Where does an 800-pound gorilla sit? Anywhere it wants. In our lives, social media is that 800-pound gorilla. Love it or hate it, the gorilla isn’t moving. Nearly half of the world’s population (3.1 billion) uses social media for news, entertainment, sharing, and connecting. And 150 million of those users are connected to a nonprofit cause on ... more

I found myself doing it again just the other day.  And it’s not just me… we all do it.  I’m talking about comparing ourselves to others.  I don’t advocate trying to keep up with the Joneses when it comes to your personal life, but benchmarking your fundraising performance against your peers can be very useful for your nonprofit organization.   How do you ... more

As a proud member organization of the Giving Institute, Blackbaud is excited to announce the publication of the Giving USA 2018 report. Giving USA is the longest-running report of charitable giving in the United States and has been an important tool for nonprofit professionals to understand what is happening across the sector. The latest Giving USA ... more

When scrolling through your social media feed, what makes you stop and say, "Wow"? What makes you like , comment , and share ? I get excited when I see content from nonprofits. With so many confusing or upsetting things in the world today, it's an ideal opportunity for nonprofits to share positive and uplifting stories. At the same time, it can be hard to ... more

TOOLKIT | SHOWING YOUR TEAM THE VALUE OF TRAINING We’ve got some great feedback from our new Organizational Best Practices course releases ( read the blog here ). Let’s address some questions about how you can help your organization see the value of technical and professional development with Blackbaud University. “ I've been interested in getting my ... more

I have three important questions to ask before you read on: Have you ever heard of a Blackbaud product that you don't know and wanted to know more? Do you learn from analogies? Are you excited about Avengers: Infinity War? If you answered yes to those three questions you're the very specific target audience for this post! Read on! Capt. America – (“on” ... more

DENVER RESCUE MISSION | Staying sustainable and successful in a changing world Marlissa Cunningham , Specialized Gift Coordinator at Denver Rescue Mission , has always made continuing education a priority in her career. This has made her a better nonprofit professional and a better partner to her colleagues. Recently Marlissa engaged in new ... more

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is due to come into law on May 25, 2018. The rationale for GDPR is to bring aging data protection and direct marketing practices up to date. If your organization is subject to GDPR, now is the time to ensure you can comply. For nonprofit organizations not subject to GDPR, now is a good time to reflect on your data ... more

My first job at a nonprofit was 20-something years ago. It was the quintessential small shop—a one-man, er… one-woman show. There was no training program, no orientation, and certainly no how-to documents. Honestly, there was no internet to speak of, either. That’s right, no Google— can you imagine the horror? To learn how to do my job and develop my ... more

As a member of the Blackbaud Community, you’re probably familiar with the Blackbaud Institute’s annual Charitable Giving Report , which offers the premier look at giving for the previous year. This is our 6 th edition of the report, and there’s no shortage of valuable information, including overall, online, and mobile trends, key statistics on ... more

Does your school have a Spirit Week ? School Pride Day , 90’s Day , and Hat Day are just a few of the fun activities I remember enjoying during my school’s Spirit Week . The excitement buzzing through the hallways during Spirit Week was contagious—even those students tasked with major tests and assignments couldn’t help but get on board. How do you keep that ... more

I went a little overboard when my daughter turned one. The birthday party planning started off as a few family members coming for cake and coffee, but turned into a full-blown princess-themed party, with 40 guests, a buffet dinner, and a tent in the back yard. I spent two days making a princess castle cake, while my husband blew up dozens of pink and purple ... more

Is your organization ready for GDPR? Here are some helpful resources for you to review: GDPR Collecting Consent – Documentation to help you prepare with confidence. GDPR Toolkit – Everything your non-profit needs to know to get ready for GDPR, coming May 2018 There is a new GDPR section of the community located under Best Practices   more

Blackbaud University offers certified learning opportunities that recognize student achievement and help validate knowledge. We provide these development opportunities to reflect our students’ commitment to excellence.  Great New Year’s news— Blackbaud University 2018 Certification is available now! Nonprofit Fundraising ... more

Let’s face it: hierarchy and structure can be cringe-inducing terms. Perhaps they aren’t the fun, meaty, or inspirational parts of running a nonprofit organizational body. However, just like a human body, the skeletal structure must be intact before anything works. Period. In this newest eLearning course, Best Practices: Nonprofit Organization ... more

As the winter season reminds me, life goes through stages and cycles. Just as my purple fig trees now lay bare, I am confident they will once again bear fruit. It’s the same with relationships—including donor relationships. As with any relationship, new seeds must be planted, nurtured, and developed before they bloom and bear fruit. In the nonprofit ... more

Before working in the education industry, I was (what I like to call) a code monkey . I can easily code in HTML and CSS, with a touch of JavaScript and other coding languages thrown in for good measure. I even taught HTML and CSS classes in grad school (okay, so I guess I was never that far from education). But even an experienced coder, like myself, has to get ... more

Let’s celebrate Blackbaud University’s new Nonprofit Fundraising Certified professionals! Since the Nonprofit Fundraising Certification launched in June, 44 nonprofit professionals have been certified. To all our Nonprofit Fundraising Certified professionals, let me be the first to say a well-earned and heartfelt  congratulations ! Be ... more

According to Forrester Research, 60 – 73% of data collected by businesses is never used for strategic purposes. 1 I suspect that number is similar or higher for nonprofit organizations. When I worked at a nonprofit organization, we had enormous amounts of data to process. The most difficult data to understand and manage was program data . This ... more

What is the definition of insanity? According to Albert Einstein, it’s “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Does your nonprofit organization’s decision-making process suffer from this insanity from time to time? I know mine did! In a lot of organizations, we do things the way we do because—well, that’s just the ... more

I’ve been reflective this week – it’s the 20 th anniversary of my first job with a nonprofit organization. Coming from the hospitality industry where I worked evenings, holidays, and weekends, I was just thrilled to be working an office job, Monday through Friday! I didn’t even mind that my first three days were spent photocopying scholarship ... more

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When working with our Target Analytics predictive modeling clients during consulting sessions, we often help them create action plans with their results with the use of an idealized potential gift table.  We do so by utilizing the bottom end of estimated annual capacity ranges identified from their project (i.e., Target Gift Ranges or Principal ... more

Have you ever read through a particularly lengthy obituary and then thought – wow, I feel like I know so much about this person now? Obituaries can be very specific, but they can also be really helpful – especially if your job is to update information about people in your database. At International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC), we add obituaries ... more

Can you quickly produce a financial statement for a funder with the specific expense categories they require? Can you run a report to double-check the figures on your organization’s audit? How about reports to help prepare Form 990 or Census Bureau reports? If you can’t produce these reports quickly without resorting to exporting to Excel, you are ... more

What do millennials want? Marketers are OBSESSED with this question! Product targeting and segmentation to millennials is key to promoting successful events, even for non-profit organizations. Understanding this group of constituents and targeting them will provide for growth to your organization. As a millennial myself, I want to support a ... more

Creating a fundraising appeal is a little like asking your parents for a small sum of money. The goal is to explain your grand idea to the people you appreciate, show them the nuts and bolts of how their money contributes to your plan and thank them profusely for their involvement. Nuts and Bolts:  Appeals help donors focus on supporting specific ... more

I read community digest daily and am not surprised by how many people inquire about writing procedures and creating a manual. Here are a few tidbits that have helped our procedure manual be used daily.   Organize your content much like your Blackbaud database is organized. Use bookmarks and create a table of contents. Date all procedures with date ... more

If my memory serves me well, the above title is from a certain kids’ TV show that my four kids always watched. Somehow, the message of the TV moment never transferred to any of those wonderful children who are now all in their 20s. But, like many of our kids’ favorite electronic faves, I can’t get the words out of my mind. But, I can apply it to a good practice ... more

ResearchPoint passionate?  Not yet or completely?  ResearchPoint can be summed up simply as an electronic phone book (yes I know I am dating myself) full of prospect information! Does anyone out there, oh I know you are there, remember trekking to the local or university library to conduct prospect research? Yes, I still am a public library advocate, ... more

Over the last three years, we have shifted our focus to be on the donor (we call the partners in mission), not on the money we are raising. We focused on building relationships and getting "personal." We are not talking invasive personal, but relating to our partners in mission so they know we care about them and care about what they do for us. We began a ... more

Like many nonprofits, our operations are divided into multiple departments. In Financial Edge, we give each one a 4-digit “Project ID” so we can track revenue and expenses to their respective source. However, we have one department that manages multiple activities that each have their own, stand-alone costs, and the department manager wanted the ... more

Were you the kind of kid who wanted to know how things worked?  Who took apart the telephone to figure out what was going on (back in the days when there were actually land line phones that is)?  Did you love jigsaw puzzles?   I love puzzles, I love solving puzzles and figuring out the best way to get things done.  To take a process and refine it and then sit back ... more

As a former non-profit auditor, now on the other side of the desk working for a non-profit, I am acutely aware of the time and effort spent on the annual audit process by all parties involved. However, my experience as an auditor allows me to streamline my annual audit by using Blackbaud’s reporting tools, so I can minimize the pain and disruption to my ... more

Want to know a way that you can have triple the impact in your local community? Get an intern! Reflecting back on several of my internships, the experiences were incredibly valuable to my career as well as to the organization. I walked away knowing I grew a lot as a professional and the organization is in a better place. Unfortunately, I see many ... more

One great tool that we have at The Citadel Foundation is active portfolios, which means they are always changing, moving, increasing or decreasing. Our research office is made up of only two staff members, myself, Lisa Ukuku, Director of Research and Libby Davis, Director of Prospects Management & Research therefore it is challenging to maintain ... more

We're zealots for personalization, timeliness & gratitude at our small shop. Our database is uber-up-to-date thanks to our skilled & conscientious donor relations coordinator. Each donor gets a custom thank you letter within 48 hours of receiving the gift along with a personal handwritten note from the CEO if it exceeds $1,000.00 and a phone call ... more

Update!! 150 recurring gift donors (paying by check) that migrated to Raiser's Edge during our conversion are tagged as Monthly Donors in Attributes but the gifts are not labeled as Recurring Gift-Pay Cash. So when I query on Monthly Donors and last Recurring Gift Date, the gift info doesn't show up! NEW TASK: 1. Go into each record 2. Establish the ... more

Our year end direct mail campaign…. starts in the summer, just as soon as I’ve cleared up all our early summer appeals and have a moment of breathing room. This mailing reaches folks that have given gifts over the last five years, so first things first…we need to remember to reach out to that group in a friendly way about our mission and how they have helped.  ... more

Chances are, your appeals fall into one of just a few buckets. For my organization, those buckets include: Direct Mail, General Giving, Honor/Memorial, and one for each of our three big events. You probably don't have to think too hard about what buckets exist at your organization - this stuff is second nature. But a lot of DBAs I've talked to in the ... more