| December 2008 |
| Featured in this issue: Fundraising Strategies for Tough Times -- From the Experts Also In This Issue: Events Add-on: The Right Tool for Events Management Online Donations: How to Pick the Best Solution for Your Nonprofit Tele-Seminar on January 8, 2009: Technology for FundRaisers Holiday Help Desk Hours Smart Strategies for these Tough Times
GiftWorks team leader, Mary Pat Donnellon, highlights some top-notch advice.  Mary Pat Donnellon Mission Research
How can you use GiftWorks to implement this "selective approach?" By focusing on key donor groups who are most likely to help your organization. Look at some of the suggestions Warwick and Doyle provide:
Consultant's Corner
Events Add-on: The Right Tool for Events Management This month Consultant Duke Speer of Apogee Consultants, Park City UT, shares his experience as a beta tester with the new GiftWorks Events add-in.  Annual dinners are a key component of just about every nonprofit's fundraising formula and now the GiftWorks Events add-in brings to these events the workflow and ease-of-use that GiftWorks is known for."I can't tell you how many times I have seen annual dinner reservations managed with Excel spreadsheets. By the week of the event, the spreadsheets are full of disorganized status notes, confusion about which reservations are confirmed and paid for, and which are 'tentative' reservations made by Board Members to block seats for their friends to sit at their tables," remarks Duke Speer, speaking from his experience in organizing literally hundreds of social and fundraising events. Often, according to Duke, smaller non-profits cannot afford (and may not need) heavy-hitting comprehensive event software with a total cost of ownership measured in the thousands of dollars. Plus, most of those packages are stand-alone proprietary databases and do not offer the built-in integration with the donor management database that GiftWorks provides. GiftWorks Events is a straight-forward entry-level add-on for the smaller organization that wants to take event management to the next level. Avoiding just one embarrassment that impacts the support from a regular donor pays for the software. "Avoiding just one embarrassment with a regular donor pays for the software."
In testing the Beta, Duke used a major fundraising event of Peace House, a domestic violence shelter in Park City. Over a third of Peace House's operating revenue comes from the Luxury Home Tour, an event sponsored by the local Board of Realtors. The multi-day event involves a dinner with auction, a tour of 8-9 top-end homes, and recognition events for dozens of sponsors and over a hundred volunteers. "Being able to track sponsor fulfillment, volunteer scheduling, cash and in-kind sponsorships, and volunteer donations all in one database, as GiftWorks Events does, is a godsend!" Duke adds, "I was impressed with the clean interface, simple workflow, and the short learning curve."The combination of GiftWorks Standard with the Events and Volunteers add-ins provides a one-stop-shopping solution for friendship management. Now we can send invitations, take reservations, track cash and in-kind sponsorships, and schedule event volunteers all in one database. Duke's partner, Pete Nixon, points out that the greatest value of the Events add-on, particularly in combination with the Volunteers add-on, is building a complete picture of a donor's long-term involvement with a charity. So often, institutional memory is lost as Board Members' terms expire and Executive and Development Directors move on to their next challenge. A comprehensive database like GiftWorks "remembers" and helps a charity properly celebrate the full value of a long-term friendship that the current Staff and Board may have lost track of. All too often a donor who has bought tickets and brought friends to events year after year and sent smaller checks in response to nearly every campaign request is overlooked, even though the sum of his/her gifts may significantly exceed another's one-time big check that gave them recognition as a major donor. According to Pete, "'It's not rocket science' to put in appropriate tools to help an organization keep track of and appropriately recognize their friends." Duke's final thoughts, "I wish more organizations would replace their cluttered event reservation spreadsheets and start using the right tool for their event management workflow! GiftWorks Events is the next step towards their success." Apogee Consultants, Park City, UT, supports smaller non-profits that are trying to make their operations more efficient. GiftWorks is a key tool to reduce staff time required to receive and acknowledge donations, as well as maintain the quality and consistency of timely recognitions and 'thank you' notes. Online Donations: How to Pick the Best Solution for Your Nonprofit
So you've decided that it's time to collect donations online. Now you need to select the best solution for your organization. Here's help. The Basics You Need to Understand First, consider whether you want an integrated or stand alone solution. Integrated solutions make it easy to download online donations directly into your donor database. Stand alone solutions are not connected to any other system. The next consideration relates to how money is collected. With some solutions you set up your own merchant account with a bank. Other solutions are aggregators; they aggregate your donated funds in their merchant account and then send you your funds every few weeks. Lastly, you need to consider the particular features you want in your online donation solution. Ultimately, choosing an online donation solution is a dollars and cents decision- "which solution is going to generate the most revenue?" As you review your choices, here are five critical factors to consider. Analyzing these factors will enable you to calculate how much your solution costs to set up and how much revenue you will generate. Choosing an online donation solution is a dollars and cents decision - "which solution is going to generate the most revenue?" 1. Donation Page Customization: Some online donation solutions let you customize your donation page with your organization's look, feel and message. Why is this important? It's important because when a user clicks "donate now" and goes to your donation page, the information and feeling they get from that page will affect whether they take the next step and actually make a donation. Does that page look like your site? Does it communicate your message? The look and feel of your donation page may actually increase (or decrease) the amount of funds you collect.2. Management time: How much time does it take your team to log donations, enter them into your donor management and accounting system and generate reports? Time is money and this management time equals real dollars of cost to your organization. 3. Money transfer speed: After a donation is made, how long until you receive your funds? Some solutions "aggregate" the funds, then transfer them to you once or twice per month. With others you receive you money in 48 hours or less. Consider how this time lag may affect your operations. 4. Recurring donations: Recurring donations are good for your cash-flow and they save staff time chasing pledges. Some solutions allow these and others don't. 5. Fees: There are three types of fees for online donation solutions: set up fees, transaction fees, and monthly fees. Some simple online donation solutions have only transaction fees. Other more robust solutions may have set up, transaction and monthly fees. The monthly fees cover the cost of the merchant account and integration with the donor management system. Adding It All Up When you analyze all five of these factors, you will see that if you get just a few donations each year, a solution with the lowest fees will be the most economical. However, as the number of donations rises, other factors become more costly. Consider this example. Imagine that you get 50 donations per year. Entering and tracking these donations using a stand alone solution may take five minutes per transaction. So your total management time is about four hours. Now imagine that you receive 500 donations per year. With the same stand alone solution, staff time jumps to over 40 hours. That translates into significant cost and you would be wise to get a solution that reduces management time by integrating with your donor management software. For more information on choosing the right online donations solution, visit www.IdealWare.org for "candid reviews and information about nonprofit software." You should also take a look at GiftWorks Online Donations, a solution that integrates with GiftWorks fundraising software. Tele-Seminar on January 8, 2009: Technology for FundRaisers
Regardless of the size of your nonprofit, technology should be integrated into every aspect of your fundraising initiative. In this tele-seminar, Ruthellen S. Rubin, CFRE will discuss the role technology plays in creating and executing a development plan that is sustainable, professional, ethical, cost-effective and most important, will help raise more money for your organization. Topics will include: your organization's website, donor management software, and online and email communications. This seminar will help development staff and executive directors make informed decisions on the technology issues facing nonprofit organizations. Sign-up online. Ruthellen S. Rubin, CFRE is a nonprofit consultant; learn more at www.developnp.com. She is also a Member of the Faculty at New York University 's Heyman Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising. Help Desk Holiday Hours  The folks at the GiftWorks Help Desk stand ready to help you during our normal business hours: 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM EST, Monday-Friday.The Help Desk will be closed on December 25 and 26, December 31 and January 1. |
