Using Your Fundraising Software to Effectively Manage Your Prospects

Transcription

1 Using Your Fundraising Software to Effectively Manage Your Prospects

2 Learning Objectives How do we use our fundraising software to help manage our prospects more effectively? Note that this presentation will be software agnostic. Review and understand the software side, the data side, the metrics side and how all of this also relates to the rest of your organization.

3 Contents Contents/Introductions Getting Started We Shall Overcome Your Terms Prospect Management Meetings Standards and Metrics Fundraising Cycle Resources Questions

4 Experience, Expertise, BIAS Sr. Vice President for Finance & Information Systems VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation Principal and Founder SupportingAdvancement.Com SupportingFundraising.Com Finance, Information Systems, Operations (Most of Career) Large, Medium and Small Organizations Not for Profit and Private Sector Financial Statements, Audit, Investment Management Transaction Processing and Management Technical Infrastructure Database Management, Reporting and Data Warehousing Web, Online, Social Media, Marketing Part-Time Consulting

5 Lessons Learned Ongoing Support from Sponsors is Critical Planning is Not Always Fun But Essential Be Creative Change Management & Communication is Key Change in Jobs, Roles and Responsibilities Everything Takes a Lot of Time and Effort Every Organization has a Variety of Issues Try and Learn from Past Mistakes Have Fun

6 Getting Started

7 Fundraising in General Fundraising Started Around the Reunion Cycle More and More Mega Campaigns Much More Competition for Charitable $ The Growth of Online and Mobile Fundraising Reduction in Administrative Support for Fundraisers More Complexity in Type of Gifts Transparency, Accountability, Privacy More Reliance on Sophisticated Analytics Competition for Major Gift Fundraising Staff Length of the Cultivation Cycle

8 Scope Defined for System A fundraising system encompasses people, business processes, software, data All need to be tied together for an organization to manage their prospects successfully.

9 Complexity and Management of Data

10 Complexity of Fundraising Software Go to the prospect tab, change the capacity rating, then go to the proposal tab, add a target amount and target date, set the prospect status to active, set the proposal status to active, enter the notes in the proposal tab about the meeting, add attributes for priority, date and estimated cash flows, set the proposal action to asked..

11 Supplemental Systems

12 Remember Fundraisers need to be enabled to raise money. Moves management is only part of the picture. There s both a prospect pipeline and a data pipeline. Relationships within your organization can be critical to your success. Great administrative assistants can be worth their weight in gold.

13 We Shall Overcome

14 Establish Clear Goals Raise More Money Increase Major Gift Activity Balance Your Prospect Pools Between Fundraisers Improve Your Major Gift Data Identify More Prospects For Pipeline Run More Effective Major Gift Fundraising Events Staff Training Program Galas, Auctions and Similar Better Tracking and Accountability

15 Plan Organize Planning Process Conduct Research Construct Plan Formalize the Planning Process Implement Plan Evaluate Metrics and Outcomes Revise Plan

16 Document Your Plan/Activities What s in it for me?

17 Your Terms

18 Define Your Pipeline

19 Language is Critical Major Gift Prospect Prospect Stage Proposal State Proposal Amounts Balance: As the language and terminology gets more complex, the corresponding data maintenance in the system becomes harder to manage. Example: 5 prospect stages and 700 prospects = 3,500 codes, if you have 7 stages and 700 prospects, jumps to 4,900 codes.

20 Language Example Actions (Tasks, Activity) Forward actions: Accountability reports (targeted), invites to cultivation/recognition events Background actions: Accountability reports (mass mailing), personal/seasonal cards Have an organization wide glossary of terms and make sure it gets updated.

21 Prospect Management Meetings

22 Audit Your Meetings Are prospects on the system and recorded as to how they re being discussed? Is there a set of standard reports that everyone is using? Is there a lot of discussion about items like What do you mean by cultivation? Who s responsible for taking notes and ensuring data tasks are completed? Are fundraisers being held accountable for ensuring their data is accurate? How much of the discussion is taken up by talking about data? Tip: Invite the head database person as an observer only, head of your IT as a regular attender.

23 Accountability as Part of Job

24 Training as a First Step

25 Standards and Metrics

26 Defined Standards Are a foundation for measuring your organization s performance and make improvements. Help compare your organization to industry standards. Need to be challenging but achievable. Both $ and activity should be a standard. Need to be clear understood by everyone. You are expected to raise $1,000,000 per year, from a pool of 150 active and qualified prospects, and complete at least 4 in person donor visits per week.

27 Metrics Are measurements used to gauge some quantifiable component of performance. A variety of applications for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help make better business decisions. Are employed to transform an organization's mission statement and business strategy into specific and quantifiable goals, and to monitor the organization's performance in terms of achieving those goals.

28 Metrics Help. Drive activity and accountability for managing complex long-term relationships Help to predict future donations Report activity to stakeholders such as your board. Improve resource allocation If you don t measure it, it won t get done. 28

29 Metrics are Leading or Lagging

30 Metrics What prospect meetings do we have planned? What actions are overdue and need follow-up? What actions have volunteers completed? Number of actions completed this year compared to previous years and compared to monies raised in previous years? We need to hire additional staff we know on average that it takes many significant actions over years to raise a major gift. Don t Focus on Punitive Aspects of Metrics 30

31 Programs/Solicitors Selection for Reports 31

32 Identification

33 New Prospects Identified

34 New Prospects Identified How quickly are they assigned? Do we have standards for identification, # of visits, capacity, inclination, event attendance, others Do we track subsequent actions/gifts for assigned to ensure that follow-up is done? Do we try and predict and measure who s best at identifying? Are we systematic about our techniques for identifying and is any part of this automated?

35 Automated Profiles Used for.. Donor Visits Events Briefings Improves Research Effectiveness Forces Data Updates Statistics often show these are the most used reports.

36 Peer Screening

37 Wealth Screening

38 Data Mining and Analytics

39 Creative Uses for Data Mining

40 Screening, Data Mining, Surveys Understand what data you will receive. Have your vendors to do a test segment to prove that their approach works. (Have them profile you.) Understand the differences between scoring and strategy/tactics/implementation. Do some verification before committing activity. Have a concise segmenting plan and a clear activity plan. If it works, make it a regular and automated process. If it works, make it a recurring budget line item. Whatever you do, make sure it can be recorded in your fundraising database this can take a lot more time and effort than you might originally think.

41 Don t Forget Your Own Data Sources Grateful Pet Patients Surveys to Different Donor Segments

42 Assigning Prospects

43 Cultivation

44 Activity Levels Required

45 Contact Reports Structured to Collect Wealth Indicator Information Drop Downs and Standardized Fields Rather Than Freeform Text Enabled on Mobile Devices Useful as a Training Tool for Fundraisers Automate the Uploading if Possible Tip: Try and structure these in the same way that you do your research profiles.

46 Contact Reports Dev Contacts

47 Cultivation Accountability Checks How long without an action/task/contact? How long assigned without an active proposal? How long assigned without a gift or pledge? Contacts this year compared to previous years. Counts of types of contacts.

48 Contact Reports Audit Distribution Policy for New Reports Filed Paper or Scanned Backup Verify What s in the File Quality Control Follow-up With Prospects Time to Write and Get On System How easy is it for fundraisers to enter their contact reports into the system?

49 Privacy and Accountability

50 Notes Fields Hard to Extract Information for Reports Make Sure You Have Appropriate Categories Clear Decisions on Who the Author Is Use Attributes and Other Areas Wherever Possible Don t Duplicate Information in Other Fields Standards are Critical

51 Holes in the Contacts Bucket High Net Worth Events or Galas Monitor over Time

52 Solicitation

53 Solicitor Metrics

54 How Credit is Assigned Campaigns Appeals or Solicitation Codes People (Staff and Volunteers) Fund (Distribution) Organizational Structure Unsolicited Credit should not be punitive and staff education and training is critical. Agreed upon arbitration for dispute resolution.

55 Gift Processing Segmentation

56 Solicitor Credit for Gifts Received This view will have different totals than a 5 year giving history for their current pool.

57 Solicitor Credit Views Specific Solicitor Credit Assigned at Gift Entry If a solicitor is assigned to another prospect, and that prospect gives a gift this view documents the fundraising performance of the solicitor for all prospects that were assigned to them. Giving Over Time for Currently Assigned Pool If we re-assign prospects, we don t want them to give less no matter who they re assigned to.

58 Monitor Overdue Pledge Payments

59 Monitor Gap to Goal

60 What have you done for me lately?

61 Stewardship

62 Stewardship System Enhancements If you have a lot, enter plans into the system using actions or tasks. Automate stewardship reporting.

63 Track Data Quality Over Time

64 Automated Monitoring Automated Notification of New Gifts Automated Notification of Donors Reaching New Cumulative Giving Levels Automated Notification of Contacts or Actions Recorded for Donor Birthdays, Login to Online Community, Clicks on Electronic Newsletters Be creative good monitoring helps cycle donors back into the pipeline for the next ask.

65 And with that, we re back. Identification Questions?

66 A Few Resources

67 A Few Resources Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP) Listserv has lots of volume, not always the most helpful in terms of responses or expertise. Not too many data questions. Selection of online resources available if you re a member. Local chapters may provide contacts and help. Association of Records Managers and Administrators (ARMA) Various resources for members. This association is focused on indepth professional records management activities. Local chapters.

68 A Few Resources Association of Advancement Services Professionals (AASP) Annual conference, web site has best practices, regional meetings. Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement (APRA) Numerous resources, local chapters, conferences, webinars and much more.

69 A Few Resources Council for Aid and Support of Education (CASE) Higher education focus, but a number of resources, listservs that you can subscribe to without being a member. CoolData Blog Lots of discussion on data, data elements, data mining. Higher Ed focused, but concepts hold throughout. Tableau Software Some good samples and illustrations of creative data visualizations.

70 Listservs

71 SupportingAdvancement.Com

72 Questions?