Make End-of-Year Gift Processing Easier with Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® and Blackbaud Merchant Services™

At this time of year, your fundraising team needs to process donations quickly and efficiently, while also facing potential challenges like last-minute donations outside of normal business hours when December 31 falls on a weekend.

Raiser’s Edge NXT, combined with Blackbaud Merchant Services, can help you automate and streamline your year-end gift processing.

Six Ways to Maximize Year-End Fundraising

This is the first time in a long while that December 31st falls on a Sunday. This has some critical considerations for processing at the end of the year. Be sure to review your organization's gift recognition guidelines as well as the below information about some factors that make this end-of-year giving season unique.

1. Process credit card gifts as early as possible. If you have donors who specifically want their credit card gifts to be processed before December 31, plan to enter them on or before Friday, December 29. For credit card transactions, this ensures that donations are processed before the end of the year, as this year it falls on a weekend.
2. Submit recurring gift batches by December 29. If you use “manual recurring gift” batches, plan to submit them by December 29th. This ensures that all donations are accounted for in the current fiscal year, aiding in accurate financial reporting and budget planning for the upcoming year and helping to avoid any last-minute processing issues.
3. Update outdated credit cards. One common challenge in successfully processing recurring gifts is the expiration of or change in donors' credit card details. If you’re using Blackbaud Merchant Services, you benefit from the Credit Card Updater service. This secure service works in real time to ensure that gifts are processed without interruption, especially crucial for year-end donations. It saves your team time and money by simultaneously preventing declined transactions and boosting donor retention.

4. Leverage automated gifts. Remember you can convert manually processed recurring gifts to be automated so that recurring payments will be automatically processed as scheduled. If you have a large number of gifts that fall into this category, a bulk convert option is available to save you time.

5. Monitor fundraising success. To quickly assess your fundraising performance at end-of-year, Raiser’s Edge NXT offers excellent visual reporting on year-over-year performance and performance-to-goals. Access reports from Fundraising, Reporting, to ensure timely reporting in the final days of the year. Note: If no one at your organization has used these reports in over a month, the initial data refresh might take up to 24 hours. After this initial refresh, it may take up to three hours for these metrics to update based on new or edited information.
   
   
   (Sample of a Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT Fundraising Analysis Report)
6. Use the Blackbaud Merchant Services web portal for managing transactions, creating lists, and running reports to help with reconciliation and financial auditing. By leveraging the portal's robust reporting features, you can easily track every transaction, including year-end donations.

• Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT: Preparing for Year-End from Blackbaud University
• Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT: Giving Day Donation Form Workshop from Blackbaud University
• Ultimate End-of-Year Fundraising Toolkit
• End of Year Fundraising Webinar Series
• Top Tips to Increase Your Average Gift from Blackbaud University
• The ENGAGE Blog: December Stress Relief: Automation for Gift Processing