Welcome to the new eInsights newsletter!
eInsights contains valuable information about SofTrek's product offerings, partner announcements and news, fundraising articles, and links to useful resources for nonprofit professionals. To learn more about SofTrek or our products and services, please visit us online at www.softrek.com.PRODUCT NEWS
ClearView Moves Management: A Decision Support System
When SofTrek set out to incorporate “Moves Management” into ClearView1, the first task was to define what “Moves Management” means. The official definition lacked specifics:
Moves Management is a term used primarily with the non-profit sector in relationship to donor development. It refers to the process by which a prospective donor is moved from cultivation to solicitation. -Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2010
More specific definitions (i.e., Moves Management is a term that refers to the actions you take to bring in donors, forge relationships, and keep contributions coming, such as visiting prospects, creating gift proposals, soliciting individuals or organizations for donations, and cultivating and stewarding donors. Moves Management, simply put, is the system of policies, procedures, and practices that directs these actions.) didn’t get us much closer to the expectations customers might have of software Moves Management functionality.
With these nebulous definitions in hand, we approached our Product Advisory Council and business partners and asked them to help us understand what they were doing on a daily basis in their organizations that they considered aspects of “Moves Management.” With their help we developed a set of user stories that describe different tasks people were trying to accomplish that they consider a part of Moves Management.
Story 1
Nancy is a major gifts officer at Giving Hands. She has some telephone calls to make. She needs to prioritize the calls. She logs in to ClearView, clicks on the Moves Management link in the global header. She pulls her full list of potential donors, re-sorts it for those with the highest giving potential (wealth-rating), filters those who have not given in the past, reviews the Current Action, pops up the Brief Bio to get the first phone number and calls Sue Jones, the first name on her list. The two chat for a while. Nancy hangs up the phone and clicks on the ‘Call’ action date to update the action with her notes and mark it as completed and adds her next move (action).
Story 2
Charles is a planned giving officer at Giving Hands; he’s planning to be in Chicago for a week at the end of next month. He’d like to make as many visits as possible. He does some research and knows the zip codes within a reasonable distance of the area he’ll be staying. He logs in to ClearView, which he has set to automatically open to the Moves Management page. The list of potential donors is filtered for those belonging to him. He changes the filters for all major gift prospects, whether assigned to him or not, in the zip code range he’s determined. He browses through the records, sometimes clicking on the Brief Bio link to check on someone’s age, other times to the full prospect overview for the prospect to learn more. As he goes through he notes that some of the prospects have been identified, but not rated – so he sends them for wealth rating. He also notes that some are assigned to other major gifts officers, so he sends email to his colleague telling him of his visit. As he goes through he flags those individuals he hopes to see.
Story 3
Thomas is the assistant to all the major gifts officers. On any given day he has piles of information coming in via different sources for prospects that are being either actively cultivated or solicited; he receives notification of every gift over $5,000 that is received. On this day he has received notice that Mr. & Mrs. Smith have sent a check for $100,000. He already has the Moves Management page opened, and knows the Smiths ID#, so uses the filter to search for proposals belonging to that ID#. The Smiths have two active proposals in progress, one where Nancy is the solicitor and another where Charles is the solicitor. Thomas notices that the gift has been associated with Nancy’s proposal – the Gift column amount has changed from black to red (for dollars received). He adds an action for Nancy to write an acknowledgment for the gift. He also attaches the electronic copy of the letter received with the gift to the proposal, sends an email to Charles letting him know about the gift, and changes the status to complete.
Story 4
Ben is a director of development for Giving Hands. He wants to assign newly qualified prospects to his staff. He logs in to ClearView and navigates to the Moves Management page. There he views all the qualified prospects, and as he determines he wants to make an assignment he clicks on edit. The chart expands to allow Ben to change the owner and status, as he desires. From there he can optionally open the full record view to add notes, or select the option to Add Actions or any other number of items to the proposal.
Story 5
The Giving Hands board of trustees meets once a quarter to decide strategies for prospects that are active in the cultivation and solicitation cycles. Rather than using paper, they opt to enter information directly in the Moves Management screen. They prioritize the list of potential donors, checking for those with no Current Action first, viewing all actions associated with the record using the All button, and adding new actions/strategies as desired.
Story 6
John is a prospect researcher for Giving Hands, his task today is to qualify identified prospects, making them available for solicitation. John does this by filtering for Donors with a status of “Identified.” He works his way through the least, choosing the option to Send for Wealth Rating when no rating exists. He also selects Add Attachment to add the profile he creates to the record, and uses the in-line edit functionality to change the record status from “Identified” to “Qualified.”
With user stories in hand and ClearView principles in mind (flexibility, ease of use, intuitive design), we set about developing Moves Management functionality that addresses needs across an organization, from proposals and actions to prospect research, into an application that can serve as a Decision Support System for any non-profit organization. Proposals display in a single page that can be filtered to the list you want to work with – and the critical information you use to make decisions about a given prospect, like wealth rating or total giving to your organization, are viewable; access to other important information is just a click away. You accomplish straightforward tasks like make entering a prospect into a pipeline, viewing current and past actions, making telephone calls, sending emails, editing statuses, adding attachments, or managing projections without ever leaving the page.
1 ClearView is SofTrek’s Web 2.0 interface, intended the less the less technical users in an organization. With ClearView Technology you can personalize your donor workspace and data views, connect to an unlimited number of information resources, and radically improve the way you work with your donors.
Please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it today to schedule a demonstration of ClearView Moves Management.
Riding the Technology Wave
With the economic climate in recent years, many nonprofit organizations have learned that raising funds and awareness for their cause can be increasingly difficult. One thing is for sure, consistent exposure of your nonprofit is a must.
So how can a nonprofit best advance its mission? In today’s world of business, nonprofits can often get ahead by utilizing all of the latest technology resources that are available.
One of the fastest growing resources is social networks, which offer an inexpensive and user friendly way to promote your nonprofit. Networks such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube are major instruments in extending your nonprofit community. For example, by creating a profile page through Facebook, which has more than 400 million active users, you’re able to communicatie with existing as well as potential supporters of your organization.
Many experts also propose blogging as another critical resource for boosting exposure of your nonprofit and related initiatives. Similar to social networks, blogging for your nonprofit can keep your donors and volunteers informed and involved.
While these tactics are great means for your web presence, it is also imperative to treat your donors with the best services. This means that the donation process for your donors must be as convenient as possible. It may be time to purchase donor management software (DMS) which allows relations with your donors to be more productive and much easier. Some services, like SofTrek’s donor management and fundraising solutions, include credit card systems, direct deposit, electronic updates, volunteer tracking, and planned giving.
In times where the access of information is only a couple clicks away, it is crucial to make sure that your nonprofit is using all of the resources accessible to get noticed and build gratifying relationships within your communities.
(Sources: ehow.com; Facebook.com; globalprblogweek.com; The Nonprofit Times)
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) was established in 1943 and first began its work focused on the resettlement of war refugees in Europe during World War II. CRS was established by the Roman Catholic Bishops of the United States to help war-torn Europe and its refugees recover from this great conflict. Even today, the mission of CRS is to assist the poor and vulnerable overseas.
CRS works to promote human development by responding to major emergencies, fighting disease and poverty, and nurturing peaceful and just societies; and, serve Catholics in the United States as they live their faith in solidarity with their brothers and sisters around the world. As part of the universal mission of the Catholic Church, CRS works with local, national and international Catholic institutions and structures, as well as other organizations, to assist people on the basis of need, not creed, race or nationality.
After the recent devastating earthquake in Haiti, CRS assisted with relief efforts in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas by delivering food and water to hundreds of thousands and providing medical care to thousands more. CRS has provided food to more than 100,000 people in Port-au-Prince, many of whom gathered at the city's largest camp run by CRS. Just days after the earthquake that killed an estimated 200,000 people and left as many as one million people without shelter, CRS turned a Port-au-Prince golf course into one of the first formal camps for the homeless, delivering food, water and hygiene materials to some 40,000 people.
CRS has collaborated with the local Church in Haiti and its Catholic Caritas partners, including Caritas Haiti and the Caritas Internationalis confederation. A CRS team also worked closely with Haitian colleagues to get one of the country's oldest hospitals, St. Francois de Sales in Port-au-Prince, up and running within days of the disaster. Despite being 70-percent destroyed, CRS worked with the hospital administrator to restore the hospital's ability to receive patients, and volunteer medical teams are now performing up to 200 critical operations per week.
As camps became more organized and with the rainy season looming, CRS also stepped up efforts to build temporary shelter and stem the outbreak of disease that results from a lack of clean water and poor hygiene. CRS began installing large water storage bladders throughout the capital, and construction is underway of latrines and washing stations that will serve thousands of people at various CRS sites, including St. Francois de Sales.
Meanwhile, CRS has seen an overwhelming outpouring of support in response to the crisis in Haiti. CRS has raised more than $38 million for its emergency response. Parishes are reporting generous second collections for Haiti; Catholic colleges and universities responded immediately by setting up special websites; Catholic schools held special masses, prayer services, concerts and fundraisers.
Donor response to the Haiti emergency was extremely positive. The volume of donations CRS processed in January was nearly five times that of January 2009, and in a little more than a week, the same number of calls were received as in all of fiscal year 2009. CRS was able to post all donations for January 2010.
As a longstanding SofTrek client, CRS uses SofTrek’s donor management software to manage more than 1 million donors, including those who participated in recent emergency and on-going relief efforts in Haiti. CRS generally sends more than 250,000 mail pieces monthly and receives an average of more than 9 million gifts annually. All of the funding CRS receives is sent overseas and 94% of funds go directly to their programs.
CRS has rating of A+ from The American Institute of Philanthropy and is listed in both The NonProfit Times Top 100 (ranked 28) and the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Philanthropy 400 (rank 73). To learn more about CRS and their mission, visit http://crs.org.
PRODUCT INFO
Nonprofit Technology News Review
NonProfit Technology News reviewed SofTrek’s donor management solution, ClearView for PledgeMaker. After seeing SofTrek’s ClearView technology, writer Karen Corey noted that “ClearView for PledgeMaker is amazing high-tech software that allows the user to do a multitude of tasks in one application.” Corey concluded that “SofTrek spent a lot of time and energy to make this system user friendly and the options are endless. ClearView was designed to be easy to use, customizable, and have integrated features for searching and accessing donor information. I can’t say enough about this product, I was amazed at all it could do.” Read the entire review on the NonProfit Technology News website by clicking here.
To learn more about ClearView, please visit our website where you can download complete product feature lists and register for a personalized informational webinar and demo. Or contact us directly at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
to learn more about ClearView for PledgeMaker - the fundraising tools you need, the friendly technology you want.
SofTrek and partner organization WealthEngine recently hosted a free educational webinar on how to prioritize and segment your donor database to maximize your fundraising efforts and successes.
In this hour-long webinar, our industry experts presented key strategies for identifying your top prospects and those with untapped potential in your donor database. There was also a demonstration of essential features from our integrated wealth screening solution, which provides direct access to robust, on-demand prospect research that can help you maximize your fundraising performance.
Start making the most of the donor relationships you already have. Access a recording of this webinar here.
Nonprofit Genie
A free service of consulting and research firm CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, the Nonprofit Genie is a searchable list of frequently asked questions written by leading experts around the United States. Sort the FAQ list by category and find answers to questions about strategic planning, funds management, 990 forms, volunteer programs and much more.
SeniorNet
This nonprofit organization provides training for and access to computer technology for adults age 50 and older. The site offers online courses on a variety of technology-related topics, virtual discussion groups, discounts on technology products, digital galleries, a robust enrichment center, and information about local learning centers
AScribe
This low-cost national public interest newswire that includes hundreds of nonprofit organizations and governmental agencies that are sending news and information to the news media, Web sites, portals, and online services. News releases can be organized around specific topics or from particular institutions and can be customized for geographical regions or demographic groups. The site includes an example of the Live Newswire, with news releases that have been issued by members during the past seven days.
Zoominfo.com
Visit this site to locate biographical information for prospective donors to your nonprofit. Searching a prospective donor name will return pages of results with useful information and links. The site works best for well known individuals but also returns useful information for lesser known individuals.