Category Archives: Best Practices

Connect with Me: Waste Not Want Not

August 31, 2010 – 11:35 pm

Last Sunday at our church we listened to a presentation by Sandra Staudt-Killea, Board Chairman of Waste Not Want Not. Normally these presentations are given right before church is dismissed, so you can imagine how much attention they get. But Sandra’s presentation immediately grabbed my attention. It was one of the best examples that I’ve [...]

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Fundraising For Nonprofits – Analytics And All That Jazz

March 31, 2010 – 12:17 pm

Myth: A donor management system needs to have an extremely extensive data analytics software engine similar to the ones the best CRM software systems have so that data hundreds of combinations of queries can be run by the team and artistic reports with multi variable graphs can be generated. The analytics capabilities need to be [...]

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Church Administration & Financial Accountability In The Social Web Era

March 12, 2010 – 7:00 am

How many times have we seen skirmishes between church goers and church administrators over the finances of the church? Sure it’s a common area of conflict across churches and charitable organizations just as it happens in enterprise organizations where stakeholders demand to see how their funds are being utilized and get insights into the working [...]

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Using Donation Videos To Fuel Your Online Fundraising Pages

March 11, 2010 – 7:00 am

If you’re looking for inspiration on how to spruce up your online fundraising pages and add that little extra to connect with donors at the most critical stage of the donation process then these videos are perhaps what you’re looking for. Youtube recently crossed the 1 billion videos watched per day mark according to a [...]

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The Value Of Thank You In Effective Donor Management

January 26, 2010 – 8:15 am

Thank You – perhaps of the most important words in anyone’s vocabulary and undoubtedly the most important in the fundraising and donor management realm. It’s gratitude in it’s simplest form and an acknowledgment for a donation or contribution whether in cash or in kind and no matter how big or small that contribution is, the [...]

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How to Create Smart Tags

December 17, 2009 – 11:00 am

Smart Tags is a powerful feature that will change the way you look at your donor data. First off, Smart Tags are pretty different from regular Tags; the main difference is in how they’re created (although you’ll notice that Smart Tags are orange, and regular Tags are blue). To create regular Tags, you simply add [...]

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Would You Take the Risk?

November 12, 2009 – 1:00 pm

A non-profit company recently offered their donors on direct debit plans the option to cancel.  The company submitted a form to the donors that included a check box to cancel, (no questions asked) and also provided a place to request a different amount taken each month. What actually happened? Four people canceled, but over 400 [...]

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Why I Love Working for Donor Tools

October 28, 2009 – 8:00 am

Hello, my name is April, and if you read this blog very often, you know that I’m the newbie1. I am very honored and excited to be working for Donor Tools with all that it has to offer. One of my main reasons is their belief that customers are the business. Without our wonderful customers [...]

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Standing Out In Fundraising

October 26, 2009 – 11:08 am

In the world of popularity have you noticed that the cool people all tend to be doing pretty much the same thing? Same clothes, same cars, same sports, etc. However, in the world of fundraising and non-profits that dynamic just doesn’t fit. The ones that stand out and do things differently are the ones that [...]

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Be Careful Where You Put Your Password (A Lesson From Twitter Spam)

October 14, 2009 – 12:20 pm

I just got this Direct Message today from one of my contacts on Twitter: Clicking the link takes you to this web page that asks you to log in to Twitter: If you put your username and password in that form, prepare to have your identity stolen! As you can see from the URL, this [...]

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