If You’re Going to Make One New Year’s Fundraising Resolution With eTapestry, it Should Be This One:

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2014 is right around the corner. Like most people I am sure you are looking forward to the parties, the all-day football and maybe even preparing to kickstart a New Year’s resolution. I already have two in mind for myself; one is personal and the other is professional. If you’re looking for suggestions, I have one that I truly believe will impact your mission and fundraising efforts. Let me first start with a little background on me so you can know where I’m coming from.

Before joining Blackbaud over 6 years ago I was the Annual Fund Director for a mid-sized nonprofit. I was responsible for our Annual Campaign and the various fundraising initiatives that rolled-up to it. Our Mission, our constituents, and my colleagues were all top-notch. The antiquated database we used for fundraising was not.

Trying to find useful data was an exercise in futility. I would have to find my notes and instructions on how to run specific reports. I’d have to make sure I had all of my “Is Null” and “Is Not Null” values in the correct fields and then check the 20 other items I needed to mark to hopefully get similar results to the one’s I received the last time I ran the report. Combine this with my summary data, which I would then update on a separate spreadsheet and you’d have a recipe for disaster, or at least some data inconsistencies.  When I should have been creating a stronger affinity between our constituents and our organization, I was instead trying to get useful data out of the system to determine who to mail to or call.  At the end of the day, I didn’t feel our system helped me do my job. It became my job.

In September of 2007 I joined the eTapestry team and my first few days with the product were amazing. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing; all of the donor’s information on one screen, mass email and online giving tools integrated, and best of all, easy and impactful reports at my fingertips. I can’t put into words how amazed I was by the Giving Dynamics report in particular. It was the equivalent of watching a Bowl Game on an old tube TV and then watching the same game in HD. Mind-blowing!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Giving Dynamics report, it is a part of our Executive Reports Module, which is available in our Essentials and Pro Packages.  The Giving Dynamics Report allows you to compare giving statistics between two periods of time you select. The report includes data about new, upgraded, downgraded, and unchanged donor accounts. As you can imagine, this information for an organization would be extremely valuable not only for donor retention but also for stewardship and planning purposes. Plus it comes in ONE report.

Let’s take a look at the report (which also comes with a handy graph and legend):

Jeremy 1


 Jeremy 2

 

As you can see above there is a great breakdown of our 2012 vs. 2013 results. In this example we raised almost $77k more, which was a 28% increase. We were able to recapture 26 lapsed donors for $119k and we brought in 57 new donors this year. If I want to drill down into the details of this example report, I can do so by clicking on the Status name, i.e “Lapsed New”. These are donors who were “New” donors in 2012 who haven’t given yet this year in 2013.

Jeremy 3

 

Hopefully you are able to see how powerful this report is because of the information you will have at your fingertips. How impactful will it be to your mission to see at any time those donors in jeopardy of becoming a lapsed donor and actually having enough time left in the fiscal year to do something about it? How nice would it be for a donor to receive a phone call from your organization when they upgrade their annual donation? Do you think you’d increase the chances of someone giving to your organization again if you all called or did something special for your 1st time/New donors?

My suggested 2014 resolution for you is to run this report at least once a month using the following timeframes; All of 2013 vs. All of 2014. As the year progresses you will want to be proactive in the course of action you take with the different categories. Here are my quick suggestions:

  • New – Call and thank them or recognize them for making their 1st donation to the organization. Maybe share with them what their contribution will do for the organization.
  • Recapture – Analyze the list and see if there was a consistent theme on why these folks started to give again. Was it a special occasion, appeal, or did someone call them directly? Whatever the special formula was; rinse and repeat.
  • Upgrade – Acknowledge these individuals increase in giving either via the phone, email, or a personal note. Let them know how much you appreciate their support.
  • Same – This isn’t necessarily a bad thing that they’ve matched their previous gift, maybe see if there is another opportunity that interests them within your organization which could boost their overall engagement and lead to larger or additional contributions.
  • Downgrade – Do some research within the data and try to find out why. A small difference is not the end of the world, but a substantial drop in someone’s giving should be a red flag and would mean it’s time to act.
  • Lapsed New/ Lapsed Other – These were people who were donors previously, but haven’t given this year. Check to see if they received an ask this year (don’t laugh, it’s happened before)? Did you send them a thank you, e-newsletter, or any stewardship-type information after their gift? If you find that you have a dramatic amount of donors in the “Lapsed New” category, you may want to do a review of your program on recognizing and welcoming 1st time donors. We don’t want the folks in this year’s “New” to be next year’s “Lapsed New”.

I hope some of these suggestions and especially the report help you achieve your fundraising goals in 2014. I’d love to hear your comments and/or questions, so feel free to email me at Jeremy.Vanscoy@blackbaud.com. Best of luck and thank you for your partnership with eTapestry and Blackbaud.

 

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