GiftWorks Update is On the Way October 31, 2005 By Steve Fafel

We're finishing final testing of the final Fall update for GiftWorks 2006. The update will be available tomorrow morning--so check for updates from within the software by clicking on Internet Updates on the lower lefthand side of the GiftWorks border.

The update includes some fixes, some refinements, the GiftWorks 2006 Manual, updated Help, and apparently and Easter Egg (anyone remeber what that is?). In the meantime, I'm getting ready to do a big import from SalesForce over to GiftWorks--for our use. The importer is easy to use, but the SalesForce source files are a pain!

Record for GiftWorks Usage October 28, 2005 By Steve Fafel

Well, you've done it again. As the Fall fundraising season kicks into full gear, we're seeing many more people using GiftWorks. Discussion group participation is up, the use of the Knowledge Base is increasing, and visits to the blog are increasing. Issues are decreasing as we fix issues and as you get more familiar with GiftWorks 2006, and calls to us are more for pre-sales questions than post-sales concerns.

Your feedback through the surveys has been incredibly valuable--please take the survey if you haven't (located on the home page of GiftWorks). And your feedback through the Make A Suggestion button is again, very important. We listen, we read every entry, and we learn how to better serve you. Thanks for your feedback.

Spamming Your Supporters October 27, 2005 By Steve Fafel

We had a glitch this week with our email marketing and accidentally spammed a few people looking at GiftWorks. Sorry! We're been switching away from a CRM system over to GiftWorks, and haven't started using GiftWorks yet for our marketing. So we blew it, and someone complained, as they certainly should.

What about your supporters? I get spam all the time from Witness.org, but I opt in and I like to see what they are up to. The IRC, on the other hand, isn't one of my big causes, and I would rather not keep up with them but I always forget to unsubscribe.

So how do you deal with emailing your supporters? Click Comments below.

Nice Customer Review October 26, 2005 By Steve Fafel

Sometimes we get some really great mail that lifts our spirits. I just received this from Karen Read, a customer in Vancouver, WA who raises funds for the Council for the Homeless:

Thank you so much for producing such a wonderful software product!  After extensive research of other database solutions large and small, we selected GiftWorks because it looked both powerful and easy to use.  You exceeded our expectations tenfold.  With the reporting and contact management capabilities GiftWorks has given our organization, we can strategize better and focus our fundraising where it can be most successful – with half the effort we were putting into our old database system.  It’s easier for us, better for our donors, and ultimately more beneficial to the community we serve.  This is software created by someone who understands what it takes to be successful in today’s fundraising environment.

Karen G. Read
Fund Development & Outreach Manager
Council for the Homeless

Thanks, Karen. If anyone gets the chance, check out the website of the Council for the Homeless. (As usual, you can comments below.) Sure makes our work feel meaningful!

Blogging for Nonprofits October 26, 2005 By Steve Fafel

There's a lot of hype about Web 2.0 (there is no clear definition of this) and blogging. I've been blogging for a long time off and on, since 1999. Only recently has it really taken off--we're at the beginning of the fast adoption of something that's fairly easy to do and useful if you get it right.

Nonprofits should blog. The more supporters you have, the more money you'll be able to raise from your support base. If you have 1000 supporters and 20% donate, it's likely that when you have 2000 supporters 20% will donate, doubling your fundraising base if not your funds. The more reach you have, the more people will support your cause.

Blogging gives you reach, gives you a connection, gives you a forum. It gives your supporters a way to find you, a way to interact with you, and a way to learn more about the daily or weekly changes and challenges of your cause.

So blog!

Help Has Arrived! October 23, 2005 By Steve Fafel

After an extra month of revision and writing, Help has arrived. You can access it online or download the pdf. Both are right here. Chow down!

Great Tip from Mal Warwick's Site October 23, 2005 By Steve Fafel

Mal Warwick advises Mission Research and has allowed us to pull articles from his archives and publish them here for you. Here's a good one:

Q: In what order should ask amounts be listed?
I recently got a piece in my own mail from the Salvation Army, and the string was as follows:

[ ] $65      [ ]$55      [ ]$100        [ ]other

Why do you think the amounts were listed in this order? — Diana Lee, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, Oakland, California

What is the best way to order your donation ask amounts on a reply form — lowest to highest, or highest to lowest? For example, should a reply form gift amounts read "$25 $50 $100 Other", or "$100 $50 $25 Other"? — Michelle Pilatzke, World Wildlife Fund Canada, Toronto, Ontario

Mal answers:  There's no "best" way to do this. Like just about every other detail in direct mail fundraising, this matter is testable. There are some practitioners who hold that the gift string should be ascending in donor or member acquisition mailings and descending in house file mailings. Presumably, they tested this question and found those arrangements advantageous.

A big mailer like the Salvation Army probably tests this sort of thing regularly. Either this is one of those tests, or previous tests have determined that it produces better results. Irregular sequences like this occasionally work well. All I can say, though, is that it's wise to test when in doubt.

Google AdSense October 21, 2005 By Steve Fafel

You'll notice the Google ads to the left. I'm experimenting with it, and I don't really like how it's turning out. Do you? We don't have control over what gets displayed, so the ad to the left and the ones to the right below are, well, not appropriate so we'll take them down this weekend. We sell nonprofit fundraising software, not ad space :)

And we'll replace them with ads from our nonprofit customers--no charge.

But if you run a nonprofit, you might want to consider Google AdSense for your site and/or blog. It's easy to set up, and if you're smart about embedding keywords in your content, you can get appropriate ads and some revenue--perhaps $1000 a year? Not bad.

There are a lot of great articles about setting it up at a venture capitalist's blog, Fred Wilson. And yes, I think nonprofits should start reading venture capitalist blogs, as antithetical as it sounds. Lots of great ideas out there--that's why there are a number of them listed below to the right.

Welcome Tech Soup Members! October 20, 2005 By Steve Fafel

We've been a fan of Tech Soup for a long time--we're pleased to see so many of you coming by! I've personally read a few hundred posts in Tech Soup Discussions--we really pay attention to the issues nonprofits face, and it informs our design and development choices.

You'll find our own Discussion Groups over at http://www.missionresearch.com/discuss, and the Knowledge Base at http://help.missionresearch.com. When trying GiftWorks, there's online Chat available for about 10 hours a day from the home page.

For you developers out there, we do have plans to release an SDK. GiftWorks is built on our Graphite application platform, which makes it easy to build new desktop applications that integrate with web functionality.

What web stuff? Well, the info on the Home page of the app is AJAX--the info is pulled from our servers. We update it occasionally, and there will be an RSS feed into it soon too. You can get automated updates over the internet, as well, and we post bug fixes and feature improvements out to your GiftWorks client on a regular basis.

There's more coming down the road--we have online services like online donations, email marketing (email is in now, but kind of buried), and address validation. If you have a real interest in seeing how GiftWorks is built, a lot of the presentation logic is viewable in the GiftWorks directories (look at 1033). If you play with the code, you can always reinstall, but I'd suggest making a backup copy of the folders you change. And no, the documentation for it isn't availablle yet. SDK 1.0 Alpha is coming soon.

So stay in tune--lots of great stuff on the way from Mission Research. And please feel free to comment below!

--Charlie Crystle, CEO

We Support Universal Healthcare October 19, 2005 By Steve Fafel

This is not a political company or political blog--we all have different perspectives on how the world should work. We make nonprofit fundraising software, and we do it well. But we all agree on at one thing: the health insurance crisis is affecting each of us personally, and we are committed to supporting any efforts to ease the pain.

So, for business reasons, for humanitarian reasons, for community and economic reasons, we support single-payer healthcare and would gladly pay a "health assurance" tax of 10% of payroll than a health insurance "tax" of 14% of payroll--our current costs.

Today, the single-payer legislation introduced by an org I'm involved with was endorsed by the Patriot News of Harrisburg. Everybody in, nobody out, and businesses pay less. I'm on my way to Harrisburg to meet with the Governor's Office on Healthcare Reform in about 10 minutes.

What's going on in your state? Can you afford health insurance? Would you join a pool of other nonprofits to make sure your employees are covered? Let us know.