan. Even though we tend to have a younger donor base, it makes me nervous to make that global change.

~The Honorable Charles Alphonse Smithereens, III, (aka Chucky)

Dear Mr. S-3:

The nonprofit sector is so large, with 1.7 million different nonprofits in the United States alone, that there is no one trend. Some are using very formal salutations and some seem to have abandoned salutations altogether for very casual, “Hi, Friend.”

Dear Kim:

You are often quoted as saying things like, “Thank before you bank,” and “The thank you note is the most important element in a donor relationship” and other pro-thank you note statements.  But how do you make a thank you note interesting?  And do donors really read them?  And what if I think the gift the donor gave isn’t really what they could afford so I am not that thankful?

~Dubious

Dear Dubious:.

Your letter poses several questions, and I will quickly dispatch the last one first.  You need to change up your attitude toward the gifts that are given to your organization.  Any gift is more than nothing, and donors are making all kinds of choices.  You really don’t know what people can afford and you need to thankful they thought of you.

Dear Kim:

You are well known as an advocate of individual donor fundraising, and many people admire you. However, you have your detractors, one of whom describes you as “the Queen of spending a lot of time to little result.” Others claim that you are simply not realistic and that real money is in foundation grants especially when you compare writing a proposal that yields $50,000 to the amount of time it would take to get that from individuals, unless you know a few really big donors. It does seem like the work of grassroots fundraising is out of proportion to the money raised. Can you comment? (And, please know that most people I talk to really love you and admire you.)

~Wanting to be a fan

Dear Potential Fan:

Dear Kim:.

I was wondering what tips you have for engaging all levels of staff members in fundraising? I am being pushed to create a culture of fundraising within the organization, and while I’ve had moderate success engaging the department heads in major donor communication, I’m struggling a bit on how to engage the rest of the staff. Our structure is: one executive director, 5 department heads, and 7 other staff under the department heads..

~Heads in gear, tails slow to follow.

Dear Slow Tails:

Dear Kim:

Our organization is in the middle of finalizing our fundraising plan for the coming fiscal year. Is there any general rule about what percentage of our unrestricted funds should come from foundation grants?

The Michigan Israel Business Bridge (MIBB) facilitates business and investment opportunities between Michigan and Israel for their mutual economic benefit.

Pam Lippitt has used FundRaiser reports to help her dramatically increase the membership of MIBB.  As it turned out, when she first looked at the report section of FundRaiser, she didn’t find what she needed for her membership renewal efforts, so she called FundRaiser Technical Support for help.

West Plains, Missouri is buzzing this week, in preparation for the  Old Time Music Ozark Heritage Festival. It's pretty near impossible to live here and not get excited about it. West Plains is also the home of FundRaiser Software.

Happy Father's Day to the fathers at FundRaiser. Their role as fathers is an important influence on who they are, on the job as well as off.

Josh Shirley is the father of Lily, 18 and Isaac, 15; as well as CFO of FundRaiser. For Josh, he finds that something he carries over from being a father is patience and compassion.

Dear Ms. Klein:

I am the treasurer of the Spanish Honor Society at my local High School. My goal is to raise approximately $20,000 in order to have all our club members fly to Costa Rica. We plan to volunteer at an orphanage there where we will teach the children English and organize activities for them. The problem is, however, that I have no idea where to start. I know a project of this scale requires more than a bake sale, but what? I understand that you are probably more used to dealing with things of a larger scale, but do you have any tips for the penniless high school student?

Dear Kim:

I recently sent a letter to the founding director of our organization and asked her to consider being on our event committee.  I never heard back from her and so I formed the committee without her.  But now I have heard through the grapevine that she is a little hurt not to be included on this committee.  It is our 30th Anniversary and the event is a really big deal.  She had her chance, so I am not sure what I am supposed to do.  Ideas?

Dear Kim:

My nonprofit has recently decided to follow your advice and build a base of individual donors.  (We have lost most of our foundation funding and see this as our only choice.)  We are very small, with only two staff and five board members and so we want to attract a small number of big donors ($5000+).  We are not trying to disrespect people who can only give $35 or $50, but we don’t have the staff capacity to deal with them and think it is more efficient to go after big gifts.  How can we best focus on major donors?