VOICE – Multichannel Communication That Converts

Good afternoon, and welcome back to the 2026 DonorPerfect conference. And welcome to Sarah’s session on multichannel communication that converts. And this is considered intermediate content. A little bit about Sarah: she has been a Donor Perfect trainer for eight years, and she has been Read More

Good afternoon, and welcome back to the 2026 DonorPerfect conference. And welcome to Sarah’s session on multichannel communication that converts. And this is considered intermediate content. A little bit about Sarah: she has been a Donor Perfect trainer for eight years, and she has been working and training for more than 15 years. Sarah also trains clients both in English and French, and loves teaching them how to make best use of their system. In her spare time, she can be found enjoying her passion for reading and spending quality time with her family and her dog, Maisie. And just a couple of housekeeping items before we get started. Please submit your questions in the Q and A tab, and we will try to address those during the session. And then just a reminder that all sessions are being recorded and will be available on the DonorPerfect website after the conference. Take it away, sir.

Thank you so much. Oh, is everyone doing? I hope that you’re learning a lot. I am so excited to be here with you today, and I have been learning a lot myself. So, I find this has been a wonderful two days so far, and we’re going to keep it going. When I was preparing this presentation, I came across this quote, and I just wanted to share it with you, because I felt it really resonated with me in many different ways, and I felt it was appropriate for what we’re going to talk about, and the quote is, all while we communicate is not determined by all well we say things, but all while we are understood, and I’m going to let you think about that for a moment, and I think that that’s really.. I don’t know, it really clicked with me, so I just wanted to start with that. And today we’re going to do a session called Multi Channel Communication that converts, so it’s a perfect quote, and it’s a perfect presentation. It’s a perfect topic to talk about. Now, many studies have shown that multi-channel donors are a lot more valuable than single-channel donors, and that by being present on multiple channels, we can create a more cohesive donor journey, and that can build trust and deepen their commitment to your mission. Using multiple channel is just about increasing, is more than just about increasing donation, it’s about the long-term relationship that you can build with the donor, and this sense of connection that will lead to higher retention rates, and donors will feel valued and connected and with you in your mission, so when I was thinking about this topic, and I was thinking about this, it made me think a lot about me, how I am as a donor, and what is happening. So today’s donors, they’re everywhere, they’re they’re checking their emails on their phone, I check my email on my phone all the time. They’re receiving direct mail at home in their mailbox, they’re checking their emails at work, they’re engaging with your social media content, they’re checking out your website. Maybe they’re receiving a text message from you to take them for attending an event, they’re going to your event. So there’s so many different ways that they’re interacting, so many different channels, right. And with that comes higher expectations. We want messages that feel personal, we want the timing that makes sense, and we want consistency across this messaging, because donors don’t think in channels, they just think about your organization as a whole, and that’s huge, right? So, the challenge isn’t reaching them anymore. We have many ways to reach them, but how can we coordinate those touchpoints so that it is meaningful? In a lot of organizations, communication will happen in silos. Somebody’s going to be taking part to creating the direct mail, sending that out. Someone else is doing stewardship calls, someone else is managing the email content, someone else is taking care of the social media aspect, someone else is running events and inviting people to it, so with without a shared system it could feel disconnected, sending donation ask right after someone has just given, repeating the message across multiple channels with without really understanding that they just got this or missing on opportunities as well for communications, and that’s when the donors start to disengage, because they’re never thinking this is an email, this is a phone call, this is a direct mail, they’re just thinking, why are they communicating with me this way, this feels completely disjuncted, do. And they just want to experience your organization as a whole with a proper communication plan, but when it’s coordinated, that’s when we can build trust, and that’s when DonorPerfect can become in the middle your coordination hub. So today’s session, we’re going to talk about all the tools in DonorPerfect, or hopefully some of the tools in DonorPerfect, that can help you create that kind of connected experience. So, what can we use DonorPerfect for? Why am I saying it’s your coordination hub? Well, you can use DonorPerfect to see giving patterns, create donor segments with those giving patterns track every donor interaction and keep the full history of those donor interaction, and then you can manage this outreach across channel with the big picture.

It becomes more than just a place where you store the data, it could become a huge integral part of your communication strategy. So, who attended? There was session yesterday, actually was multiple sessions, I think, that brought up this topic, but on segmentation. So, I don’t know if any of you attended those sessions. There was one by Mallory that was beautiful that I personally attended, and I loved, and she talked about segmenting, and we can segment on so many different ways, and often we’re going to want to do segments based on information that we have in our DonorPerfect, or we’re going to need to first maybe acquire this information, so I’m going to give you some examples of how you can use DonorPerfect to create targeted groups to send your message to, and remembering that I’m going to use examples with fields that everybody has, but you can also create those same targeted groups based on any information, as long as you put that information in DonorPerfect first, so we can use use selection filters. Apparently, I forgot my animation here. We can use some key fields in DonorPerfect to find the right donors, so if we’re looking for new donors, so a good, a good example would be I want to create a welcome series and add all my new donors to this automated process that I’m going to set up, and the whole plan where they’re going to receive a series of emails. For example, I could do that with the initial gift dates. I can decide that I would like to reach out to my lapse donors, so I’m going to look at who are my lapstoners been on their most recent gift, so the last gift date is what’s going to tell me who is a lapstoner, and the example we’re going to use today, so we’re going to try to seek out our potential upgrade for our mid level donors, so that’s the example I’m going to run with. We’re going to use last year’s gifting total, as well as how many gifts these people have given, and a couple of other key fields, and we’re going to run through this example and some pieces of communications, how we could coordinate that whole plan together. These are just examples. There is so much more that you can do, but let me show you in DonorPerfect what that’s going to look like. So, this is a donor record in my DonorPerfect system. So, we could see here we have Michelle, and I’m going to scroll down to a very specific section right now that you may or may not have seen before, so in my system, this section is called Giving an Engagement Profile. The Giving an Engagement Profile is a section that may not be in your system, but the fields that I’m going to talk about right now are in your system. Maybe they’re somewhere else, maybe they’re hidden, maybe the section is called something else. My colleagues are going to be sharing in the chat a link to a knowledge base article to display those fields if you do not see them in your system. Okay, because they’re really, they’re really helpful to use these, these fields that I’m going to focus on is, so what did I talk about? Well, I talked about the initial gift date before. So the initial gift date is over here. Okay, and I can tell this person was a new donor in December of 2024 The most recent gift date, so this person is not left because she’s given recently, and I could see that right here. Sometimes you may want to look for the full giving total of this donor, so that’s the lifetime giving. You could use that. Sometimes you want to look at the. The maximum gift, what was the largest gift this person has ever given, and that would be here, and I’m not. And then we can continue on with with these fields.

The one I’m going to talk about to find mid level in this example is going to be last year’s giving, so I’m going to look at last year’s calendar year to date, and that’s going to tell me that this donor has given $1,100 Now, I could tell you the plan is go through each of your donor records and then choose which ones you have given a certain amount, of course, that would be silly. No one has time for that. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to build a filter to find all of the people that fit the criteria we selected. We’re going to run with an example today that their last year giving total has to be between 1010 1000. That’s just an example that I’m using. Your threshold would be whatever you will determine based on your donors, so I just needed to pick something, so that we could go with it. So I’m going to look for people, whereas last year’s giving total is between 1100 1000 sorry, and 10,000 So this person would fit because they have 1100 The second criteria that I’m going to use is that I only want to find people that have given at least two gifts, so I want to not see my donors that have only given once, because they’re still part of my new donor plan, and I don’t want to overwhelm them with multiple communications talking about different things, so if I go here to number of gifts, I can see that this donor has given four gifts, so that would be greater than two. That’s going to be my second criteria. And then I also want to look for donors that are individuals, so I will, I will not use companies or foundations in this particular effort that I’m doing. I’m going to focus on individuals, so that is the field called donor type. That’s the field I’m going to use in my filter. Okay, so those are my three criterias that I’m going to use right now. So, whenever build a selection filter, the first step that I suggest is write out in English what you want to do, then go to Donor Perfect and translate it to Donor Perfect. So, if I say I want to find my mid-level donors and only for people, not companies, that’s the English part. Then, okay, well, all can I tell that, right? And that’s what we just did. We broke it down field by field. Took a look at it now. We’re going to go ahead and build the filter, so I’m going to go under settings and then filters, and I’m going to grab here this button that says add a new filter. So I’m building a new filter from scratch. So here I am going to see this screen. So if you’ve never built a filter before, do not let this screen intimidate you. It intimidated me for a while, and then I mastered it, or kind of tamed it a little. So this is broken down into five steps. Step one, what information that you’re looking at, where is it located? Step two, what specific field? Step three, what do you want to do with this field, and that kind of goes with four. And then you click add more criteria if you have more things to add, and it’s going to kind of translate it here in a filter language, so where is the information I want? Well, I just hung out on the main screen, so that’s where my information is located. And I said I wanted to find people whereas last year’s giving total is between 1010 1000, so where is that information? Well, the field was called last year’s giving total last year calendar year, so it is not listed here, because this only lists some very popular fields. So I’m going to click all fields, and then all the fields that are on the main screen or bio screen are listed alphabetically for me.

Okay, so you can see them here, so I can see all of these, so I’m looking for last year, so I’m going to go down where L is, and if you don’t remember the alphabet, goes that happens to me all the time, so don’t feel bad, and I am apparently there, it is this system as a lot of fields, okay, last year C Y T D, so that’s what we called it. Last year, calendar year to date, total. Your field may be called something else. Okay, so I’m going to give you one little tiny trick. If you don’t, if you really want to use this field and you don’t know what it’s called, you could, of course, go look, but if you’re not sure, it is called. Called L Y underscore C Y T D, okay, that’s the field name. You can also search by field name, so if I click sort by field name instead, now I’m seeing that part, the part that can’t be changed, that’s the same across the board for everybody. So now I could go to that L section, and it’s going to be L Y, and they’re all here last year, two years ago, and so on. So you could also do it this way sometimes. That helps. So last year’s calendar year total, and then I said between. Well, that’s easy. There is literally a between option. And then I’m going to type my two amounts. So I said between 1010 1000, now that’s not it. I want more, so I’m going to click add more criteria. I’m going to turn that off, so we can look at it with the names, and then I’m going to be looking at number of gifts. Okay, so number of gifts is going to be N, and that’s after L, and number of gifts. Number of gifts is this field, and I want it to be greater than or equal to two. I could also say greater than one that would also work, right? Because greater than or equal to will be two or more, greater than would be more. So we can, we can do it either way. And then I want to look for individuals, so I’m going to add more criteria again, and I’m going to be looking for donor type, so that’s back up in the D donor type, and I’m going to say is equal to, and here I could type individual, but that’s that’s why I’m going to get it wrong, because I need the code, so I’m not going to expect anyone to know the codes, that’s when you click here, look up codes, and then you select I N individual, and then I’m going to hit continue. Okay, I have my filter. This is exciting, so I could go ahead and name it. I’m gonna just put my name on it, so that I don’t get confused later, because a lot of people are using this particular system. You can also put it in folders, so I believe I have a folder. Yes, I do. I’m going to share with my friends, so if they do want to use it, they can. This is how you keep a filter secret if you don’t share. And then I’m going to click done, I’m Okay, now I’ve created the I already had one, but that’s okay. I have created the new filter right here. Now I have my segment that I plan on working with, and now I can start working on the communication plan, and this applies to so many things. It could be based on interest, it could be based on what did they actually gave to it, could be based on these people attended an event, and now I want to communicate to them about what we talked about at the event, right. So, there’s so many different ways that this could go, but we’re going to continue with this specific example, and we’re going to talk about sorry. Apparently, my screen changed on me. Okay, we’re going to talk now that we have this segment. We’re going to talk about how do we coordinate the actual campaign itself, like what’s our actual plan. So, instead of sending one message to everyone and then waiting for what comes next.

We are going to design a sequence of communication, a timeline of sorts, to go through different channels, and then maybe not everyone will receive every single piece of it, because depending on how each piece of it gets responded to or goes. So, first off, in this example, I’m going to send a letter in the mail, and I’m going to call it my pre-call letter. It’s going to include an impact report of what we’ve done recently, and mention that our grateful we are with further help, and also that we would like to call them to discuss what we’re working on, and kind of telling them, I would like to call you around this time this week, if you want to call me first, go ahead. Here’s my phone number. If you want to read more about what we’re doing, here’s the actual impact report, and kind of just informational letter. Then I’m going to have the actual phone call. I’m going to call them, I’m going to talk to them that about what we’re working on, what is our project right now, what we’re doing, and there might be a very soft ask on the phone, but it’s more still informational in this case, and I’m going to follow that up with a text message to thank them for the call, of course. If I don’t reach them, there’s not going to be a thank you text, right. So I can’t just blankly grab my same criteria and thank everyone, and then potentially following the phone call and the text, they’re going to make a donation, but potentially not. So if they don’t donate, then I’m going to follow up with an email that kind of recaps a little bit of the project that’s coming, that’s connected to the call that refers back to all of the same things, but that’s going to have a different, a different format, and it’s going to have also a soft ask in the email, and maybe that’s going to work, maybe they’re going to donate, and then if they do donate, then I’m going to send them a thank you video to show my appreciation, so this is a very basic example here of five different steps. I’m going to demonstrate two of them in DonorPerfect. How we can use what we will already build on to get there. So the first one is that letter. So I have my segment, so I am going to send that letter to everyone in that segment, so how am I going to do that? Well, I’m going to go under in DonorPerfect. I’m going to go under mailings, and then mail merge. And when I go under mail merge, it’s going to right now, it’s going to bring my filter along. I’m going to pretend that it didn’t, just so I can show you how that works. But basically, when I’m under mail merge, I’m going to be able to do one of two things, or both. I can either export a list of all the people that fit my segment, or I can do instant merge directly into the letter that I’ve uploaded to DonorPerfect. So I created a letter, it has everything that I want in it, and I could instant merge the donor’s information directly into that letter. I can instead export a spreadsheet and then do the merge on my own afterwards. So that’s both options are available. So, how will that work? Well, first off, I need to apply my selection filter. So, you may notice before I said it followed me, it was here, I removed it. Just want to show you both options. So, when you build a selection filter, it has a tendency to hang out with you and just follow you around for a little bit. So, if you go to a report, or you go to mail merge. It’s going to apply it automatically, assuming while you just built this, you probably want to use it right now. If it’s not there, because you didn’t build it right away, and it’s a different step, then I’m going to go to apply, and I’m going to be able to select it here and grab it, and that’s why saving it with a logical name in a logical place here.

Okay, secondly, I’m going to go down where it says set mail merge options, and I’m going to click in this little drop down and I’m going to pick an export template, so what is an export template? That’s the spreadsheet that I’m going to get. So, if I was to export a mail merge file, it’s going to give me a spreadsheet. This drop down is all the spreadsheet templates in this specific DonorPerfect system, and this particular list is connected to all the export templates that we have created in this particular system, so yours will be different for sure. That, what is this mean? What is this list like? What, what does that do? Well, that’s going to determine which columns are in your spreadsheet if you export a spreadsheet, but it’s, it’s also going to determine what fields could be merged into your letter if you’re using the instant merge feature, so it’s important in both cases. So I don’t know that I feel like what I wanted to use is not here, I’m just going to use this one here, this basic mailing template in this example, and then I can click export the mail merge file. When I click that, I’m going to get this little message at the bottom. Okay, that’s telling me that my file is processing and it’s going to download soon. When it downloads, it’s going to save it on my computer. Okay, so that I can now go do something else if I wanted to. It will download automatically when it’s ready. The reason it’s doing this is it’s just putting it in a queue, so you can easily continue and don’t have to wait if it’s a large file. So, there is my file, it’s putting it here, and I’m just going to click save. The second option, if I had wanted instead, is I can click instant merge, and I could go, and I already added my letter, so I can grab it here, and then I could simply hit merge, and now what it’s going to do. Instead, is it’s going to create a Word document with all my letters merge, and that’s also saved on my computer. So, both options are possible. You can do either or, or both, I guess, if you really wanted to. So, if you wanted to check it first, and then, like, yep, that’s good, and then do the instant merge, and it’s going to merge into letters. One more thing, I’m going to show on this screen is over here, where it says ‘Show more options. There is an option that’s called ‘Update Contact Manager. We’re going to talk about the contact in a, in a little bit in this presentation, so I will come back to this, but this is how you can make sure that everybody knows that you sent this letter, so here I could go and be specific and say I have sent my letter. This is my, this is this mailing code, my mid-level donor campaign from 2020-six and when I do export the mail merge file, it is going to create a contract transaction in everybody’s record, so that I know who has received this letter, or also if I’m not there, everybody else knows who has received this letter, so remembering we want to coordinate, so someone else would see that and be like, oh, I’m not going to send them a different appeal, because we’re sending this work, they’re part of this project, this plan. The second thing, so if we go here, this is kind of how we would do this part, right? So I created a filter, found my segment, and then I was able to create the letter. The second part that I’m going to show you is email follow up, so let’s say I did my call, I did my free call letter, I did my phone call, I sent my thank you text.

I have a donation, I’m not sending the email follow up to people that donated, but maybe I want to send that email follow up to people that didn’t donate, and maybe I’m going to use Constant Contact to send that email, so what I’m going to want to do in this scenario is I’m going to want to make sure that I’m changing my filter now to exclude anyone that’s donated since I sent the letter or since I had the phone call, right. So here in DonorPerfect, I’m going to want to first off go back to settings, go back to filters, and maybe I want to keep my first filter the same, and I want to build a new filter, or maybe I’m just going to edit this filter. In this example, I will just simply edit it, but I also want to bring your attention to the copy option that a lot of people don’t realize is here, because you have to go under settings to filters to see it, and that’s a neat little trick if you need to just build a filter that’s almost the same but not quite, so I’m going to edit this filter, and I’m going to add to the filter that they have to have not made a gift since I called them, so assuming I’m going to go with the pretend example that I know I had done all my phone calls may 20, then here for this email follow up I’m going to only search for people that have not made a gift since may 20, so I’m going to add more criteria and I’m going to go back to the main bio screen, and this time I’m looking at the last gift date, so their most recent gift date has to be less than right before, that’s what this means, and this is trying to explain it, but basically when you do a date, less than means before, greater than means after. Okay, so less than, and then I can use the little calendar to go select may 20. That’s when I finished all my calls, and I’m going to add more criteria, just so you can see it. Add over here, click continue, and here’s my list. So I use the same filter, almost, but now I’m adding something else to it, and I’m saying they can’t have given since this day, so I want to send them an email. I could also add that they’ve had a phone call logged, right? I want to make sure that I, if I missed someone somehow, I didn’t get to reach them, I’m not going to send them this email. So, there’s a lot more criterias we could add for sake of time, and this demo. This is the only one I’m going to do, and I’m going to click done. So now I have a new filter. So, how can I apply that to create an email? Well, if I go under mailings, I also have Constant Contact email as an option, so I’m going to send this email using Constant Contact. I just want to build the list so that it appears in Constant Contact immediately, so I can go ahead and send that email. So I’m going to go to List Management, and I’m going to build a new list, and I’m going to call it. The mid level donors 2026 Sarah. Again, just so I know what this is later, and I’m going to go and grab my filter. So here’s my filter that I built. When you’re building a list in Constant Contact, it’s always asking you this question: Are you sending the email to all email or only sending it to the email that’s on the main screen, so I’m going to uncheck include secondary addresses and send them only one email per person, and then I’m going to go ahead and create my list while Constant Contact does its thing. This is creating the list here, and it’s automatically creating the list in Constant Contact, so that I can go ahead and send that email. These are the people that have found the email that I’m going to create whenever I create it. The beauty of this list is that it’s dynamic, so if I create the list today, but only send my email in two days, and someone makes their donation tomorrow.

They won’t be on the list anymore, because every night the list updates itself with the filter, and a gift tomorrow is a gift after may 20. So they will be removed from the list in that scenario. So I hope that was helpful. I’m going to encourage you to try it out, and let me know later. I guess we’re going to also talk about another tool in DonorPerfect. Now that’s called the Fundraiser Bot. Has anyone here ever, ever used it? The Content Creator Bot that we have, I would love to see in the chat if anyone has used it before. I see nose, nose. Oh, I see a yes. Okay, did you know it was there? Do you not need help? Maybe you don’t need help. I personally, I’m not the most creative person when it comes to writing emails and letters, so I think it’s a great tool that we’ve added. So, where can you find it, and what does it do? So basically, it is powered by Chat GPT, and what DonorPerfect people did is they put some prompts underneath, so that it is already nonprofit fundraising specific to help you create the content, so you can see it right here in your DonorPerfect system, in the blue band at the top, it’s probably super small right now on your screen, but it is there, and when you click on it, it’s going to take you to a page that just says get started. I’ve already filled this up, so it’s going to be pre-filled. It’s going to remember you on your browser if you did fill it in before it’s going to be three slides of questions asking you, you are what you’re doing, and then here you’re going to be able to go ahead and specify what kind of message you want to send, and then what is the details of the message that you’re doing, and then if I click next, it’s going to generate that message for me. It’s going to just create content. So, sometimes what I’ve seen a lot of people do is start from this and then modify it and make it their own, but this is sometimes a good start, even for format. What should I look like? Some sentences sometimes help, but in general it can help you with content creation. So, hopefully that can help those of us that have creativity issues in the moment, sometimes, or just need a little nudge.

Okay. well, that’s all great, but now we want to track all this, right? So one of the things that I was mentioning at the beginning was that if we work in silos, so I sent my direct mail and my colleague Matt sent an email, and then now no one knows what was sent, no one knows what’s going on, right. So, of course, it is super important to track everything. So, with DonorPerfect, you can track every donor interaction on the contact screen, you can track results and compare segments with DonorPerfect reporting tools, and you can, of course, learn and refine, because the goal is not necessarily to get everything right on the first try, but to learn and improve all the time. So, in DonorPerfect, I’m gonna go back to my, the profile I wasn’t before, Michelle, and show you. So, I know I saw some comments super fast in the chat before, somebody said they love the contact manager, so this is the contact manager. This is what it can look like if you’re using it to track everything that you’re doing with terms of communication, so this can include all your constant contact emails. All your personal emails or letters, phone calls, text messages, anything really that you’re doing, and you can assign tasks to specific staff members, and then those tasks are going to show up on your homepage in a section called Scheduled donor outreach, so if I go back to the homepage over here, this is where I could see all my to-do tasks that are assigned to me. So I have to send an email to this donor, I have to call this donor, and then I could see what I have upcoming for the next seven days, and oh, I have a visit with this person, so this shows up because it’s assigned to me. My colleague Matt is going to see something different on his scheduled donor outreach page, but it all connects to this specifically. This page and these tasks that have a due date and then an assigned to, okay, and then, of course, you could track what has been done, so Constant Contact email can be tracked automatically. I showed you how you could create a line for whenever you do the mailing, so when I did my letter, I could have created this here when I did it. You can also have your emails automatically going in this section if you’re sending personal emails from your own inbox by using a specific BCC email address, so I encourage you to try that out if that’s something you’ve not done yet, and if you want to know more about that, maybe my colleagues can share that as well. How that works, but basically you would just use a BCC email address, and all your emails will copy in here without you having to manually go add a note after the fact. And then we can report on all of this, and that’s that’s the best part, is that I want to see what I’ve been doing, what’s happened in a month, or what about my mid-level donors? What are all the pieces of communications that I’ve sent to them in the last little while? So, if I go under reports and report center, I built out an easy report, so we call them easy report to help you out in terms of making you not afraid of it, that’s the idea, and the idea is they’re not hard, they’re not hard to build, you can build your own, you choose your columns, and then they appear, that’s the goal, and we try to make it simple, and it’s like, let’s call it easy, so you know, and you’re not afraid of it. Okay, so that’s kind of the idea. I built one already, because I don’t have time to show you this, but I have – we have a lot of resources on easy reports. If you do need help, definitely look into that here. Here you can see on the screen the report. I’m just going to click run. I have a filter on it, so that I’m looking for the right people right now.

And here is the list. So this report, in this example, will just show you all the different communication pieces. pieces that I’ve had with the donors that fit my criteria, and it’s broken down by what the activity was in this example, and then it’s giving you the notes, when it was done, was it finished, was it completed, and you can see here who is assigned to as well, and that is the Is the report okay? So, what do I want you to remember from this as we’re wrapping up slowly, hopefully you’re remembering lots of things, but maybe there’s too much information out there, so it’s hard to remember lots of things with all the channels and data points. It is easy to lose sight of what matters the most, which is your mission. So every message, and no matter the channel, it should sound like it’s coming from you, your organization, and reinforce your purpose and clearly show impact, and a good test of that is asking yourself if they only saw one piece of this campaign, are they still understanding what the mission is, are they still understanding why they’re here, so to recap, consider consistency builds trust, and your message should be consistent with your mission. Segmentation will make your messaging more relevant, and your donors experience one journey, not separate channels. And donor perfect can help you coordinate that journey. Just map one. Campaign at a time, build your segments and use your data to track your results, and I will leave you on this last quote, and this one is from me. I made it up as I was thinking about things. DonorPerfect isn’t just where your data lives, it is where your donor relationships can grow. I just saw somebody say info overload. I know, I know. So I’m going to tell you. Well, I’m going to go to the thank you slide, and Matt’s going to come and hang out with us for five minutes. But basically, there is a resource if you go into the exhibitors area, and there’s a fundraising guide, and a lot of links related to what I’ve shared, but also with all the other presentations, so I highly encourage you to check it out, and then you can rewatch me talk to you today anytime on our website too, starting the end of this week, so hopefully that helps. Here, I did have one question here I wanted to pose to you real quick, I don’t think that you looked at this, but Jenny asked, where you upload the mail merge letters in DonorPerfect.

Oh, that’s just such a great question. Actually, so in DonorPerfect on their mailings, you have an area here for mail merge templates, and this is where you would go to upload it. This system is filled with letters. This is where you would go to upload it, and at the bottom it’s even going to give you a link to pre-made templates that would have not necessarily your branding, but well, definitely not your branding, but we’ll have all of the merge fields that are popular in those types of templates. But to upload, you would simply click upload new, and that’s where it goes, and then it would be available to use. Great question.

Thank you. Cat Clark wants to know. She says her organization’s fiscal year does not align with the calendar year. Are there times when you would recommend pulling a donor’s calendar year to date versus their fiscal year to date, often that’s going to depend more on your fundraising calendar than anything else. So, if you’re doing something like, if what you’re planning is connected to fiscal year, then you could definitely use the fiscal year giving, and I don’t know if you noticed, because I didn’t really talk about it, but the same fields exist for fiscal year, right here in DonorPerfect, for all of the last six years and the current one, so most people will know, like, well, our campaign is fiscal year based, not calendar year based, and that’s important, I would say probably, if you’re doing something that’s end of year, and you just want to, like, end of calendar year, like a December something, or maybe you just want to recognize your donors, or you just want to send them a thank you for the giving of the year. Most people in everyday life think in January to December, so in that case it might make sense to, to use calendar anyway for those purposes.

I think we have time for one more real quick here. This is from an anonymous person, but if you select to send to secondary emails, does DonorPerfect pull in fields from the main screen? For example, will it pull in the salutation from the main screen, or is there a separate salutation that’s on that secondary address?

That’s also a great question. So, when someone has multiple emails, if you go to addresses, you’re going to see they’re going to have a full on, like, first name, last name, and email, and if I click edit, because apparently the salutation is also here, so it would pull that

perfect. Thank you so much. And thank you all for attending Sarah’s session. We hope you had some great takeaways. Next up, Arlene Lessie brings you an advanced session on strategies that keep donors engaged, or Kelly Ramage with designing donor pathways that work, that is considered intermediate content. See you all soon.