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End of Year Fundraising Kick-Off!

I know, I know…I’m like those annoying retailers putting out stockings when you haven’t even finished carving your pumpkin but considering that most organizations receive nearly half of their annual online donations in the last two months of the year, I’m totally going there.

That’s right – it is officially momentum-building time!  End of year is a busy time for everyone but you can watch those fundraising dollars go up at the end of the year if you get your supporters enthusiastic about your organization over the next few months.  Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Get to Know Your Supporters Better: Due to the diverse needs of your supporter base, segmenting constituents into appropriate groups will allow your organization to more effectively communicate relevant information to each group. Segmenting your list and then targeting groups with communications and appeals based on their interests, donation history, gender, age, length of membership or any other defining characteristic will result in higher response rates. Know who your supporters are and what they care about. Understand which donors, activists, and volunteers are most active, and devise special programs to keep them engaged. Regularly ask supporters to provide information about themselves to help you improve your segmentation and targeted messaging. Include questions in your online surveys, direct mail response cards and in sign-up sheets or surveys at events.
• The 5-Second Test: Gather your closest friends and display your home page for five seconds—then close it and ask a friend to write down what he or she remembers. Effective websites tell visitors within seconds of their arrival – where they are, what they can do, and why they should act.
• Promote a Sustainer Program: The donors who supported you last year likely had to be selective about their charities. It’s likely these donors may be even more inclined to be loyal to you and would be open to recurring donations or paying their annual donation amount throughout the year. Sustaining and pledge donors typically renew at rates 10-20% higher than single-gift donors. It’s important to offer reasons for people to give on a recurring basis or to pledge a larger commitment that can be paid out over time. 

View the full guide with 10 simple steps to set your organization up for a prosperous year-end.

Make the Most of Your Holiday Week

Office a little dead this week with the 4th of July holiday? Hearing crickets instead of coworkers (and no, I’m not talking about the Austin cricket infestation)?

Sometimes…OK most of the time, a slow week like this can be great for knocking through projects. But sometimes it can bring you to a standstill if everyone you need to work with is out enjoying an extended holiday. If you fall into that latter category, this blog’s for you! Here are 5 things you can do, sans coworkers, partners, donors, anyone at all, that will keep your mission on track.

1. Data Hygiene: Data nerds rejoice! This is the perfect opportunity to do a little merge/purge on your constituent records. If your merge/purge is complete (give yourself a high five), take a minute to add more detail like the preferred title (Ms, Mrs., Miss, etc).
2. Clean Your Desk: It’ll make each workday seem so much less hectic going forward. Promise.
3. Thank You Calls: Whether catching up on long-overdue thank yous or just reaching out to your board and committee members with an extra thanks, these will go a long way in building relationships.
4. Professional Development: All those on-demand webinars and how-to blog posts you have bookmarked, this is the week to actually learn from them. And if you don’t have any bookmarked, check out these guides on nonprofit best practices.
5. Me Time: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. That’s right. If the whole office is on vacation, leaving you high and dry on projects, this might be your perfect opportunity to catch some R&R yourself. Go play some golf, get a pedicure, have a mojito by the pool. Do whatever it is that will rejuvenate you and leave you ready to hit the ground running next week.

Happy Fourth of July!

A Chat With Watt and Troy

As I mentioned in last month's podcast interview with Judi Sohn, following Blackbaud's acquisition of Convio, I'm super excited about the increased pool of talented coworkers that I now have to interview for the Connection Cafe. This being the first interview that I scheduled after the acquisition was completed, I wanted to do something that represents how our teams have come together over the last two months. I thought one neat way to do that would be to do my first joint interview on the Connection Cafe with more than one subject in the conversation.

Today's conversation is with Watt Hamlett and Troy Walker. Both are Solution Engineers on the Enterprise Presales Team with me. In fact, Watt and I were hired at just about the same time. While I've only gotten to know Troy recently, I'm just as impressed with him and proud to be working with him. In today's podcast you'll hear more of their thoughts about the role of a presales consultant, how our teams have come together over the course of the acquisition, and what we have learned so far.

Connection Cafe Podcast 9 - Watt and Troy

Download audio file

3 Welcome Series Timing Tips

Rather than immediately including new constituents in all your regular online communications and appeals, using an email welcome series gives you additional control over your constituent communications. Below are a few items related to timing that you will need to keep in mind when planning your email welcome series.

1. Filter your messages. The last thing you want to do is include a new constituent in a fundraising campaign immediately after they signed up to receive emails. Remove new constituents from the regular flow of email communications, and send them several introductory messages in a staggered, or ”drip,” fashion. This approach will enable you to control the timing of your messages, as well as your first ask.
2. Experiment with timing. You can control the number of days (or weeks) that elapse between messages. Play around with the frequency, and review your metrics to help you determine the optimal timing. Some organizations find that an email welcome series of one message every two weeks for two months is effective, whereas others prefer weekly messages over a period of a month. 
3. Set it and forget it. Online solutions allow you to create the initial welcome series and automate the rest of the process. This feature saves administrative time and effort. Of course, you can tweak the email message content and images or add new messages as needed. 

After the constituent has received all of the emails in the welcome series, they can be added to your larger list and receive the regular communications sent by your organization.

Read "Creating an Email Welcome Series" for more tips on greeting your new constituents with style.

Integration for the (quick) win

What are the three most important factors to a successful integration? Speed, speed and speed.

With our heads down and noses to the grindstone, we’ve taken that mantra very seriously for the past month. And we’re finally ready to (briefly) come up for air and share our first results with you.

Our “quick wins” integration initiative is doing exactly what it was intended to do – identify and execute on actions that in extremely short order can improve your ability to serve your mission. Our quick wins include

• Integrate Raiser’s Edge and Luminate Online to smooth the process, reduce constituent duplicates and improve data quality, for release in Q1 2013.
• Extend complimentary Data Health Check to Convio products by Q4 2012.
• Improve data warehousing and reporting offering for large direct marketers in Q3 2012.
• Enable Blackbaud Merchant Services for Convio customers by Q1 2013.
• Combine bbcon and Convio Summit for 2012.

Each one is exciting in its own right and I’m sure that list has only whet your curiosity whistle. Hop on over to our product blog, Blackbaud KnowHow, or watch this short video by our Senior VP of Products and Marketing, Jana Eggers, to learn more. And please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below or through the form on our integration web page.