Go mobile on the go

If you're a frontline fundraiser who's often on the road, you have a powerful new ally in the mobile version of ClearView CRM, available for iPhones and iPads. 

Anyone who spends a lot of time on the go knows that being efficient and effective can be a real challenge. That's why ClearView CRM Mobile helps with the kinds of activities that are keys to fundraising success. With the new mobile app, you can:

• work with prospects by creating and tracking opportunities, capturing meeting notes with their phones’ voice-text tools and prepping for meetings.

• stay connected with donors by making calls or emailing directly from the app, updating donor data as soon as they learn new info, and importing donor info to a device contacts file.

• immediately handle tasks like creating and tracking actions to take, sending notifications to colleagues, and capturing and connecting pictures to donor files.

The app offers even more support for your out-of-office solicitation efforts. For instance, you can easily plan your strategies for those all-important prospect meetings right from within ClearView CRM Mobile.

If you're already using ClearView CRM in the cloud and have an Apple device, you can go mobile. Your first step is asking your organization's ClearView administrator to configure your system, which is a quick and straightforward process. Once the configuration is complete, simply visit the iTunes app store, and download ClearView CRM.

Soup up your prospect summary screen with simple tweaks

Did you know that, with a few simple tweaks, you can soup up your ClearView CRM prospect summary screen to make your work-life more efficient?

Tweak 1

Pare down tabs. You can easily create new prospect view screens that include only the tabs you want. Consider making a “quick info” screen that has only the Prospect Info, Touches, Memos and Prospect Tags tabs. You can also think about screens that focus on a specific topic. If you often analyze donor giving habits, make a new prospect summary view that includes the Giving Summary, Giving Summary with Soft Credits, Giving Breakdown and Giving Breakdown with Soft Credits tabs.
     To make your changes, go into Settings -> Application -> Manage Prospect Summary Views. Once you create a new view, you see the option to switch views in the Prospect Summary View for any donor. There, you can add the tabs you want. You can also set the default view of your choice in Settings.

Tweak 2

Streamline the Go To menu. The Prospect Summary View Go To menu by default contains so many topics. If you or your organization isn’t using some of those topics, you can quickly delete any of them from the menu. Paring down the number of menu items helps you find the menu item you need more quickly and can clean up the screen considerably. To do this, go into Administration, choose Go To Menu Configurations, and choose the menu items you want to see.

Tweak 3

Customize tables for any Go To menu item. Technically speaking, this tweak isn’t for the Prospect Summary View but for the views of data you get when you click on many Go To menu items. Say you click on Actions in the Go To menu. The table that you see with detailed data by default likely contains more columns than you use regularly. To customize the columns you see, use Settings on the Actions page to eliminate some of the columns or add others. You can also choose the number of rows you can see on each page of results, up to a maximum of 100. You can make similar changes to any of the Go To menu items, giving you exactly the view of data that you prefer to see.

Ready for even more integrations?

ClearView CRM connects with even more software that nonprofits use regularly

New accounting software integration is system’s 14^th

The list keeps growing. ClearView CRM from SofTrek Corporation added three more applications with which the system connects. The integrations, which allow the applications to “talk” to ClearView CRM directly, give SofTrek's nonprofit clients the flexibility to build a fundraising software system that exactly meets their organizations’ needs. 

The applications that newly connect with ClearView CRM include peer-to-peer and online event fundraising, in addition to the system’s 14^th accounting software integration. They are:

• DonorDrive peer-to-peer fundraising software that provides tools for people to raise funds for causes they care about.
• TeamRaiser online event fundraising software that helps organizations turn event participants into fundraisers.
• Epicor accounting software, which provides general ledger journals, accounts payable and receivable, cash management and other accounting functions.

ClearView CRM’s core donor database now connects through APIs (application programming interfaces) with nearly 45 applications that nonprofits use regularly, such as accounting, credit-card payment processing, giving analytics, prospect research, email marketing and more.

“These latest integrations with ClearView CRM prove our commitment to helping our nonprofit clients create fundraising software systems that work exactly as they want them to,” said Robert Girardi, SofTrek president and CEO. “We've always believed in playing nicely with others, as the tech industry puts it, and we'll continue to add to the list of applications to which our clients can connect ClearView CRM."

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.