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Special Olympics Massachusetts (SOMA) was a study in the need of an electronic database if ever there was one. Boxes of binders and folders filled with copies of checks and correspondence stored in the basement was the norm in the development department of SOMA. This system was sufficient, until the Mothers Day flood of 2006. SOMA's basement was completely inundated and several years of donation history records were destroyed and lost forever.
 At the same time this disaster was happening, two new development professionals were hired to benefit SOMA's fundraising efforts. Each of these individuals had been exposed to fundraising software programs in their previous positions and knew the value of an electronic solution to this problem.
One of the associates, Erin McNamee, began researching fundraising software programs that
would suit the needs of this organization based on past experiences with other programs. "I've had experience with Raiser's Edge, Teams, Jenzabar, Blackbaud-and I knew our operation didn't need that level of complexity," comments Erin. "Our ideal program must function as a development-style database. It had to handle donor and stewardship management, donation transactions, capital campaign features, including pledges and corresponding payments, corporate matching gifts, and it must generate useful reports."
Assisting in the search, the organization's executive consultant sent Erin a link to the GiftWorks website. Not knowing about the product himself, he suggested Erin look into it as a possibility. After reviewing the free demo, Erin was immediately impressed with the software's capabilities and knew it would present a viable option to satisfy their database needs, and would do so at a very reasonable price.
 Feeling confident that others within the organization would see GiftWorks as the obvious choice, she brought together several of the organization's decision makers, each with his or her area of expertise, and tried to find flaws with the GiftWorks system. After the brief online tour and a discussion, all were convinced that this was the right product for SOMA.
After several months of use, SOMA has not needed technical support or specialized training from Mission Research. They have learned from reading the guide and just trying things out. "We've taken a few of the online classes offered, which has heightened our knowledge of the product and its features, which has led to increased productivity within the development department.
"GiftWorks is so user friendly, so adaptive, and so very easy to customize," notes Erin. "The Settings area is very easy to navigate and customize to fit your organization's needs and wants. You can build it to look, function, and perform just the way you want. It's so refreshing not to have to fight with your database.
"For example, an organization like ours has so many intricate designation types, each with several different restrictions, that crediting them in line with the donors' intentions can get rather dizzying. In addition to the State Office headquarters, there are three sections of Special Olympics in Massachusetts, each of which conducts its own fundraising, using different accounting budgets. While we do need to keep them separate, we also want to aggregate them sometimes. We fundraise for programs, operational needs, in-kind gifts, capital gifts, and restricted gifts, and need to have the ability to track the correct accreditation and accounting for a particular gift. For example, if a foundation gave money for a Boston-based program in the elementary school's afterschool bowling league, then we need to show that it was entered as a Corporate Sponsorship, restricted to the North section, further restricted to Boston-designated to the afterschool programs, specifically benefiting the bowling league. GiftWorks can do this and is one of the only programs that I have encountered that will."
Erin adds, "I was almost speechless when I saw the SmartLists! It is just so simple, so well designed, that all it takes is a few clicks to designate the criteria you want to isolate. It is list management simplified!
"GiftWorks is also the first piece of software I've seen with the report writer already integrated. The skill set required to use a more complicated report-writing program, such as Crystal Reports or InfoMaker, is not universal, so it is nice to see a program that has a list of pre-built reports at your disposal-without opening up another program. With one report, I can create a snapshot of our donors' intentions. We can then tailor our efforts to the needs that excite our donors!"
www.specialolympicsma.org |
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