GiftWorks Web Collect a Hit with Colorado Foundation July 26, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

by Ellie LaCasse

Corinne O’Flynn wanted GiftWorks Web Collect even before it was released. “Once we saw the ease with which GiftWorks Online Donations was able to capture data, it was an instant wish that we could capture data online outside of an appeal for donations.”

Corinne is the founder of the Rowan Tree Foundation (Parker, CO), whose mission is helping families heal after the death of a child.

Rowan Tree’s website receives 160,000 hits each month. And though the organization’s events are local to Colorado, the foundation provides support and outreach worldwide. Only “about 65% of our website visitors are from the U.S. Most people find us via Google,” Corinne reports. “There is so little active support for those grieving the loss of a child across the globe that those who find us stay connected no matter what the distance.”

Each year Rowan Tree holds several memorial events enabling families to commemorate their child. One of them is an annual summertime Butterfly Release. Both attendees and nonattendees can register to have their child’s name read aloud and listed in the event program. Rowan Tree is using Web Collect to take and fulfill orders for personalized keepsakes made from photos taken at this year’s Butterfly Release.

"Fewer fingers involved, fewer mistakes."

Corinne created an online form with Web Collect to capture important personalized data and contact details. She then integrates this data seamlessly into her GiftWorks database. If the information collected includes monetary gifts, Corinne uses GiftWorks Online Donations to process the gifts. She is able to check and manage Web Collect, Online Donations, and GiftWorks Data Protect all from a single dashboard. “Fewer fingers involved, fewer mistakes,” Corinne quips.

After this event and others, Rowan Tree mails event programs, keepsakes, or other items to participants. “Having all the data on hand to do this automatically is great!”

Corinne has ambitious plans for future use of Web Collect, and she’s in conversation with GiftWorks developers, helping identify the most desirable new functions. As her next project, she hopes to develop a survey of 5–10 questions, use Web Collect to bring the responses into GiftWorks, then use that data to build a new awareness program.

“At Rowan Tree Foundation, we hope to help change the way child loss is addressed so parents have access to compassionate care that respects the humanity of their child, the gravity of the loss, and the lifelong impact that the loss of a child has on the family,” Corinne concludes. “To accomplish this goal, we need to have accurate information in our database so that we can treat each family with the utmost compassion.”

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Ellie LaCasse, a friend of GiftWorks, is officially retired from fundraising but is forever a community volunteer.

July Nonprofit of the Month: St. Joseph's Home in Cape Town, South Africa July 5, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

Each month, our intern Anthony highlights one of our GiftWorks clients as Nonprofit of the Month.  If your organization would like to be considered for a feature in an upcoming month, please email us at giftworks@missionresearch.com.  Here's Anthony's feature on the St. Joseph's Home for Children in South Africa:

Meet St. Joseph's Home for Children in South Africa by Anthony Fucito

As the world turns its eyes to South Africa for the international excitement of the World Cup, we here at GiftWorks are looking deeper, to Saint Joseph’s Home for Children in Cape Town.

Saint Joseph’s Home for Children is a medical facility in South Africa offering convalescent care to poor children who suffer from chronic medical conditions like cancer, HIV/Aids, congenital abnormalities and other life threatening conditions.

This year marks the Home’s 75th year of uninterrupted service to those most in need, having been managed by the Pallottine Missionary Sisters since 1935. Through the sisters' continuous dedication to provide service at no cost to families, they have made sure that the Home addressed all the needs of the child, such as having a school on the grounds, a preschool program, and a physio and occupational therapist.

Since they provide their services at no cost to families, fundraising is a huge priority. Their campaign to raise the funds is called “Mind the Gap”, in which they seek to close their 35% budget deficit.

This is not an easy task to accomplish. They made the decision to hire a full time fundraiser, as their cash reserves would only support St. Joseph’s for a limited time. One of the first tasks of the fundraiser was to organize existing donors, and that led them to GiftWorks. At a fraction of the cost of other similar products on the market, they found GiftWorks to be the best fundraising software to meet their needs.

“Over the three years we have been using GiftWorks, we have been able to organize our long-term donors, and effectively manage assorted campaigns and our volunteers," said Luis Medina, the Resource Development Director for St. Joseph’s Home. "Our donors and the money we have raised has increased each year, and the value of GiftWorks in tracking tasks and in report writing have allowed us to stay better connected to our donors who come from all over the world.”

The only concern was location. The GiftWorks Team was located half way round the world.
Luis added: “Would they be able to support our needs in Africa? The answer to that question was quickly realized once we started using the product. The GiftWorks team is exceptionally talented and really know their product. In spite of the distance and the time change, their service feels like they are just down the block.”

South Africa certainly feels like it’s right up the block to us here too, since every time we turn on the television or log onto Yahoo, there is a news post about the excitement of the World Cup. With all of this hype and action, we figured that there had to be some interesting stories.

“Several of our children just came back from a soccer game. They got to sit in box seats donated by a major company. The kids had the time of their life. They watched Cameroon lose to Holland 1 to 2.”

Amongst the excitement, there is always more work to be done. St. Joseph’s Home is hosting their 75th Anniversary Gala Event on September 9, 2010. They are also always looking for support from the global community—to donate to St. Joseph’s Home, please visit their website at http://www.stjosephshome.org.za/.  

May Nonprofit of the Month: Bethania Kids May 5, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

Each month our intern Anthony 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. Here's his feature of Bethania Kids:

Changing Lives from Childhood Up

Bethania Kids is always putting children before revenue; noting that 100% of contributions are given directly to support children in India; they are truly a “not-for-profit” organization.

“This is a ministry that nurtures and equips the children of India through Jesus’s love to change their world and many of the children who started as preschoolers in the beginning are now getting ready to graduate from high school,” says Tena Marsiglia, the director of development of Bethania Kids.

The organization has been using GiftWorks fundraising software for over 3 years now, but their history extends well beyond that. Bethania Kids was founded in 1987 with Dayavu Dhanapal, and the Granner and Hennig families in southern India. Twenty-three years later, and the organization is still going strong, helping about 900 children in several locations.

Tena explains some of the ways GiftWorks has helped Bethania Kids:

• “Bethania Kids workers don’t have time to worry about manually searching through donor records; that’s why they use GiftWorks. Tena notes that “GiftWorks allows for more flexibility so that we can see if a donor has fulfilled a pledge. This makes it easy to send a friendly reminder in the fall of each year.”
• “Reports are 100% better than the previous database and this means that our Board members have a much better awareness of where Bethania Kids stands in regard to donor giving.”
• “And finally when it comes to auditing, GiftWorks provides a much higher level of accountability.”

Tena adds that “we have a great curriculum available for churches or schools if they want to do a mission project. I am also available to help guide a committee or individual that is interested in doing a fundraiser for Bethania Kids.” To find out more about Bethania Kids or to become a sponsor, go to http://www.bethaniakids.org.

Compelling Client Stories February 7, 2010 By Mary Pat Donnellon

We just published our February eNewsletter which had three compelling client stories.  I think they captured the essence of the transformation that GiftWorks can help inject into an organization. I am going to reprint them here this week just in case you're not on our email list or you zipped through your inbox before reading the whole enewsletter.  (You can get on the email list by subscribing here).

The story below emphasizes the efficiencies an organization gains by using the right software.  If a nonprofit spends hours or days on activities that really should take alot less, it might not be serving its mission as well as is could be.  If you could save 5 hours a week, or 1 whole day a week, what would you do with it? I suspect you would do alot...

Please comment if your organization has identified or implemented operational efficiencies that others may benefit from! 

Haiti: Emergency Aid and In It For the Long Term
In a critical time for its mission, Health and Education for Haiti is thankful for the efficiencies that GiftWorks has brought to their operation.

"This month Health and Education for Haiti has three medical teams operating in the Jeremie area of Haiti (approximately 100 miles west of Port-au-Prince)," reports Treasurer Richard P. Gustafson. Each team (consisting of 8-14 health care professionals — doctors, nurses, pharmacists) serves one week — providing basic medical care; in more challenging cases (requiring surgery or ongoing care), they refer patients to other providers in the region--and cover the costs of the patient's care.   

Since their organization relies so heavily on outside help, the GiftWorks Volunteers Add-in is especially valuable. "The ability to track all of our volunteers and their skill sets is critical.  Our medical mission coordinator can easily identify which doctors have gone on missions, their specialties, and our experiences with them.  It enables us to fill our missions, such as the current crisis, with the right providers at the right time," according to Gustafson.

Health and Education for Haiti was founded in 2008 to provide medical services, education, infrastructure, and basic needs to less privileged Haitian citizens. In many areas of Haiti, the only functioning organizations in the lives of the villagers are their local Catholic parishes; Health and Education for Haiti works with these parishes to provide better lives for Haiti's citizens.

Beyond the current crisis, Health and Education for Haiti works in four program areas: medical missions, education (sponsoring students and supporting teachers), infrastructure(communications, water, power), and basic needs (developing sustainable food and shelter). They work primarily in the Grande-Anse Department (province) in Haiti, which has historically been underserved by both the Haitian Government and International Non-Government Organizations (NGOs).

Donations are received online and elsewhere — and 100% of donated funds goes directly to the services in Haiti. The Board itself underwrites all of their fundraising, general, and administrative expenses.

Health and Education for Haiti has used GiftWorks software for about eight months; "it's really helped us to improve our focus on mission delivery.  The software has reduced the administrative tasks around our fundraising.  The integration between GiftWorks and QuickBooks has enabled us to enter information once and have it appear everywhere we need it. ("Before using GiftWorks we had to enter our donor information into QuickBooks and Excel [for mail merge], and also enter the donation information into QuickBooks and Word [for receipts and thank you letters].) Now we are able to enter all of this information once into GiftWorks, and it manages all the other activities for us."

For more information or to donate to Health and Education for Haiti, visit http://site.hehonline.org. 

 

Meet The Rowan Tree Foundation - GiftWorks Story Winner August 10, 2009 By Mary Pat Donnellon

We having been sharing the results of our Share Your GiftWorks Story Contest where clients could tell us how GiftWorks has helped their nonprofit organization achieve its mission. Here is the winning entry submitted by Corinne O'Flynn, Executive Director of the Rowan Tree Foundation in Parker, Colorado. The Rowan Tree Foundation is dedicated to helping families heal after the loss of a precious child.  The pictures below are from their Butterfly Release and Remembrance Event in June. Here's an exerpt of what Corinne had to say:

For an all-volunteer nonprofit organization, managing our donor lists, receipt numbers, acknowledgements, contact information, and especially our events, using only spreadsheets has been cumbersome. Most CRM products were simply beyond our reach financially.

Then I heard a few things GiftWorks that instantly put it at the top of my "to try" list.

One is the ease of use. Downloading the free trial took moments, and I was up and running in less than an hour with my own data. On the first day, the reports I produced using the GiftWorks SmartList tool enabled me to see my fundraising history in a whole new way.

Another is that it links up directly with QuickBooks. My fantasy of doing data entry only once has come true! All donation information is entered and posted into QuickBooks with the touch of a button.

Using GiftWorks, in less than a month I had sent out all of my pending tax receipts, corresponded via email using the built-in mass mail tool, finally had a single place to store my donor information, printed out perfect mailing labels, and began thinking about campaigns and appeals differently.

GiftWorks has a fabulous help window that you can keep expanded on the side of your screen that gives helpful tips and tricks relating to the current tasks you are performing. By nature of its own design, GiftWorks has improved the way I collect data, manage data, and plan for donation campaigns….It is hard to believe that we used to attempt all of this using a spreadsheet! With GiftWorks, we spend most of our time working on our mission and less time managing the back-office. I am not sure how to put a price tag on that!

Next GiftWorks Story Winner: The Welcome Ministry August 5, 2009 By Mary Pat Donnellon

Rev. Meghan Rohrer is the leader of the Welcome Ministry (www.welcomeministry.org) in San Francisco.  Welcome is comprised of 12 churches and faith-based organizations working together whose mission is "provide a faithful response to poverty and to improve the quality of life for individuals in our community by providing: hospitality; education; food; and referrals for housing, health care and drug and alcohol treatment."  Here's her GiftWorks story:

The Welcome Ministry works with the chronically homeless and hungry in San Francisco. We specialize in one-on-one care that enables people to make the small changes that make a big difference. In the past year, we discovered that helping the homeless get their identification enabled more than 155 of our chronically homeless guests move indoors.

 

When we were looking for fundraising software to grow our program, we wanted something that was easy to learn, professional and cost effective. With only two paid staff, we also needed software that would quickly produce professional development materials.

 

GiftWorks Fundraising Software provides us with professional development tools that are easy to use, cost effective and more than doubled our donor giving. Not only does it take less time and training than other programs, it also provides customized reports for our board of directors. GiftWorks Fundraising Software enables us to spend less time fundraising and more time helping those most in need.

 

Other non-profits complain that they are unhappy with the hidden fees and poor customer service of other leading fundraising software providers, but GiftWorks Fundraising Software provides us with a quality product and exceptional customer support.

 

If your organization is looking for software that will save you time, money and give you control of your database, join the Welcome Ministry and make the switch to GiftWorks Fundraising Software today.

 

GiftWorks Story Winner: Cancer Resource Center of the Finger Lakes August 3, 2009 By Mary Pat Donnellon

Now meet Shawn Galbreath, CFRE, Executive Director of the Cancer Resource Center of the Finger Lakes.  She joined Ithaca Breast Cancer Alliance and led its transition from grassroots organization serving women with breast cancer to a mainstream community service organization serving all people with any type of cancer (now CFCFL).  Please visit their website at www.ibca.net.  Part of this successful transition was GiftWorks - here is the winning story submitted by Shawn and her team:

CRCFL, from 1994 to 2007, was the Ithaca Breast Cancer Alliance: a small group of women dedicated to supporting other women in the local area who were diagnosed with breast cancer and going for treatment.  They served about 200 people year, counting family members and others in a person’s network. They were only part time and had a small number of dedicated volunteers.  They raised about $20,000 a year in a good year through a walkathon and some direct appeal letters.  Everything was paper-based, no computers!  But the mission of the organization to create and sustain a community of cancer survivors remains to this day: highly reliant on self-help among survivors.

Then in 2006 they decided to serve anyone with any cancer and changed its by-laws, services, and mission to reflect that.  They hired a new executive director with a background in nonprofit management, was a professional fundraiser, and a cancer survivor herself.  She began to network and raise the profile of CRCFL in the community reaching for more resources for this little-known, but well-loved and underfunded organization.  The biggest changes she made were to computerize, buy GiftWorks and move the organization to its own building. 

The database has changed everything.  Adding the volunteer management component has not only helped to organize and recognize the fantastic contribution of volunteer cancer survivors, but also to organize and network cancer survivors with each other: the very mission of the organization!  We now are doing monthly e-newsletters directly from GiftWorks to our volunteers, client-survivors and to the general public!  All of this and saving more staff time for clients than ever before!

Fundraising is part marketing and part asking for donations.  GiftWorks donor database has played a major role in growing a small organization with 200 names in paper folders, raising $20,000 a year into a well-networked organization. With a full continuum of services and full time staff thanks to the capacity to manage the donor database, 11,000 people are raising over $200,000 annually and providing substantial in-kind services and products to over 600 clients a year.

The capacity to segment donors and prospects for special attention, do quick donor analyses to identify prospective major donors, and to pull reports quickly have enabled CRCFL  to be a flexible and responsive organization. 

From the beginning CRCFL has benefited from the responsive customer service from Mission Research and seen how our feedback has had a direct impact on the upgrades.  And not to forget the cost! There is no comparison. We frequently get calls from other agencies looking at GiftWorks software and they report the astronomical prices of other company’s products, which of course we had seen as well.  

We have increased our service range and capacity, our staff numbers and capacity, lowered our overheads and are more responsive and efficient.  This reputation makes it easier to fundraise especially when you can point to the fact that more money goes directly to the client services, not overheads!  It’s just been win, win, win all around!

GiftWorks Story Winner: Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas July 30, 2009 By Mary Pat Donnellon

Our "Tell Us Your Story" contest surpassed our best expectations.  The entries were both voluminous and beautiful.  To hear first-hand how GiftWorks has helped nonprofit organizations become better and stronger is over-the-top gratifying.  We set out to change the world of fundraising software by offering the nonprofit sector an intuitive, well-designed fundraising software solution that is also easy-to-use and very fairly priced.  We're not resting on our laurels, but are glad to know that we're doing something right.

Selecting the winners of the contest was not easy - they were all outstanding.  In the end, we voted and the top four won prizes.  I will feature each of the winners here this week. Today, please meet one them, the Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas.  The Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas "works to eliminate hunger by distributing food to people in need through a network of non-profit agencies and programs."  Each and every week the Food Bank feeds approximately 4,200 people.  Vicki Pillow, Director of Development, sent us her story:

GiftWorks has given the Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas one of the most important benefits a non-profit organization can have…more time.  It is my pleasure to list the ways that GiftWorks has helped the mission of the Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas.

•        The time spent trying to remember the exact way the donor was entered into the system, so that it could be found again, is now spent distributing more than 1.7 million pounds of food and grocery products through our agencies, including food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, non-profit daycare centers, senior citizen centers, and special care facilities.

•        The time spent pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to make our software work is now spent recruiting sponsors and volunteers for our Senior Pack Program, a food box program for elderly people living on fixed incomes.

•        The time spent running reports is now spent delivering the child friendly, nonperishable, easily-consumed, nutritious food for children at risk of hunger as part of our Backpack Program.

•        The time spent waiting for the software to complete a step (not unlike watching molasses run) is now spent on our commodity distribution system.  The Food Bank works with the USDA to distribute commodity foods to 11 counties in Northeast Arkansas.  In 2008, the Food Bank conducted 4 to 5 distributions at each of our 18 different sites, serving thousands of families each quarter. 

•        The time spent on the old mail merge system is now spent networking with community businesses and civic organizations to build partnerships with the Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas.

•        The time spent memorizing codes, to be able to run the system, is now used to do research on available grants to build the capacity of our 84 non-profit agencies and programs.  GiftWorks is such an intuitive system, that I usually figure out what I need to do in a matter of minutes.   

•        The time spent rebooting the old system again and again is now spent working to eliminate hunger by distributing food to people in need through a network of non-profit agencies and programs.  This is the mission of the Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas and GiftWorks has allowed us to achieve our mission in a more efficient manner. 

On behalf of the mission of the Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas , we want to thank Mission Research for GiftWorks.  For us…it’s about time.   

Please visit the Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas at http://www.foodbankofnea.org/.

Project YES (Youth Envisioning Social Change) July 29, 2009 By Mary Pat Donnellon

GiftWorks helps this organization reengage with lapsed donors.  In addition, the organization's Board of Directors is more involved in fundraising now that information on supporters is so easily accessed.

Project YES (Youth Envisioning Social change) is dedicated to creating leadership opportunities for diverse young people through the arts and service learning. Project YES provides three principle programs: the Youth Center, The Service Learning Partnership, and Art in the Community. Our free drop-in Youth Center provides a safe place where young people, ages 12-18, participate in daily, after-school and summer programming. The Service-Learning Partnership promotes academic success and civic engagement through art and service learning for young people ages 5-14. The Art in the Community Program promotes self-expression, collaboration and art appreciation through arts-based programming for youth ages 12-18. 58% of the youth we served are considered low-income.

Project YES recently re-located closer to the local high school and middle school, in order to accommodate rising numbers in Youth Center participants and a subsequent need for a larger space. However, like any nonprofit during these difficult economic times, we have struggled to maintain the funding necessary to continue providing our vital services to the community. An increase in rent and demand for our services left us scrambling to make ends meet, and as funding cuts were made we knew that we needed a new fundraising strategy to make us sustainable.

The obvious solution was to tap into our individual donors, and push for community support, rather than relying on foundation and government money. Unfortunately, the existing database was difficult to use and complex, resulting in corrupted data or no data at all. We had no way of easily re-connecting with our lapsed donors, or even identifying them to ask for their support during our time of need. 

Project YES began searching for a new database system: something easy to learn and use that would bring immediate results. However, everything available seemed too large, too complex, and much too expensive for our needs.

Now, thanks to GiftWorks, Project YES has been able to easily identify donors that have fallen off and re-engaged them through targeted appeals. Our Board of Directors has become more involved in donor solicitation, because we are able to provide them with quick, detailed information on supporters. Direct Mailings take less time, and our volunteers are happy because we can track their interests, skills and schedules. Project YES has set a goal to triple our individual giving in the next 5 years, and we are confident we will be able to meet this goal.

Economic times may still be difficult, but Project YES is in a much better position than we were only 6 months ago because of GiftWorks. We are grateful that Mission Research continues to help us meet OUR mission of serving disadvantaged youth by giving us the tools to connect supporters with our work!

 

Planned Parenthood Association of Hidalgo County, Texas July 29, 2009 By Mary Pat Donnellon

A one-person development office needed to move away from its "technically tedious" database system to one that could track records more effectively.  GiftWorks proved to be both easy-to-use, and essential to tracking and reporting.

My name is Vivian Vargas and I'm the Development Director for Planned Parenthood Association of Hidalgo County, Texas, Inc.  My department consists of one person, me!  I've been with Planned Parenthood for over nine years now, so I knew the problems the Development Department had, in terms of managing their donor list.  I also knew that I was going to spend the better part of six months doing my best to clean up, tighten and refine my list into the well-oiled machine it is today. 

One problem that needed to be tackled straight away was replacing the database system; it was quite antiquated and in desperate need of an overhaul. This, I knew without a doubt, needed to happen quickly! I first learned about GiftWorks from my colleagues at a Development Officer's Conference in Boston over two years ago.  After much searching and emails back and forth with other Planned Parenthood Development people; it became clear to me that I should give GiftWorks a try.  The worst possible outcome was that the user-friendly system would prove to be too useful and productive that I would fall in love with it.  That's all!

Well, I was right!  I returned to camp re-energized and anxious to finally organize my list the way it should be.  The process of importing/exporting was tedious but has proven to be quite useful.  The former database system our affiliate was using was called FileMaker Pro 5.  This horrid system of a database organizer was not only technically tedious; it was truly a waste of time.  It could not track records based on households.  It could not give me complete financial reports based on campaign or events.  And worst of all, it didn't give proper usage of its people. 

For example, I couldn't organize a record for a Mrs. Patty Brewster who is a board member and a $1,000 donor who likes to help out with the decorating committee for our annual events.  I couldn't even think of matching other donors with Mrs. Brewster's similar variables to make her volunteer/donor experience more rewarding.  On GiftWorks I can set up smart lists for people like Mrs. Brewster and add variables to a new or existing list.  I can also send a special appeal mailer or email to invite them to a decorating meeting to brainstorm ideas for the up-coming annual event.

This is why I refer GiftWorks to fellow colleagues all the time.  As a matter of fact, I referred GiftWorks to Leslie Holloway, a Marketing Assistant to the Director for Quinta Mazatlan Birding and Event Center.  She called me one day and inquired about our database system and if I could refer her to user-friendly software for her organization. 

Well, I sold her on GiftWorks and she's an avid user and promoter like me as well.  Thank you GiftWorks!  You truly helped to organize my life.