5 Free GiftWorks Resources You Need to Know About August 27, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

GiftWorks is easy to learn and easy to use, but as with any software, you will undoubtedly have some questions along the way. We want to make sure you know about some of the free resources available to help you get the most out of GiftWorks.

1. Read the guides! We have excellent guides that walk you through GiftWorks donor management, campaign management, QuickBooks integration, and more. They are well-written and include lots of examples and screen shots.
2. Watch the videos! We have created a YouTube channel so you can see demos of different GiftWorks features and functions. One of the most popular series of videos is the Data Importing series. Everyone needs to start by getting their data into GiftWorks, and these videos can help you understand how to do this very efficiently.
3. Take a tour! Ellen Mowrer hosts two live GiftWorks webinars each week. We also have free overviews of data importing (watch the YouTube videos first, then sign up), and of processes for managing online donations, events, and volunteers. Sometimes just watching the software in action and hearing other organizations’ questions during a webinar can help you get ideas on how to make GiftWorks super effective for you.
4. Join the User Group! All GiftWorks customers and consultants are welcome to join our lively User Group on LinkedIn. Simply create a free LinkedIn account if you don't already have one, search for the GiftWorks User Group, and request to join. You will see robust conversations on all kinds of topics. You can ask your own questions and learn from your peers and from experts around the world.
5. Email support! If you can’t find your answer using one of these other resources, you can always email us. Email support for GiftWorks is free, and we’ll get back to you within one business day.

Of course, we offer additional options for those who want to be able to call and talk to support at any time or would like to take our GiftWorks University courses (see www.giftworksconnect.com/support). We want to make sure everyone gets the help they need to be successful with GiftWorks!

Managing Members with GiftWorks August 26, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

by Karen Schaller

Have you been successfully using GiftWorks to manage data related to your prospects, donors, and volunteers, but wishing you could do more to track and cultivate your members?

The most obvious approach to membership within GiftWorks has been to use the member-since and renewal-date fields, assign a group code to indicate membership, and use a custom field to record the level of membership. However, these donor-based fields don’t link the membership details to donations, and so don’t support retention of membership history or analysis of membership activity. Group codes can’t be output into a report, and because donor custom fields are attached to the person, they can be used for only one piece of information and therefore are not effective at retaining membership details over time.

Read on to move beyond the obvious and explore the possibilities of using membership donations to record and work with member levels, changes in member activity, gifted and life memberships, and concurrent memberships.

Storing membership details in donations

Donation custom fields can track membership history and provide analysis of activity because each donation custom field exists in every gift and can hold information unique to each gift. Therefore, only one of your limited donation custom fields is used to track membership levels over time. The same holds true for any donation custom field, so a total of four custom fields could store all membership details and history. And you can record concurrent memberships simply by adding another membership gift.

Examples using Donation Custom Fields: For gifted memberships, the monetary gift would be entered in the donor’s record with the member level indicating “Gifted to.” Another donation custom field holds the name of the person who is receiving the gifted membership. The membership level of “Gifted to” allows you to exclude this donor if you do not want them in a member list, or if you want to retrieve them separately to send them a different type of solicitation or reminder notice than you would for someone who purchased their own membership.

With GiftWorks 2010, you can create gifted and lifetime memberships by adding a zero-dollar donation directly in the gifted or lifetime member’s record and recording the details in the custom fields.

The example below shows the detail within a zero-dollar donation placed in a lifetime member’s record. The custom field for level would indicate “Lifetime,” and this designation could be used to include these members in or exclude them from SmartLists. A dated campaign code could represent the year they were given lifetime membership.

For all membership gifts, dated campaign and appeal codes further define your membership details and provide for more effective filtering and sorting in SmartLists and reports.

Analyzing membership data

When membership detail is in the gifts, you can analyze your member activity right along with gift amounts, campaigns, and appeals. You can filter SmartLists on the basis of any gift detail, including donation custom fields, and the gift detail can be included in the output—the printed or exported list.

Donation reports filtered on campaign or appeal, or based on a SmartList, can also include the gift details, as shown in the examples below.

Donation History by Campaign report—grouped by campaign:

Donation History by Campaign report—grouped by donor (member):

This report could also be grouped by appeal or by any of the donation custom fields.

Letters

When all membership details reside with gifts, the thank-you letter templates can include merge fields for these details. You can generate membership renewal letters by sending a donation-based SmartList to the mail center. With a list based on gifts—the membership details are from previous membership gifts—you are able to access the donation letter templates. This gives you the opportunity to include any of the past gift or membership details along with the current renewal date. With the membership details recorded with separate gifts, you can generate letters for separate, concurrent memberships within one record.

There are limitations with this strategy. When the membership information is stored within gifts, it is not easily viewed in the donor record. Unless you open a gift, you can’t see whether the person is a member, and at what level. Determining membership activity is also more difficult during gift entry.

Combining options to achieve your goal

Each option for membership management in GiftWorks has particular strengths and weaknesses, as detailed in the chart below.

When these options are used in combination, however, new possibilities emerge. One possibility would be to use gifts plus detailed group codes like 2010 Patron, 2011 Supporter, and 2011 Life Member. This strategy would require you to add only a group code after entering all membership details in the donation, and it would provide a visual history along with the analysis available through the gift method.

No single option within GiftWorks can do everything, but if you creatively combine options, you can achieve data management goals that once seemed out of reach.

---

Karen Schaller, fundraising database consultant, has nearly a decade of experience helping nonprofits utilize fundraising software. Karen works with organizations to learn their database needs and evaluate their current software use. She helps them handle new information, merge and update old sources, and most importantly make data accessible, analyzable, and profitable. As a service to nonprofits in the community, Karen presents workshops with the Maine Association of Nonprofits. For more information, visit www.karenschaller.com.

The 4 Rules of Social Networking Nonprofits Can Ignore August 19, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

by Daniel Klotz

You can't go three clicks on the Web without reading about social media best practices. Most of what is found in lists of rules for social networking applies across the board, but my agency has learned that four of these rules do not apply for nonprofits.

Rule #1 to Ignore: Don't Talk About Yourself
If you sell cosmetics and talk about nothing but lip gloss and eye shadow, you'll have a hard time attracting Twitter followers. But you can talk about your nonprofit all the time. If your cause is supporting the educational needs of autistic children, you don't need to mix it up by also talking about sports scores or news headlines. But if you're doing something great for your cause, you cannot tell your story or talk about your cause too much. Your supporters will listen and appreciate the feeling of connectedness.

Rule #2 to Ignore: Don't Ask for Help All the Time
Go right ahead and ask your supporters to invite their friends to like your Facebook page, to retweet your Twitter updates, or to favorite your YouTube videos. Tell people that you would appreciate links from their websites to yours. Let your supporters know that such seemingly small gestures are a big help, and ask them for that help frequently.

Rule #3 to Ignore: When in Doubt, Respond
Feedback you receive through social networks falls into three categories: the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is said that it is wise to praise the good, address the bad, and ignore the ugly. The tricky part is identifying whether a comment is just bad or downright ugly. When in doubt, most businesses need to err on the side of considering a comment bad and respond either publicly or privately. Not so for nonprofits, which tend to have much more good will and a base of support. When in doubt about whether a negative comment warrants a response, err on the side of considering it ugly and ignoring it. The risk for your organization is lower that way.

Rule #4 to Ignore: Be Yourself
When you're speaking for a nonprofit, you don't need to be yourself. Many businesses are cold and impersonal and need to be given a human face. Not so with most nonprofits. You don't need to be personally real or authentic. Instead, be your cause. Your cause is real, and it doesn't need your personality to make it any more real. So if you're blogging and feeling like your individual personality isn't coming through, don't fret. Talking about your hobbies, your family, or your faults doesn't help anything. Put the cause front and center and let it get the attention.

What social networking rules should nonprofits adhere to? Follow this three-step process and you'll be fine, whatever social networks you use: 1) Tell your story. 2) Thank your supporters. 3) Repeat.

---

Daniel Klotz is a social media strategist at YDOP, a Pennsylvania Internet marketing agency that specializes in assisting educational institutions and mission-driven organizations.

Empower Ring Empowers Donors August 11, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

Attract new donors. Introduce them to your organization. Involve them in a specific project. All are challenges for a busy development staff.

John Jascoll, director of development and communications for YWCA Lancaster (PA), has a plan to accomplish all of this and more by cultivating 100 donors in a single season.

The YW is inviting 100 men and women to join its new donor club, the Empower Ring, by contributing $25 to fund a special project not covered by the YW's existing funding sources.

Rather than just making a small contribution,
the donor has a voice in the future of the YWCA.

Will the project be hiring language and hearing interpreters for women who have been sexually assaulted? Providing childcare subsidies to parents facing employment cutbacks? Purchasing new audiovisual equipment?

The club will gather at the YW on September 23 for a presentation on the potential projects and will vote on which one to fund.

John explains:

It's a perfect way for someone who wants to get involved in a helpful way, at a modest level, and yet have a significant impact as part of a group. Rather than just making a small contribution, the donor has a voice in the future of the YWCA.

The YW is promoting the Empower Ring on its website, by word of mouth, through mailings, and via local press and cable television. John reports that the publicity is attracting a steady stream of participants as the August 31 club-signup deadline approaches. The short window of opportunity to join adds a sense of urgency and is an incentive for donors to make their contributions right away.

If you'd like to join YWCA Lancaster's Empower Ring, visit www.ywcalancaster.org.

Nonprofit of the Month: Daystar for Medically Fragile Infants August 10, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

Each month our intern Anthony Fucito highlights one of our GiftWorks customers as nonprofit of the month. If you'd like to be featured, please let Anthony know by emailing info@missionresearch.com.

Office manager Nancy Heath and her diligent colleagues are busy! Their organization, Daystar for Medically Fragile Infants, is wrapping up its biggest fundraiser, the Daystar Derby Party. Few people are available to input information for 400 guests and acknowledge the $140,000 in donations that the event yielded. Fortunately, GiftWorks has been making this seemingly difficult task run much smoother.

Amid the hectic everyday life of a nonprofit organization, Nancy was still able to talk to me about Daystar, our August Nonprofit of the Month.

GiftWorks is a critical tool
for a very special day care center

Daystar takes care of infants and children, age 6 months to 3 years, who cannot go to regular day care centers for various medical reasons. Because Daystar is the only licensed, nursing-supervised, medical day care for this age group in the state of New York, it is faced with a space problem and can host only 10 infants at a time. With saving, fundraising, and perseverance, its supporters hope to be able to double Daystar's capacity and initiate services to older age groups as well.

Daystar has been using GiftWorks to facilitate this effort:

We finally have a system that not only keeps track of our day-to-day donations, but also allows us to keep an abundance of information about our individual donors. It allows us the ability to compare the results of our fundraising efforts year to year. We can group individuals and categorize organizations, donors, and donations in a myriad of ways. I love SmartLists and Reports! We also have a tremendous number of honorary and memorial donations that can be simplified for acknowledgements. Speaking engagements can be kept track of, as well as the results from these engagements. We work with many medical professional organizations and, again, they can be separated out."

While Nancy and all of her peers down at Daystar continue to push forward toward expanding their facilities, they are in constant need of support from both local and global communities. To find out more, go to www.daystarhome.net.