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Nine Tips for Raising Money in Tight Times

Nine Tips for Raising Money in Tight Times

In todays tough economy, non-profits face increasing competition for donations. Its more than a hunch: According to Giving USA 2003, an annual report on philanthropy, giving by individuals dropped by 0.9% in 2002 compared to 2001 when adjusted for inflation.1 A person who used to give to three organizations might now give to only one or two, notes John Dasher, product manager for FileMaker Applications. The organization thats best at donor management gains the edge. Following are nine tips from fundraising experts on how you can leverage technology to raise money in todays challenging economy. Know your donors The more you know about your donor, the better you can craft the ask so that its in tune with your donors wants, says Paul Clolery, editor-in-chief of The NonProfit Times. A model is Child Advocates of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties (a member of the National CASA Association), which tracks the events donors have attended, their comments about events, their affiliation with the organization (volunteer advocate, board member, other), and the status of thank you notes. We keep an entire screen just for notes about our contacts, so that even a new solicitor can be aware of the donors relationship to Child Advocates and have a more personal interaction, says JoAnn Pickering, director of communications and development for Child Advocates. In fact, the most successful non-profits acknowledge their donors emotional ties to the organization, according to Patrick Hayes, executive director of The Park People of Colorado and a 10-year veteran of fundraising with organizations of all sizes. At the heart of fundraising is relationship management. Its important to help people feel that theyre a part of the organizationnot simply someone you approach when you want money. Hayes believes that approaching fundraising as youd approach marketing a product is a shortsighted approach. When people buy products, they exchange money for goods, he says. In the non-profit sector, they exchange money for an idea. This means you need to develop a higher-level relationship that includes knowing what motivates the donor to give. For example, The Park People attracts donors whose focus might be civic, aesthetic, or environmental. If we know that a member serves on the board of an environmental organization, we have a pretty good idea that environmental causes are important to the person and were not just one of a dozen more or less random charities. That helps us identify people in our database who might respond to a specific, targeted appeal. Be smart about the information you collect and store To save staff and volunteer time spent on data entry, non-profits need to be smart about what information about their donors is useful to collect. Hayes recalls one organization that conscientiously collected donors alma maters and fraternity/sorority memberships in the hopes that this information would be useful for matching donors to solicitors. A good thought, but the information was never used. In general, for small to midsize non-profits, its far more productive to collect information pertaining to the individuals relationship with the organization. Is the donor a corporation or individual? Did the member attend a particular event? Is the nature of their support cash, auction items, or something else? Are they involved with an affiliate organization?

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At the heart of fundraising is relationship management. Its important to help people feel that theyre a part of the organizationnot simply someone you approached when you want money. -Patrick Hayes, Executive Director, The Park People

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Theres incredible value in knowing, for example, that someone who has donated regularly in the past suddenly stopped. Maybe the explanation is that they didnt receive the request, or got distracted. -John Kenyon, National Training and Consulting Director, Groundspring.org

Look beyond the amount By tracking not only donation amounts but also frequency and event attendance, non-profits can better gauge a members commitment to the cause. This knowledge, in turn, helps the organization identify good prospects for planned giving as well as potential board members. Someone who gives a $100 gift year in and year out probably has a stronger relationship with your organization than someone who gave a onetime $1000 gift three years ago, notes Hayes. Be systematic and unwavering about thanking donors A good data management system enables non-profits to efficiently generate thank-you letters that mention the gift amount, date, and event. It also will generate donor listsby category, if appropriatefor inclusion in newsletters. Every gift of any size should be acknowledged, says Hayes. Sometimes a $10 gift represents a bigger stretch for an individual than a $1000 gift. Target your campaigns Targeting the campaign reduces printing and mailing costs, and also can increase yield. The fewer pieces you mail, the better your ROI, notes Clolery of The NonProfit Times. If you acquire a donor from a particular type of list, such as subscribers to an aviation magazine, and that list has done well, you might want to hold an event at an air and space museum, for instance. To conduct a targeted campaign, organizations need the ability to segment their donor base and to create reports. Thats difficult for non-profits that still track donor relationships using yellow legal pads or 3 x 5 cards or, one step up, a spreadsheet or word processing document. A database solution with flexible reporting capabilities confers a significant advantage. Theres incredible value in knowing, for example, that someone who has donated regularly in the past suddenly stopped, says Dasher. Maybe the explanation is that they didnt receive the request, or simply got distracted. With the click of a few buttons, FileMaker Donations generates reports that segment donors by giving category, relationship to the organization, last gift, and more. Non-profits can easily search for specific groups of donorsfor example, people who gave more than $100 annually over the past five years and who did not give in the last 30 days. Consider online fundraising Online fundraising has grown to a small but significant fraction of all fundraising: 5 to 7 percent, according to John Kenyon, consulting director of Groundspring.org, a non-profit application service provider (ASP). Some 60 percent of people who visit a non-profit website take some sort of action, be it volunteering or making a donation online or by mail, Kenyon notes. To make the most of the online medium, he says, nonprofits need to capture and manage donors and potential donors e-mail addresses. A new challenge for non-profits is to double-verify a persons desire to be on the mailing list, to avoid being labeled a spammer by ISPs such as AOL or Yahoo. Savvy non-profits first ask the individual to opt in by checking a box, and then send a welcome e-mail asking for a reply confirming that the individual wants to receive future e-mail communications. You can easily customize FileMaker Pro to track the e-mail verification process, says Kenyon.

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Often Im the only person in the office, so I cant overstate the value of having a data management system that allows me to generate reports and segment lists with a few clicks. -John Kenyon, National Training and Consulting Director, Groundspring.org

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Protect your staffs time Staff and volunteer time is at a premium for non-profits, so the data management system not only needs sophisticated reporting capabilities, it must be very easy to use and require little training. If were all doing our job right, were benefiting the communities we serve, not sitting in our offices doing data entry, says Hayes. Often Im the only person in the office, so I cant overstate the value of having a data management system that allows me to generate reports and segment lists with a few clicks. An easy-to-use data management solution also gives the staff freedom to gain efficiencies in creative ways. Child Advocates, for example, used FileMaker to simplify record-keeping for its annual dinner/auction event. In past years, staff members hand-printed receipts for auction winners, later tediously entering the amounts into their database and analyzing giving by table. Child Advocates simply created a FileMaker database containing guest names, their tables, and auction items. The day of the event they set up a laptop and printer, recorded donations on the spot, and were able to print receipts with the click of a button. They also could instantly track results by table captain. Keep development costs down Many non-profits dont have an IT staff or technical people, so ease of use is paramount for containing development costs. Over the years many non-profit organizations have used FileMaker to write their own fundraising solutions. FileMaker Donations incorporates the best of these ideas, making it unnecessary for non-profits to re-invent the wheel. Non-profits can begin using FileMaker Donations immediately, without any development time, says Dasher. and if they need additional features or functions, they can add the features themselves or engage a member of the FileMaker Solutions Alliance (FSA). Child Advocates, for example, plans to customize its database to include pledged income as well as gifts received. With FileMaker Pro, its very easy to add the new fields, says Pickering. We wont have to buy a new solution or pay for days or weeks of a consultants time. To save money in the long-term, non-profits need to make sure theyre not locked into a proprietary format that prevents them from integrating with other systems in the future. FileMaker Donations supports the new XML format, which simplifies integration with sophisticated fundraising applications the non-profit might use in the future, such as data mining and analytics. Know what works Fundraising organizations are at an important crossroads. Non-profits that dont leverage technology for fundraising will be at a significant disadvantage, says Dasher. With the current economic squeeze, its important to be more efficientboth in terms of campaign costs and effectiveness. A good donor management system is indispensable for knowing your donorsand knowing what works.

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