Before your busy season heats up, create some opportunities

While we’re basking in summer’s warmth, fundraising professionals know that their busiest season is right around the corner.

Why not gear up for your fundraising autumn by creating opportunities in ClearView CRM for the prospects in your portfolio? With ClearView CRM’s Opportunity Management feature, you can more easily and efficiently coordinate the set of fundraising asks and activities that gift officers and others need to execute with their targeted list of prospects.

A key reason to use Opportunity Management? It can actually make much more predictable even the highly individualized process of major gift fundraising.

So, what kinds of opportunities should you create? Think broadly: opportunities refer to anything of value your organization might want from a constituent of any kind. They could be major gifts, board memberships, bequests or something else. With Opportunity Management, you make the most of these opportunities by creating an opportunity linked to a specific prospect, adding information about

the opportunity, tracking constituents as they mature from prospect to donor to major donor, and managing the actions associated with bringing it to completion.

In fact, making an “Action Track” in an opportunity record is the closest you’ll come to automating parts of the high-touch process of donor development. Ultimately, Opportunity Management streamlines your workflow and ensures you take every step necessary toward achieving any opportunity.

Turning Reports into Dashboard Panels

Are you on a quest for the perfect fundraising dashboard? With ClearView CRM, you have a useful option of adding your own report-based, custom panels to the system’s standard list of dashboard panel choices.

ClearView CRM offers a range of panels already built into its Panel Library, from Action Reminders and Gifts by Geography, to Prospects Added in Past Month and numerous others. As luck (or software developers) would have it, you also can add panels that reflect reports you use frequently but that don’t appear on the built-in panel list. Technically, this is called “rendering” a report in a custom panel.

Adding a new custom panel to your available Panel Library list offers a few advantages:

• Efficiency: Report information that you use frequently is immediately available in the panel when you log in to your ClearView CRM dashboard.
• Effectiveness: An optimum panel configuration allows you to grasp quickly the import of what you see.
• Choice: You have more options with which to build exactly the dashboard(s) that supports your and your organization’s work.

Many interactive summary reports in the ClearView Reports Library are good candidates for a custom panel. Great examples are the Active Donor by Geography report and the Solicitor Activity Performance Summary report. Your ClearView CRM administrator will need to configure any new custom panels to display properly and with the right kind of information.  After you select the report you want in the custom panel, you’ll choose an appropriate visual layout. Once the panel is complete, it will show up in the Panel Library, and anyone can choose to include it in a dashboard.

If you don’t have support from an internal ClearView CRM administrator, ask for help to create your report-based custom panel from your account manager or anyone on the Client Services Team. They’ll be happy to help you produce a custom panel that can immediately show up on the fundraising dashboard of your dreams.

New Connections, New Capabilities

ClearView CRM Connects to Three More Applications

New integrations add accounting, call center and social capabilities

If you're a multi-channel fundraising shop, ClearView CRM fundraising software has taken your

ability to connect all your channels to a new level.  You probably know that ClearView already integrates with a long list of various kinds of applications--accounting, online giving, giving analytics and more--that nonprofits use regularly.

Three new integrations recently added to the slate of applications with which the system connects. All will help ClearView's nonprofit clients conduct their fundraising efforts more efficiently and accurately by “talking” to one another directly. New integrations come from the accounting, call center and social engagement arenas:

• Workday Financial Management, a cloud-based suite of accounting applications including grants management and reporting.
• USA800, an inbound call center that allows nonprofits to outsource their constituent-support and telephone donation-processing needs.
• Crowdster, a group of social applications like networking, cause marketing, event registration and more.

ClearView CRM’s donor database now connects through APIs (application programming interfaces) with some 40 applications.

“We’ve always had a philosophical commitment to openness for ClearView CRM,” said Robert Girardi, president and CEO of SofTrek, which develops ClearView. “These new integrations reflect our continuing efforts to expand the range of applications to which clients can connect our constituent relationship management system.”

You can’t measure what you don’t track

One of the key issues any fundraising department faces with the use of fundraising software is getting staff to actually record what they're doing with donors and other constituents so that they can track and report on those activities. It's arguably the primary conundrum related to moves management or, as we call it in ClearView CRM, opportunity management.

Opportunities are generally something of substantial value that an organization wants to obtain from a prospective donor. Fundraisers who don’t regularly record details on their pursuit of specific opportunities usually say it’s because they don’t have the time to do so. This functional inertia is a common ailment in nearly anyone who is asked to track their behavior in a system, from fundraisers and salespeople to those who have to bill their time by the hour.

If you or your staff isn’t currently tracking opportunities, you may want to address that situation for one key reason: the growing trend toward ensuring accountability among fundraising professionals. This trend is primarily driven by the increasing pressure on nonprofits to justify their costs in raising money, pressure coming from trustees, senior management, major donors and others who expect measurable returns on their investments.

Accountability is not going away. The more data fundraisers record about their opportunities, the better able they’ll be to demonstrate their effectiveness on the kinds of measures related to fundraising performance, among them:

• Gift officer revenue goals
• Key prospects
• Regular review of progress against goals
• Significant activities/touches against achieving goals
• Return on investment and productivity

Identifying and tracking activities related to opportunities in the appropriate fundraising software system will allow you the kind of detailed reporting that clearly shows progress toward all these measures. (You can also display the data in a fundraising dashboard to keep everyone aware and on track, as we discussed above.)
If you’re not tracking, you can’t measure. It’s as simple as that.

6 Ways to Grow Your Active Donor Base with Data, Part 1

Without a healthy active donor base, you’re in trouble. That’s a truism all nonprofit fundraisers acknowledge. Growing the number of active donors is a constant process, but you can take steps today to boost that effort. The following strategies focus on reactivating lapsed donors and acquiring new names.  Upgrading current donors is certainly important, but these folks are already active givers.

For most nonprofits, addressing attrition is the key to growing a healthy active list.  Most also recognize the need to generate growth in new donors.  Making sure the data your organization has is working the way it should can address both needs and translate to better results.  And, no, your data doesn't have to be “big.” You can make use of data already in your systems to encourage growth.
  

#1:  Tighten Up Data Management

Data management is the administrative process by which your organization acquires, validates, stores, protects and processes the data it needs. The result of good data management is data that’s accessible, reliable, timely and accurate enough to satisfy the needs of anyone who uses it.
If your data is not satisfying everyone—if it, in fact, gives people heartburn—try a few of these tactics to tighten up your data management.

• Most important and a best practice: Merge all your databases--donor, volunteer and event, even shadow--into one main list.  Also, integrate your online database, if you have one.  So many benefits here: If someone makes a change (e.g., snowbirds indicate their preferred seasonal addresses), everyone has access to the information. Incorrect data due to double entries decreases.  Any information captured online immediately appears in the main database.  The list goes on.
• Standardize how you collect data.  First, determine what donor and prospect information is required when a record enters the system, whether by manual entry or online capture.  Also, require the use of USPS-standard address formats.  A further step is to expand your data collection to include information you might not currently store, such as mail records that show appeals, responses to appeals or giving channel breakdowns.
• Standardized your workflows.  Adopt and communicate a consistent way to code information, and build that into your system.  For instance, make mandatory certain information (say, source codes showing where donors come from) so that anyone who adds a record into the system has no choice but to enter the info.
• Implement a National Change of Address (NCOA) and/or “new move list” service (from companies like SofTrek partner Melissa Data) to ensure that current addresses are always available even on inactive donors.  Since U.S. Census Bureau statistics indicate around 15% of people change addresses in a year, this move alone could greatly increase the quality of your contact data. 

Next:  Thoughtful list analysis

9 Must-ask Questions for Your Nonprofit CRM RFP (Part II)

By Steve Birnbaum

(Part 2)

Last post, we discussed the first five of nine questions you need to ask when you’re developing an RFP for a new nonprofit CRM. These final four questions continue the process of digging deeply into the real and vital (yet sometimes not obvious) strengths and weaknesses of any system you’re considering.

6. How does your system safeguard constituent data in the cloud?

Make sure vendors can specify how their security strategy keeps sensitive donor information safe. Cloud-based systems should help you meet data governance rules, have well-established policies for disaster recovery and PCI compliance and meet all appropriate regulations and standards.

7. Does your system empower multi-channel fundraising?

More and more NPOs are running sophisticated multi-channel fundraising campaigns. Any system you review should not only support large, complex direct-mail segmentation for online and offline campaigns but also offer tools to support major and planned giving, including capital campaign management.

8. How will your system support our national/chapter organizational structure?

Your chapters shouldn’t get less out of a system just because they’re not national headquarters. Ask if vendors’ systems have built-in national/chapter organization functions. Systems you consider should also be able to enforce rules about how chapters share, see and access data.

9. Do you provide a development environment?

A complete development environment should be a mandatory part of any system implementation. Ask vendors if they include all of your data in a test system at no charge, allowing you to test integrations and other system changes without affecting your live data.



Remember, your organization’s goal is not simply to buy a nonprofit CRM or fundraising software. Your ultimate goal is to make sure that your system improves the way you interact with all your constituents and helps you grow their devotion to your cause. Good luck with the process. 
Read Part 1 of this post . . .

Steve Birnbaum is SofTrek’s Vice President of Client Solutions.  He has more than 17 years’ experience in nonprofit management, with particular expertise in organizational planning, technology implementation, and change management.

9 Must-ask Questions for Your Nonprofit CRM RFP

By Steve Birnbaum

(Part I)

When you’re developing an RFP for your new nonprofit CRM system, some questions are more equal than others. In addition to the basics about functionality, make sure you include nine other must-ask questions, five of which we feature in this post. These questions get at some of the most important, but sometimes overlooked, aspects of a nonprofit CRM or fundraising software system. The answers will reveal a great deal about the in-depth capabilities of the systems you’re considering.

1. Can you describe the vision and product roadmap for your system?

The systems you consider might have wonderful features today. Your organization, however, is buying a system for today and for years from now. Make sure vendors can clearly explain their plans for their system in the next several years. Be alert for vendors offering outdated client/server technology today while planning to require your purchase of an expensive upgrade in a few years.

2. Can your system grow with us?

Your organization is not static, so ask vendors if their systems are scalable. Your system’s capacity should easily grow with your organization, accommodating any number of users and constituent records. Even if you never plan to grow that large, you should be confident that millions of records and hundreds of users would never be a problem.

3. Can your system align with our business processes?

You work with constituents and constituent data in the way that makes sense for your organization. Vendors should be able to configure their systems to work the way you do, not vice versa. Look for a platform that accommodates extensive configuration without the downside of having custom software.

4. Are you committed to system integration?

Ask vendors if they have a track record of working closely with other vendors to share data and processes among systems. A look at their current system integrations (finance systems, content management systems and others) will offer a good indication if they actually do. Unless you want to live in your vendor’s walled garden, make sure they play nicely with others.

5. How can you help us improve our major gift effort?

The key to effective major gift solicitation is having a full picture of a prospective major giver’s relationship with your organization. Ask vendors if their system includes a comprehensive constituent relationship management (contact management) platform to support annual and long-term development efforts for major gift programs, including tools for forecasting, reporting and analysis. The system also should run on tablets and other mobile devices on which major gift officers often rely.
 


Next post:  The final four must-ask questions for your nonprofit CRM RFP

Steve Birnbaum is SofTrek’s Vice President of Client Solutions.  He has more than 17 years’ experience in nonprofit management, with particular expertise in organizational planning, technology implementation, and change management.