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."

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.

New in GiftWorks 2011: Improved Canadian receipting November 19, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

Although the GiftWorks team is based in the U.S., our 11,000 clients hail from around the world—with nearly 7% being from our northern neighbor, Canada. From Nova Scotia to British Columbia, we are proud to work with so many wonderful organizations in the vibrant Canadian charitable sector.

In our latest release of GiftWorks, we made some changes specifically requested by our Canadian friends to help them comply with the Canada Revenue Agency (www.cra.gc.ca) receipting requirements. The CRA requires that specific information be included on receipts, plus it has rules for the reprinting of receipts. We also know that standard Canadian practice is to send year-end receipts, rather than a receipt for each donation, so we wanted to make this really simple too.

Canadian charities are benefiting directly from the wisdom and guidance their peers provided GiftWorks.

GiftWorks 2011 has a Canadian receipt template built in that contains the necessary formatting and all the required fields (including Total Advantage Value and Total Eligible Amount), but charities can certainly customize their own receipts very easily and insert the required fields as needed. Reprints and reissuance of receipts can be easily managed within CRA regulations as well.

Charlene Kelly of Key Bible Clubs in London, Ontario, is a fan of this new feature. She used to create receipts and adjust them outside of GiftWorks to meet the CRA requirements.  Now, she’s modified her receipt template in GiftWorks to create everything she needs in one place.  Plus, she says, "Our donors want year-end receipts. The receipt groups in GiftWorks 2011 make these really easy to do.”

For Canadian charities that haven’t yet tried GiftWorks, there is no better time than now! You will benefit directly from the wisdom and guidance your peers provided GiftWorks and will find it easier than ever to meet CRA requirements.

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Mary Pat Donnellon is the CEO of Mission Research, maker of GiftWorks.

GiftWorks 2011 is here! September 27, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

After months of intense work, we are proud to release the new edition of GiftWorks. We think you’ll share our enthusiasm for our latest and greatest edition.

How can you learn more about GiftWorks 2011?

• Take a GiftWorks overview webinar. Ellen glides through an hour with you and answers your questions in lively webinar overviews offered each week. Sign up here.
• Watch the videos. We have our own GiftWorks channel on YouTube, where Steve, Joe, and Jonathan have created a whole playlist to highlight what’s new in GiftWorks 2011. Check it out here.
• Read the blog. The team has written a number of brief, informative articles about GiftWorks 2011 features. You can read them here.

How can you get GiftWorks 2011?

• Current GiftWorks Anywhere customers were upgraded to GiftWorks 2011 automatically on September 27. Customers who are enrolled in the SmartPlan and pre-ordered GiftWorks 2011 will receive an email (sent to our primary contact for your organization) by Thursday, September 30, with license keys and upgrade instructions.
• Current customers who have not yet ordered an upgrade should do so now. We believe that GiftWorks 2011 can help make your organization run better, faster, and stronger. Email our sales staff to get current with GiftWorks 2011.
• Prospective customers who are still exploring GiftWorks will want to make sure they take a look at the newest edition by downloading a free 30-day trial of GiftWorks 2011.

New in GiftWorks 2011: Improved letter and envelope tools September 24, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

by Ellen Mowrer

GiftWorks 2011 features improved letter, envelope, and label tools.  Now you can better design the layout of your mailing communications. This is especially handy if your organization uses preprinted envelopes and letterhead.

With GiftWorks 2011 you can:

• Select the paper size used for your letters
• Select the paper orientation
• Use a ruler for indentations and tabs when you design mailing labels
• Adjust the positioning of address blocks on an envelope

For example, you can now easily insert your logo next to your return address on an envelope, print on A4 size paper (as long as your printer supports that size), or create a letter in landscape orientation.

Communications never looked so good!

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Ellen Mowrer is director of business development at GiftWorks.

New in GiftWorks 2011: More uses for donor notes September 24, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

By Maribeth Swarr

Historically GiftWorks customers have used the Donor Notes field for information they need to see only when they're looking at a donor record or printing a donor summary report. But what about the times when you need to export the donor notes to Excel? Or create a list of all donors with similar notes? These are things you'll be able to do in GiftWorks 2011.

Using the new Donor Notes Report, you can view a list of donor notes, then print or export the report if necessary. You can run the report on any SmartList of donors, or you can run it on a single donor record so you can work with the notes for just that one donor. A date filter allows you to view only notes that were created on particular dates.

Using new SmartList criteria, you can create a list of donors on the basis of different elements of their notes: note date, note title, and note body. You can also create a list of donors on the basis of whether or not their record contains any notes.

GiftWorks 2011 opens a whole new set of options for the use of notes in GiftWorks.

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Maribeth Swarr is the customer support manager for GiftWorks.

New in GiftWorks 2011: Phonetic search September 17, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

by Steve Fafel

You know that donor is in GiftWorks. You have heard her name. You may even have added it to the database yourself. Now, you can’t find her record. Finding donors in GiftWorks should be the easy part of fundraising—but when someone's made an error in data entry, what can you do?

In GiftWorks 2011, you can use a new feature that allows you to search for donors on the basis of what their name sounds like.

Let's say you're trying to record a donation from a second-time donor named Amy McBrum. You've checked the spelling of her name, and you know you're entering it correctly, but she's not coming up in your search. To try finding her with phonetic search, just click the Advanced Search link in the lower left corner of GiftWorks 2011:

This brings up the Advanced Search window, where you will enter Amy McBrum's name and check the box for “Include names that sound the same":

Your search results will include donors with names—first name, last name, or organization name—that match exactly what you entered, plus names that sound the same.

In this case the search turns up the Mack Broom Company, a donor named Jim McBruim, and Amy McBrum, whose last name was misspelled McBroom by the person who entered her data earlier:

This new feature speeds up data entry by allowing you to find donors whose records have been difficult to locate, reduces the occurrence of duplicate records, and improves your overall GiftWorks information management.

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Steve Fafel is a developer at GiftWorks.

New in GiftWorks 2011: Duplicate donor finder September 17, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

by Lisa Breneman

Whether you import your data into GiftWorks or enter it manually, there is a chance that you will end up with multiple records for the same donor. Misspellings, name changes, and other factors can all lead to the creation of duplicate records.

One method used to determine whether duplicate donors exist in the database is to search by name and review the search results. However, a search for Bill Shmitt would fail to reveal that a donor named William Schmitt also exists.

Another method is to view the All Donors (or All Donors and Affiliate Donors) SmartList. You can scroll through the list to look for potential duplicates. You'll probably spot many of them, but you may still miss a few.

While both of these methods may help you find duplicate records, in GiftWorks 2010 merging the duplicates is a separate step, so eliminating the extra records can be a complicated process.

GiftWorks 2011 solves both of these problems. It helps you find potential duplicate donors and assists you with merging them all at the same time!

This function scans the GiftWorks database for two or more records in which the donors have the same data in one or more fields that you select. The more fields you select, the more specific the matching process will be.

To locate this new feature in GiftWorks 2011, go to Settings / Additional Settings & Tools / Find Duplicate Donors.

There you will find 10 criteria options to choose from. You can select from one to five options to use for your search before proceeding to the next step.

In the example above, the user decided to search for duplicates in the field Address Line 1. GiftWorks 2011 then produced a list of donors with exact matches in that field:

At this point the user can print the list of potential duplicates by clicking the Print button on the right side of the screen, above the results list, or proceed to merging duplicates.

To perform a merge, you work with two records at a time, choosing one record (the "Merge record") to merge into the other (the "Keep record"). The donations, groups, and other data in the Merge record will be relinked to the Keep record; then the Merge record will be deleted.

As you see above, when you select the Keep record and the Merge record, summary information from both records appears at the bottom of the screen. This allows you to compare the information to be certain that you've selected the correct records.

As usual, we recommend backing up your database file before merging the donors. You can do this by clicking on the Back Up Database link in the paragraph above the results list.

We hope that this quick, flexible function in GiftWorks 2011 will provide you with peace of mind by helping you to keep your data as clean as possible.

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Lisa Breneman is a customer support representative at GiftWorks.

New in GiftWorks 2011: Saving report formats September 16, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

by Lisa Breneman

Have you ever created the perfect report within GiftWorks, only to find that you are unable to save the report format? If so, GiftWorks 2011 has a solution for you.

Reports will be run and customized the same way they were in GiftWorks 2010, but users now have the ability to save the specific format customizations they need.

In GiftWorks 2011, any customizations that you make to a report format will be saved, and they will be defaulted to the next time you run that report.

To use this feature, simply choose a report and set up the report options. Customize the report to show the columns you need. Then click on the Save Report Design option on the left side of the screen:

Follow the prompts to name your report, and give it a description too if you like.

Your saved reports will now show up under the My Favorite Reports section on the main Reports screen. This will allow you to easily find and process your reports.

You can manage your reports here as well. Click on the Manage link next to My Favorite Reports to delete reports, edit report names, and change the order in which report names are displayed.

We hope that this great new GiftWorks 2011 feature will save you time, increase your productivity, and allow you to print consistent reports all at the same time!

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Lisa Breneman is a customer support representative at GiftWorks.

New in GiftWorks 2011: Pledge payment enhancements September 14, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

by Joe Mosher

Donations are the lifeblood of nonprofit organizations. Without a steady and sustained flow of donations, it would be impossible for them to provide the essential services they impart.

Just as important as donations are pledges—the promise of donations to come. And tracking pledges from promise to payment is often a key element of a successful fundraising effort.

GiftWorks has always provided tools for handling pledge scheduling and payment. In GiftWorks 2011, we have enhanced these tools further, providing additional flexibility and reducing the number of steps needed to accomplish complex tasks such as applying partial or multiple payments.

Adjusting pledges for partial payments

Especially in these uncertain economic times, it is important to have a roadmap for future fundraising. Pledge tracking with GiftWorks allows you to plan ahead, to know how much you should expect to receive from donors and when it should arrive. But occasionally a partial payment comes in.

In GiftWorks 2011 we’ve added the ability to automatically create a new scheduled payment, with a date of your choice, to cover the unpaid balance of a pledge. You also still have the option to reduce the overall amount of the pledge or to add the unpaid balance to the final expected pledge payment.

Flexible options for multiple payments

There are also times when a donor has enjoyed good financial fortune and is able to provide enough to cover multiple scheduled pledge payments at once.

We’ve added two new options for recording these transactions very easily in GiftWorks 2011. You can enter a single payment that GiftWorks 2011 can automatically spread across multiple scheduled pledge payments at once, reducing the amount of data entry that would have been required to enter each amount separately. Or if you choose, GiftWorks 2011 can automatically combine multiple scheduled payments into one and apply the full amount you received to that single combined payment.

Combining payment options

Of course, there are also times when a donor provides an amount more than the expected payment but not exactly the sum or two or three payments. They may send in a check to cover a payment they missed in the past, plus the current payment, plus half of a payment scheduled for the future. They may send in enough to cover their remaining pledge payments in full, plus a little extra. No matter what the situation, the added flexibility of pledge payment handling options in GiftWorks 2011 has you covered.

For example, on the fly you can elect to combine three expected payments of $100 each into a single payment of $300, apply the $275 check you received against that combined payment, and create a new scheduled payment for the balance of $25. No need to manually add, adjust, or delete payments outside of the pledge payment wizard:

The hidden bonus: Unstructured pledges

We haven’t just enhanced the way traditional scheduled pledges are handled. By adding the new option to create additional pledge payments on the fly, GiftWorks 2011 also provides a method for you to easily track unstructured pledges.

For example, say you’ve been promised $5,000 by the end of this year, but the donor has not specified how or when it will be received. In GiftWorks 2011, you simply add a pledge that has a single expected payment of $5,000 on 12/31/2010. Then if you receive $1,200 in mid-October, you apply that payment and let GiftWorks 2011 automatically create a new expected payment for the $3,800 balance. The overall pledge amount remains the same, the payments get applied as they are received, and the unpaid balance is always accurately tracked—with no need to manually adjust the pledge during the process.

We know that your organization exists to provide services, and the less time you spend tracking pledges and performing data entry means the more time you can devote to improving our world. With GiftWorks 2011 we’ve made a great tool even better, saving you time for what’s important to all of us.

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Joe Mosher is a senior software developer at GiftWorks.