Handle Donors with Kid Gloves; Handle Donor Data with Double Checks January 10, 2012 By Ewlacasse

A good way to start the year is with a staff review of the Most Common Missteps you can make to turn off otherwise-happy donors.  You might want to lighten the atmosphere by making up examples in the extreme.  People learn better in a cheerful atmosphere than with a knife being held to their throats..

Not necessarily in Disaster order, since in each case, it all depends on the generosity of the donor and the perceived flagrancy of the staff member.

 In the category of database negligence:

• You misspell the donor’s name
• You misspell the donor’s wife’s name
• You misspell the donor’s child’s name
• You address “Vaughn Hanline” as Dear Sir, when Vaughn is a lady. You address “Marian Thomas” as Dear Madam, when Marian is anything but a madam.
• A donor’s name got duplicated in the database; you mailed two appeals to the same donor at the same address before the donor asked you to stop (if you’re lucky!)
• You address a 10-year donor as “Dear Friend.”

 In the category of more personal negligence:

•  A thank-you letter (gift acknowledgement) arrives a month after the receipt of the gift.
• The donor asked for no more phone calls and the receptionist phoned her to say OK.
• The donor asked for no more fundraising appeals by mail, but someone decided that Christmas was an exception.
• A donor’s  spouse died and left you a large bequest.  Direct mail appeals continue to be addressed to “Mr. and Mrs.”
• The donor asked that his gift not be acknowledged in the annual report, but it was.
• You promised to follow up with a donor in a week, but (for whatever reason) you did not.
• A major donor asked the Development Assistant to send him your audited financial statements, but it never happened.
• You engraved your wealthiest donor’s name on the donor wall, at the wrong giving level.  
• A donor who attended last year’s gala was not invited to this year’s gala.
• Your new Major Gift Officer sat next to your most generous supporter at the gala and didn’t say a thing.
• Your on-hold music/radio station plays “Give it to me one more time."

In most cases, the misstep is not intentional, but the damage can spread farther than just a disgruntled donor.  It’s clear that you need to develop (and reinforce) systems of “check” and “double check” to avoid these potential catastrophes.  Making all staff aware of the danger of a moment’s inattention can save the day all around!

Year-End Reports: Beyond LYBUNT January 5, 2012 By Ewlacasse

GiftWorks Certified Consultant Sally Funk offers some insights into making your year-end reports work for you.  Based in Colorado Springs (CO), Sally is Donor Systems Specialist with McConkey-Johnston International, a fundraising and marketing consulting firm for nonprofit organizations.

You’ve finished entering gifts for 2011. Now’s a great time to run “big picture” reports to help you plan better and work smarter in 2012.

But which reports?

Remember, the main purpose of any report is to answer a question. With that in mind, what questions are the most important to ask – and answer – about your fundraising efforts last year?

The first thing that comes to mind is usually something like “How did we do last year?” or other performance-related questions. Basically, you need to know: “Did we work the plan?” and, “Did the plan work?” This translates into a number of comparison reports: actual to goal, this mailing vs. that mailing, this year vs. last year, etc. Use your Appeal and Campaign reports to get this information, but you’ll also need to gather data like expense and number mailed/invited to get the clearest picture.

The next question should be, “Did it make a difference?” Did your efforts to acquire new donors actually bring donors in the door? Are your continuing donors increasing, both in numbers and in giving amounts?

Think of the different steps donors can take with your organization. How many signed up last year? How many gave their first gift (and how much)? How many continued giving from 2010 to 2011? How many lapsed? How many lapsed donors came back on board? Of your continuing donors, how many gave more – or less?

You can use Smartlists to create these reports, and then you can compare growth – or lack of it – to your efforts last year. Here’s a sure way to focus your efforts for the year ahead.

 

Up the Email Addresses in your Database! November 18, 2011 By Ewlacasse

Many of us have email addresses for only 10% of our donors.  It stands to reason: people are reluctant to give their email address for fear they’ll receive a deluge of spam from you or others.  None of us likes this uninvited visitor.

But, as web use increases and more people become familiar with email transactions (bill pay, online purchase, membership renewals), it’s likely that a wider segment of the population might be willing to share their email address with you.

Two caveats:

            Never use an email address that wasn’t given with permission.

            Never abuse your donors by sending emails unrelated to their main interest or sharing email lists.

From your point of view, the benefit of having the donor’s email is shorter response time and your ability to share news quickly.

From the donor’s point of view, the benefit is less snail mail, quicker acknowledgment/receipting,

For both of you, there is great benefit in lowering costs of postage, paper—to the benefit of your mission.

In fact, statistically donors who share their email are more likely to be engaged donors and secure in their relationship with you.  So how would you move more people into that category?

1.  Anytime there’s a sign-up, event registration, raffle entry, petition signing, designate a column for E-mail address.  More and more people are willing to comply.

2.  When asking for gift, offer to send tax receipt by email, if donor provides.

3.  Invite donors to view a webcast; they’ll need to provide email to participate.

4.  At the end of a phone call, have all staff ask for the email—to save costs in future mailings.

5.  On your website, invite readers to sign-up for your email newsletter.

Be sure to offer the donor the option to control the frequency of emails from you.  Have a check off—“Please use my email in the future to save postage, paper, and mailings.”  Offer the donor options of hearing from you monthly or only quarterly, etc. Make it clear that the donor can opt out of emails at any time.

Donor giving is based on TRUST;  using a donor email addresses with respect and letting donors select the frequency of contact will enhance the trust they’ve already given you.

 

Keep your database at a sustainable healthy fighting weight! October 12, 2011 By Ewlacasse

“Database records are like monkeys on your back—either you feed ‘em regularly or you must shoot ‘em,” quips Duke Speer on GiftWorks Linked-In Users’ Group.*  What’s he talking about?

Here is what Duke has to say about keeping “miscellaneous lists” that come to you.  (These are different from your warm-leads and prospects that are more thoughtfully sought and for whom you have adequate information and intend to follow-up in the foreseeable future.)  Sometimes you have:

• “prospect” lists that fall into your hands from other organizations and events,
• people who live in a neighborhood/zip code you’re targeting,
• a Board member’s holiday card list to which you are expected to mail the
  end-of-year letter or invite to the annual gala or golf tournament, or
• subscribers to your website or newsletter.

Except for the subscribers, you have NO relationship to the prospects; they are cold leads. 

And for the subscribers, they have self-selected that they have some form of interest, but they are not donors (no need to import them if they are) and you frequently have no more reliable information than a valid email address to go with a questionable or partial name. 

My recommendation is to not put these cold leads into your GiftWorks database just because they are on a list.  The people in these lists are not worthy of a Donor record until “something more” happens: they contact you and ask for information, they send a gift, they register for your golf tournament ... something that indicates that they have a personal interest in either your mission or your social events. 

But why? 

Because incomplete and irrelevant records are “monkeys on your back.”  Once a record is in your database, it continually consumes resources.  It nags at you until you feed it with attention in the form of more details and fresh data, until it is placated and leaves you alone … for awhile; then those records want your attention again!  If they are not fed regularly with updated information, they become interruptions to your campaigns and distract you from working your hot prospects and ‘real’ donors.  They never go away until you finally shoot them.

“Don’t create a record unless you can feed, maintain, nurture, develop, and potentially get a gift from it.”

For weeks, months, and even years, an incomplete non-gifting Donor record will keep popping up needing your attention.  For each major mailing you have to think about whether to keep it or delete it, at a time when you can’t really remember why and how the record found its way into your database, so you err toward keeping it.  Incomplete records interrupt your workflow, making you feed it more attention.  These records slow searches for your true constituents and bloat reports.  They are forever a distraction consuming resources, yet will rarely become a productive donor record solely because it was imported into the database, if the initial campaign of touches were not successful in triggering “something more”.

Granted it is easy to import and then delete based on a Smartlist that selects by Source.  And by importing, you accomplish some deduping and data grooming.  But that whole process consumes staff time without a significant benefit.   The ROI doesn’t justify the effort.

Sure, use those lists for a mailing, or three, or seven.  But date them and discard them after a those uses.  By then, the few real prospects from the lists have emerged and responded in some way and thereby have their own Donor record as a result. What’s left of the original source list isn’t worth keeping.  Self-selection has cherry-picked the best; don’t let the rest take up space in your database.  If non-producing records are not imported in the first place, you don’t have to clean out the garage as often.

The result is that you keep your database at a healthy sustainable fighting weight.  No point stuffing it till it explodes.  Don’t import non-giving donor records beyond those warm leads and prospects that you and your staff can actually research, update, contact, and effectively campaign within the next year.  More than that is needlessly adding hungry monkeys to your database, instead of spending your time working your lists, making friends, sending appeals or dialing for dollars. 

Duke Speer is a member of the GiftWorks Consultant Partner Advisors Group, a group of independent specialists who help bring a community focus to the GiftWorks development team to better meet emerging trends in the not-for-profit community.  His home is in the pine trees near Park City, Utah, where he conducts GiftWorks training sessions between chairlift rides while skiing or mountain biking.  In his spare time he designs database-driven websites and newsletters for nonprofits using Joomla!  Give him a shoutout in the Linked-In Group or go skiing with him.

*If you’re a GiftWorks user who has not yet joined the GiftWorks Users Group on LinkedIn, join today.  This  customer-only community of more than 1500 members is where clients and experts help each other use GiftWorks to the fullest and share lessons learned.

 

 

Support Doubles the Value August 26, 2011 By Ewlacasse

“Sometimes I call 5 times a day, but usually about 5 times a month, depending on what I’m tackling!” jokes Kim Stutzman, Executive Director of the Clarke County Education Foundation (CCEF).  Who does she call when she gets stuck?

The GiftWorks Customer Care Team!

Because CCEF purchased the SmartPlan when they upgraded to GiftWorks 2011, Kim can utilize phone support every business day from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm (EST) in addition to free email assistance.

Clarke County, Virginia, is a small agricultural community of 13,000 in the northern tip of Virginia. An evolving culture and economy means that children no longer can-–or want to--assume a future on the farm.  To better prepare students for success, Clarke County schools have adopted an aggressive posture to help all the community’s children compete in today’s changing job market; not an easy task in a small rural community without substantial resources. To support major school projects and provide scholarships, parents and a local banker created the Clarke County Education Foundation (CCEF) in 1991.

When Kim transitioned from CCEF Board Member to the only paid employee about a year ago, donors files were managed manually or on spreadsheets.  Wanting more ways to “slice and dice” her existing donor records, Kim implemented GiftWorks. (She learned about GiftWorks at a conference for MidAtlantic Consortium of Education Foundations.)  With GiftWorks she can easily find a donor’s gift history or relationships.  She also uses the Pledge function to remind donors of the date they've chosen to make for  their annual gift.

In 2005, the Foundation led a Science Summit bringing together Clarke County high school students and Nobel laureates, professor, and politicians around the subject “Science and Creative Thinking.” The Foundation’s Dictionary Project puts a dictionary in the hands of every third grader in public and private schools in the county.  Other funds support:  Auditorium, Bridges, Science camps, playgrounds, BookFest, and athletic team grants.

Kim considers GiftWorks a significant contributor to the success of her organization. She states that the design is “professional and organized” and Customer Care makes GiftWorks even more enjoyable to use.

One of the processes she uses for the mailing for the annual October gala is zip code select. Rather than mail to a donor living in California (or someone else unlikely to attend), Lisa-–a GiftWorks Senior Customer Care Associate - helped Kim screen her general list for distant zip codes which eliminated wasted time, materials, and postage.

Kim also appreciates that GiftWorks allows her to personalize the many different types of communications she keeps in the Letter Library. She estimates that she has at least 18 different donor letters and 25 different donation letters.  She uses the appropriate letter to make specific references to scholarships, grants or projects of particular interest to the addressee.

She also called for help when she was unable to format her letters to fit appropriately on her letterhead.  Lisa provided instructions on how to format a template so that a new design isn’t required when board members change.  “This is a real cost-saver,” said Kim. With a color printer, the letterhead is created with the letter—eliminating the need for reams of preprinted stationery.

 "GiftWorks has been a significant tool for our nonprofit organization, says Kim.  "Having our database of donors and all the mailing and report functions at my fingertips has saved considerable time and money that can now be spent enhancing the Clarke County Public Schools."

Consultant recommends "First Things First" August 22, 2011 By Ewlacasse

In the 80s, Tom Iselin was a successful stock options trader. He also wrote a pioneering software program to manage multi-traders’ risk in multiple derivative products. At age 30, Tom sold his software to a Continental Bank and then help the bank design one of the first 24-hour, international trading programs for currency derivatives in the US.

He had it all—money, sports cars and a high-rise penthouse. Then one night, Tom had a life-changing, near-death experience. It was a wake-up call most people never want to answer. But the phone kept ringing. When he answered, his purpose in life changed. The next morning, Tom reversed his priorities and exchanged his trading jacket and self-centered life for a meaningful, selfless life of helping others through sacrifice and service in the nonprofit sector.

Tom decided to redirect his business skills to the nonprofit world. He went on to start, build and rescue some of the nation’s most notable nonprofits including The Hunger Coalition, DrugFreeWave, and Higher Ground. He’s also published three books, speaks regularly at conferences and workshops, and has a thriving business offering consulting services to early stage nonprofits.

Having held all types of nonprofit positions, Tom knows firsthand the hardships of starting nonprofits, the frustrations of running boards, the challenges facing chief executives, the difficulty of securing major fund­ing in tough economic times.

This diverse work experience combined with his extensive background in business, education, and philanthropy gives Tom a unique perspective into the soul of starting, building, and managing thriving nonprofits.

You can benefit from Tom’s wisdom by registering for GiftWorks First Things First webinar series (five sessions, beginning August 23, 2011), where he’ll share a number of governing principles, operational structures, and practical tactics most early stage nonprofits overlook or undervalue.  Register at  https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/151065385.

As Tom posits, the energy of most young nonprofits centers on passion and programs, but too little effort is directed to the foundational structures required to build long-term stability. The result: young nonprofits soon become unstable and then they are forced to must spend their limited supply of resources fix blunders or adopts systems and structures that are now necessary to support programming and operations, yet should have been put in place much early.

For example, most early stage nonprofits wait too long to invest in a contact database system to manage their donor information and track giving.  Remember index cards, Excel spreadsheets, Access?  Managing 20 or 50 donors in an Excel spreadsheet is fine, but the longer a nonprofit waits to adopt a contact database system to major donors and volunteers, the more costly and time-consuming it becomes. What happens when the nonprofit is managing 200, 1000, or 5000 donors?

Whenever a nonprofit installs a new system, staff need to spend time to learn the system, maintain the old system, and redirect human resources that could be spent running programs or other areas of operations.

Adopting contact database software involves more than just importing data, the process often involves filling in missing data, making decisions about how things should be interrelated, and predicting new ways you’ll want to manipulate the data in the future.

 “You need to think about the space between the system you are now using and the system you want to have down the line.  You need to map out the process of getting from here to there; and the earlier you do this, the better.”

There is no benefit to delaying the installation of this cornerstone operational structure. In fact, the longer a nonprofit waits to adopting a foundational component such as contact database software, the more time and effort it will take to make the switch—and the switch almost always comes at an inconvenient time such as during a growth spurt.

The good news is once you have adopted a quality contact database system like Giftworks, it allows a nonprofit to leverage the information it already has, such as finding effective ways to manage donors, target messages, and generate reports.

Once a nonprofit is up and running with new database software, it’s important staff spend time to continually learn new functions and features. For example, there are many ways staff can learn to parse its donor database to improve the success of a targeted fundraising campaign.

Staff could generate a report of midlevel donors who have given $500 or more over each of the last five years, and then examine the list to determine which of these donors has the potential of making a $1000 gift this year. Or create a donor field to identify those givers who came to you through an event vs. those who found you through service lines, vs. those who first responded to a mail solicitation. The upshot: the more features and functions staff learns about a program like Giftworks, the more effectively the nonprofit can manage its donors, engage volunteers, raise money, and sustain its mission.

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Keeping the Faith-ful; reviving lapsed donors August 8, 2011 By Ewlacasse

Faithful donors are our life’s blood.  While we are working our hardest and taxing our wits developing strategies to identify and attract new donor prospects, it is the loyal base that keeps our efforts operating.  Yet do you even know when one of the faithful falls from the ranks?

The donor rarely keeps track of the time since the last gift to you.  Most rely on your gentle reminders to trigger the next gift.  It may be your annual campaign solicitation, but hopefully you are in touch with them more often than the predictable every-twelve-months.  And you should be offering them opportunities to interact with your organization and help financially more than once a year.  It takes regular communication to maintain your place in their hearts.

So how do you keep track of this?  Well, say you do two mailings a year (your Big event and your annual appeal).  Then you need to look at your lapsed donors (sometimes called LYBUNTs—last-year but-not-this-year) about every nine months.  Whether they meant to or not (or had a change in family situation), they have neglected to respond to two mailings.  You might make a personal phone call, mentioning that you haven’t heard from them in a while, and telling them about a special project they might be interested in.  It’s a good idea to ask for a specific amount at this point (but no higher than their last gift), bring them back into the flock in a nonthreatening way, then start again from that point.

When you send your annual solicitation, write a separate letter to those who didn’t give the previous year. Make gentle reference to their lapse, as in “we’d love to welcome you back to our family of active supporters.” If they didn’t realize they had lapsed, now they will and will become more attentive to their giving in the future.

If the donor fails to respond to the second solicitation, send another note saying “we miss you” and enclosing a survey asking “Can you tell us why you stopped giving?”  Offer a choice of typical responses (Too much mail, Lost your address, change in giving priorities, and I didn’t realize…).  You’ll be happy to see the number who “didn’t realize” and will return your envelope with a check.

Don’t give up on those who don’t respond to “we miss you” approach.  The cost (literal and figurative) of obtaining a new donor is still more than you’ve invested so far.  After another six months, approach them with another mailing or call with a specific offer and a request slightly lower than their last gift.  (This works especially well when you can say “your gift will be matched…).

And occasionally, in the future, send your appeal with the “we miss you” letter, and include them in your planned giving offers if age appropriate.

Track your results (and costs) over time to gauge how much follow-up—and what kind--works for you.  When someone has responded to your appeals in the past, it’s very likely that they still have an interest in your mission.  And those, after all, are the ones you want most.

Nature or Nurture? Influence of Family on Charitable Behavior July 6, 2011 By Ewlacasse

Being a donor has a high correlation with having parents involved in nonprofits—80 percent, in fact!  If your parents aren’t “donors,” there’s only a 25 percent chance that you will become one. These findings were reported recently in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Fundraisers know that household income and education levels are key elements in predicting who is most likely to give, but parental involvement in charitable causes is an even better indicator.

What does this mean?  Well, there’s a double benefit from engaging today’s adults to volunteer their time at your organization, to talk to their kids about nonprofits they support, or to give money to their church, says Lisa McIntyre, senior vice president for strategy development at Russ Reid, the California direct-marketing group who conducted the study.

In order to do that, you’ll need to have info in your database to identify which of your donors are also parents.  You might also want to “work” this insight by:

            Devising a strategy to uncover who in your database is a parent.

            Creating a program to encourage parents to involve their children in your organization.

            Including activities of interest to children in your main events.

You can grow your own donors in the next generation!

For more information on this study, visit http://philanthropy.com/article/Parents-Matter-New-Study/124120

 

 

GiftWorks’ Features Enhance Efforts for CoDevelopment Canada June 1, 2011 By Ewlacasse

“Right now, we’re testing a Mother’s Day appeal, and we can watch the results coming in daily,” Jen Kirk, Director of Development at CoDevelopment Canada (CoDev), reports as one of her favorite things about GiftWorks.  Beyond just maintaining the database, Jen finds that many of the features of GiftWorks give her important information that she needs, and with clarity.

When they are designing a campaign, they consider fundraising industry standards, what their campaigns usually generate, and set an expected rate of return for the new effort.  They can then evaluate the rate of return as it happens using the tools built into GiftWorks.

“Reports and Smart Lists functions make it easy for us to compare giving patterns with previous years and keep on top of any donors who, unexpectedly, do not respond,” Jen adds.  “Another advantage of GiftWorks is that it automatically uploads information to a donor’s file—when a mailing is sent, or a newsletter, or a receipt--giving us consistency in recordkeeping without having to go back and update donor files.”

CoDevelopment Canada is a not-for-profit that works for social change in Latin America and in Canada.  Since 1985, CoDev has been improving the lives of women, workers, and communities by linking groups in Canada with organizations in Latin America working for social justice.  Some of the global issues they tackle are protecting workers’ rights, improving public education, strengthening grassroots initiatives, and promoting fair trade. You can learn more about their work at www.codev.org

When you donate to CoDev,  you become a part of a group of caring individuals and organizations committed to global justice. CoDev is a membership based organization and has a monthly giving program called ‘Partners in Solidarity.’ In 2005, the CoDev Endowment Fund was launched in celebration of 20 years of building sustainable and equitable global development. A gift to the Endowment Fund, held at Vancity Foundation, plants the seeds for global justice and ensures a long-term legacy of growth for CoDev.

“Giftworks saves us time and gives us many options right at our fingertips so that we can steward our donors better,” Jen Kirk concludes.

Database: Trash or Treasure? April 15, 2011 By Ewlacasse

You can have five thousand donors in your database, but if you have only their addresses and phone numbers, you don’t have much more than a phone directory.  You can have one hundred fields per donor, but if you can’t turn them into the reports you want, it’s just gigabytes.

Strengthening your database by thinking through a few principles will result in happier, more generous donors and volunteers.   Try these for size: 

Who should be entering the data?  Limit the number of enterers, provide them training, and set expectations.  Although it may seem like a job that anyone can do, only someone who understands what the end result needs to be and that accuracy is critical is qualified to do the job.

Where is the data entered?  As a GiftWorks user, you’ve already consolidated all your records/lists into a single database, so there should be no need for duplicate entry (and the errors that inevitably result).  Everyone knows where the latest and most correct data is.

What gets entered where?  Standardize data entry.  Create a one-page document with the “rules” that make sense for your organization.  How to enter a married couple who do not share the same last name.  Where do you note family relationships? How is missing information to be handled?

Abbreviations, punctuation, titles, alternate contacts, etc., and how to record the date the file was most recently updated---Set up standards that every enterer follows.  As time allows, go back and correct previous entries.

When is “spring cleaning”?  Twice a year, run different reports from your database and look for problems with data.  Two common issues that cost you money are duplicate entries and missing zip codes. And you never know when you might send a letter to Mr. Jones and his first wife as well as one to Mr. Jones and his second wife—leading to complications you don’t even want to think about!  Make a plan to find and fix errors.

Who should be in your database?  Donors, certainly, but also volunteers, clients, employees, sponsors, service providers, media contacts, elected officials, etc.  Create categories so these constituents can be retrieved in appropriate groups.  And why haven’t you ever solicited some of them?

How often do you back-up?  You wouldn’t want to have to recreate more than a week’s worth of data, so back up at least weekly. And be sure to store your backup outside of the office in case of fire, theft, or other hazard.

The more carefully and thoughtfully you tend your database, the greater your potential harvest.

        Thanks to dogood consulting http://www.dogoodconsulting.org/ for consolidating the list.