GiftWorks Anywhere a Perfect Solution for ABCNJ April 30, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

Anthony, our marketing intern, and I recently had the chance chat with Reverend Dr. Lee Spitzer of the
American Baptist Church of New Jersey (or the ABCNJ, for short). The spiritual leader of the community, Rev. Spitzer also was faced with the task of adapting the churches’ fundraising strategy to the ever-changing world.

ABCNJ seeks to organize the ministries and activities in its region to promote faithful and healthy churches, pastors and leaders, ministries and staff. Rev. Spitzer guides the 286 churches led by a total of 320 pastors as the Executive Minister and Senior Regional Pastor.

In selecting fundraising software, one of their requirements was the ability to access the fundraising information from multiple locations via a secure Internet connection. ABCNJ operates from two offices; and its staff spends much of their time working from home. The staff uses both Macs and PCs.

After taking fundraising courses and mulling through the endless possibilities of what software he should pick, Rev. Spitzer decided to go with his NYU professor's recommendation: GiftWorks (his professor is fundraising guru Ruthellen Rubin, CFRE). GiftWorks Anywhere was the best option for ABCNJ, as GiftWorks Anywhere offers the same easy-to-use, easy-to-understand software as GiftWorks—just accessible from anywhere.

“Our traditional way of funding was to receive donations directly through churches, but as society has changed, we now rely on individual donations. That’s why we chose GiftWorks.”

“This was a big decision. Once you buy into a software package, you’re stuck, especially after you train your staff. We were using QuickBooks to track all of our giving data, and GiftWorks caught my eye since it can integrate with QuickBooks. My staff and I are always on the go, so we knew that in-house software just wouldn’t cut it; GiftWorks Anywhere has been an efficient, safe and easy-to-use program!”

Rev. Spitzer’s and his organization’s GiftWorks Anywhere experience has been extremely positive. He appreciates that GiftWorks can take complex functions and make them simple, which is just what he tries to do in his sermons!  Seems easy, but it’s really challenging to accomplish well.

Organization out of Chaos April 22, 2010 By

Teresa Baker, Director of Development for St. Augustine Catholic High School in Tucson, AZ, tells her story like this:

“When I came to St. Augustine three years ago, I inherited an office filled with boxes and stacks of paper.  As a highly organized person, I thought I would faint!  I couldn’t imagine how the development office functioned without strict management of information, especially related to donor history.  It took two entire weeks for me to plow through all the boxes, organize the files, papers and then re-organize again to have all paperwork together by donor.

“Little did I know that this was just the beginning!  Although the school had been opened for 3 years, because of a series of unfortunate events, the development office lacked infrastructure and organization.  Disgruntled donors were calling, obviously upset that they had never received recognition or a tax donation letter/receipt. My immediate goal was to find a donor software system that was affordable!  I was up against three huge factors:  the school didn’t have any money for software; the part-time development assistant didn’t have advanced computer skills; and I needed to get things organized in a hurry because I had countless other challenges to tackle.

“The donor software system had to be user-friendly, with simple and logical processes. It needed to grow with our organization, yet provide features that were standard in the more expensive systems like Raiser’s Edge®.”  Most importantly, it had to be something a small, non-profit could afford.  After two days of research online, I discovered GiftWorks.  It was made to order!  Because it was affordable, I was able to secure a donor to sponsor the purchase and 40 hours of manpower to input donor history and data from paper files.

“Today we have over 2500 donors in our system and recently added the GiftWorks Online Donations feature to our website.  GiftWorks is on two computers in the development office and we have plans to add it to finance department later in the year.  The system is so organized and easy to use, that even a volunteer with little exposure to the program, can successfully navigate GiftWorks without hours of training.

“GiftWorks has been blessing for St. Augustine Catholic High School!  It enabled us to organize chaos in managing our donors.  So much so, that this year (my 3rd year), I was successful in soliciting over $5M from one donor!  This is what GiftWorks is all about---making things easy for the office to operate smoothly!”

Why We Do What We Do March 28, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

Every now and then, out of the blue, you get a reminder of why you do what you do.  Here's one I just received...enjoy!:

We are an NGO located in Cape Town, South Africa with a 72+ history of helping poor children who suffer with chronic medical illnesses. Many of the children we care for come from informal settlements and live in shacks that lack water, and electricity.  Three years ago the Board of Managers realized that St. Joseph's Home was spending down their limited reserve funds, and would go out of business within a few years. Realizing this the board made the decision to hire a fund raiser. The fund raiser who was hired immediately went about creating an organizational structure that would properly track long term supporters and allow for assorted campaigns to grow our donor base.

After ruling out local software products (too expensive), and ruling out creating our own excel spreadsheets (too time consuming), we found an exceptional product in GiftWorks. GiftWorks was easy to use, and provided an intuitive design with exceptional tracking. Gift Works also presented great value for price, and as far as we were concerned was as good as the more expensive products on the Market. The one drawback was the concern that it was not a South Africa product, and we were concerned at how receptive the GiftWorks team would be in lending assistance. Would they be responsive to our needs given that we are literally on the other side of the world?

Fast forward from 3 years ago to today. We have increased our donor giving going from 1 million to 4 million Rands. With each year of data entry into GiftWorks, we have found that the product becomes even more valuable to St. Joseph's Home.  In January of 2010 Gift Works tracking identified over 25 donor tasks that needed to be completed in February. It also identified 16 donors that have lapsed. It would be humanly impossible to have this degree of organization were it not for GiftWorks, and for that we thank the GiftWorks team for a job well done. You have enabled us to see a light at the end of the tunnel, and the children we care for today and will care for in the future will be assured that a bed at St. Joseph's Home will continue to be available. We would recommend this product to any NGO globally that wants to secure a robust top of the line fund raising product at an affordable price to consider GiftWorks.

We invite you to visit our web site to learn more about who we are and what we do (http://www.stjosephshome.org.za/). We invite you to come and visit us whenever you come to South Africa so that you can see first hand the value your product has had for St. Joesph's Home. It is only through a lot of good people, joining hands that we are all able to make the impossible possible.

Thank you and kindest regards,
Luis Medina

Nice Customer Review October 26, 2005 By

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!