Fundraising CRM News from DonorPerfect

33 Energy Sucking Flood Lights

What you see to the left are 33 bulbs that on average consume 120 Watts as a standard incandescent bulb.  These were mostly in the basement and the first floor of our recent new house we just moved into.

The message?  I was completely amazed that replacing these with Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL) reduced the power consumption by 700%.  Literally, though they cost $350 to replace (because they require  ‘dimmer’ compatible bulbs, you can save more by replacing the actual switches), they will save us $1200+ / year. I break even in 4 months.

During the time that we have moved, I gave a lot away on Craigslist (boxes, couches and other things left by the owner, etc.), but these bulbs- though ‘worth’ $100- are being recycled to be never used again.

I know a lot of people read this blog – including many competitors- so let’s do our part and save the planet.  It’s easy and we’re all on the same team.

Park City, Utah in Summer

The summer is flying by as it always does around here- in the fundraising software world, summer is the season of data conversions and implementations as organizations improve their infrastructure to prepare themselves for the fall fundraising season.

This summer has been no exception- and we easily broke our record for number of installations from last year.  I’d like to think it has something to do with our easy to use software, but in reality, it really boils down to the great people we have in our client support services.  These are the folks that make sure your LYBUNTS and SYBUNTS (oh my!) work correctly and that your incoming data is perfectly transferred into DonorPerfect.

I did have some time to attend the Giving Institute Summer Symposium in Park City, Utah in the middle of July.  Park City in July is stunningly beautiful, and I regret I didn’t have more time to explore the outdoors as the sessions were simply too good to pass up.  Sessions included the future of giving (especially related to capital campaigns), as well as the the role that technology plays in developing fundraising techniques.  The discussion was spirited and genuine, and it was a unique experience I will not soon forget.

One of the discussion topics focused on Mobile Giving.  As I mentioned in my post from February, Mobile Giving (in it’s current incarnation) should really only be pursued by a select few organizations.  My beliefs were confirmed by the following blog post from Raymund Flandez who said:

Indeed, the National Wildlife Federation, which is running a mobile-giving campaign for animals affected by the Gulf oil spill, has recently pulled its text-to-donate message from its Web site. The reason? The Reston, Va., conservation group wants visitors to donate more — and not think that a $10 text gift is all they needed to give, officials say.

Clearly, if an organization as large as the NWF is having mixed results with mobile giving, then other organizations should be very careful before they dive in the same waters.

………

Recently, I also had an opportunity to raise funds for an organization I support, called Salute, Org. I blogged about it last month, and you can reach my personal fundraising page here:  http://pcc2.donorpages.com/pcc3/jp2/.

Certainly, we’re encouraging everyone to use their social networks as much as possible – including Facebook and Twitter- but we knew that the number one tool to raise money would just be email.  However, I decided to run a very non-scientific test, and wanted to see how many donations came from my Facebook posts, or from sending email.

The result?  It’s not even a contest.  Despite having 62 friends (and I have met all of them at one point or another), I have received exactly 7 things from these friends:

Zero, Zip, Natta, Nothing, Null, Nill, and Zilch.

Either I don’t have enough friends or they don’t have any money- either way it’s not good.  Luckily, I sent out two email blasts to my address book (about 75 addresses), and received 8 donations totaling $530.00.  I expect to raise another $300- will any of it be through Facebook?  At this point, I really doubt it.  What’s the lesson?  Email works.  It’s powerful and it’s much more meaningful than a status update on Facebook.  People receiving email eventually have to respond (especially when you keep pestering them!), while on Facebook, it’s normal behavior to ignore status updates.

We’re actually in the process of embedding tracking widgets for incoming donations via Facebook.  While I’m certain we are receiving at least some donations through Facebook, my gut is telling me it’s very few.  For the vast majority of people, sending email will be the superior solicitation method for a long, long time.

Summer’s here and like most everyone else, I’ve been busy and neglecting certain things- hmmm, like this blog. I think my own advice from several posts ago suggested that a good blog strategy is not necessarily the frequency of communication but the predictability of it.

Unfortunately, I’ve been unpredictable lately.

I have only a few excuses- summer being one of them- and apparently the number of ‘tweets’ I send from watching the Phillies (Yes, I am a die hard Phillies fan).

So here’s a few random thoughts I wanted to share:

Deceptive Credit Card Sweepstakes.

On the radio the other day, I heard that TD Bank (a major banking institution here in the NorthEast) is offering a summer sweepstakes whereby their Debit cardholders can win a prize if they ’swipe and sign’ instead of entering in their PIN number when making a transaction.

Why is TD Bank encouraging their customers to sign a receipt instead of using their PIN? Simple. Just follow the money. By classifying the transaction as a VISA/MC purchase, TD Bank (or their affiliates) can charge more than if the transaction is using a PIN number. That is, they can charge the merchant/business 3% instead of 1% or even less. That adds up- and quickly. No wonder TD Bank is willing to give away $50,000 to make it happen but the end result is that everyone else loses. By encouraging these transactions, businesses have to pay more in fees which inevitably leads to higher prices which hurts everyone. So the advice of the day? If you are going to use a Debit card, try to use your PIN. You save the merchant money which will be passed onto you in the future in the form of lower prices.

For non-profits, it works the same way. If your organization has the capability to process Debit cards with a PIN, or better and you can use ACH (Checking/Saving Account info)- you can save your organization a lot of dough (and you don’t have to win a ridiculous sweepstakes to get it).

DonorPerfect Roadmap Roadshow

Tomorrow and Wednesday I’ll be presenting the DonorPerfect Roadmap Roadshow (TM). Nearly a thousand clients have already signed up but it’s not too late! Check your email for the invitation or login to your client account for more information. This 45 minute presentation will highlight our direction for DonorPerfect and outline plans for our impending release of DonorPerfect.NExT- scheduled for October 6, 2009!

Social Network Fundraising

As many of you know, we’ve been offering a Social Network Fundraising solution for over a year now. Called DonorPages, this groundbreaking solution makes it easy to enable your constituents to raise money on your behalf. We’ve got a ton of success stories, and with that success we recently promoted Rob Strickler to manage the division. Rob just launched his blog here, so take a look- DonorPages is simple the most powerful, easiest and cost effective solution in the marketplace!