Adding A New Donor

November 13, 2008 – 9:43 am

“Donors” in Donor Tools can represent all kinds of people who your organization works with - volunteers, board members, prospects, and of course, donors. In short, your constituents.

If you’re adding a large number of donors, and you have a CSV (comma-separated values) file, your best bet is to import your database.

Here’s how to add a new Donor in Donor Tools.

1. Go to the Donors tab, and click “New Donor”

New Donor - Step 1

2. Start by typing the name of the person in the form.

new-donor-2

3. You can enter multiple names, multiple addresses, multiple phone numbers, and multiple email addresses. For example, to add multiple email addresses for this record, click the green “+” icon.

new-donor-3

4. Click “Save New Donor”

5. You can now enter a donation for the donor, or go back to step 1 and add someone else.

new-donor-5

By Ryan Heneise | Posted in Help | Comments (0)

First of all, I want to apologize to those of you who have had trouble searching your donor database today and yesterday. There was a bug in the search engine that was causing some donors not to come up in the search results, even though they could be found by browsing.

Here’s what happened, if you care for a technical explanation:

It all started when we implemented the Sphinx search engine over the weekend. Sphinx is what’s known as a full-text search engine, which means that it is supposed to make it easy to search for parts of words (or in our case, parts of names) inside big blocks of text. While Donor Tools doesn’t have big blocks of text to search, we do have a lot of information on each donor that needs to be searchable: multiple names, multiple addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, etc. It seemed like a perfect case for full-text search: just index all the donors’ contact information as one big blob, and then search on it.

Turns out it wasn’t so easy. Due to a glitch in the way the indexer was handling aggregate selects, any names that had any part left blank were being indexed as blank. For example, if the middle name field was blank, then the whole name would be blank. Obviously this was not what was intended.

This was definitely not what we wanted to happen during the middle of the work week, so I spent the morning hustling to get this fixed.

Here’s the upshot: We scrapped Sphinx, opting instead for a much simpler system where we query the database directly. As it turns out, dealing with this forced us to streamline the search process a bit. Even without the full-text search engine, searches now run faster and more accurately than before.

One more thing…

And, there’s a minor new feature that made its way into all these bugfixes:

Now, if your search result is empty, and if Donor Tools thinks it can help you refine your search, you’ll get a nice little search tip with a suggestion.

Thanks for bearing with us - we’re constantly working to improve Donor Tools. Don’t forget to send us feedback - we love to hear from you!

By Ryan Heneise | Posted in Progress | Comments (0)

Donor Tools Welcome Video

November 6, 2008 – 6:01 pm

update: View it on viddler or download the high-quality Quicktime version

By Ryan Heneise | Posted in Help, Tips | Comments (0)

Guest Access: Improved Donor Tools Feature

November 5, 2008 – 2:21 am

Guests are a special kind of user.

Donors’ privacy is very important, even within your organization. Lets say that you have a volunteer who needs to be able to update donor records, but they shouldn’t be able to see donation details - who gave what.

No problem. Just make that user a guest. Guests can edit donors, record notes, and view donation reports, but they can’t see or access any donation-specific information.

This assists in building transparency within your church or organization by enabling you to give access to people who need to have access while still protecting donors’ privacy.

Guest User Donation Report. Notice the absence of any personally identifying information for each donation.

By Ryan Heneise | Posted in Progress | Comments (0)

Unexpected Downtime Last Night

November 4, 2008 – 6:41 pm

If you happened to be using Donor Tools last night about 10:00 PM (CST), you may have felt things grind to a halt. I was working late when I noticed things slowing down considerably, and then stop entirely before coming back online again. All in all, the site was unavailable or really slow between 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM (CST).

After checking things out I discovered that the slowdown was a result of unusually high activity at the data center where Donor Tools’ servers are hosted. There was a DOS (Denial of Service) attack going on somewhere on the network that was causing things to slow down everywhere in the datacenter. Basically, a DOS attack means that some bad guy out there decides to inundate some server with millions of requests per second. It would be like you hitting the refresh button on your browser a million times in quick succession. The server gets backed up with all the requests, and starts denying service to legitimate incoming requests.

Even though our servers weren’t the target of the attack, we felt the ripple effect as network bandwidth was sucked up to compensate.

What can you do if you can’t access Donor Tools?

Fortunately, we have several systems in place to handle the occasional unexpected downtime.

First of all, we have regular backups that make sure all data is always safe and locked away. You can also back up your own data. To do this, simply sign in to your account, click “Settings”, and click “Download Backup Archive”. You can keep this archive somewhere safe at your location.

Second, you can easily check the status of the service. To see the report, which shows whether the service is available, and if it’s down, how long it’s been that way, bookmark http://www.pingdom.com/reports/j2ssh5j7kl8x/. This monitoring service will notify us within one minute if Donor Tools has a problem, day or night.

You can also bookmark this blog. Since it’s hosted on WordPress, it’s on a completely different network, and should keep running even if the main site is down.

This was a relatively minor malfunction, and fortunately, our servers weren’t affected. However, it has prompted us to take some additional proactive steps to make sure that we can quickly respond to any problems that come up in the future.

If you have any questions please feel free to call or email, and we’ll be glad to help.

Thanks!
Ryan Heneise
Owner/Developer

By Ryan Heneise | Posted in Status | Comments (0)

Donor Tools: Just What You Need, Nothing You Don’t

October 30, 2008 – 3:01 pm

Donor Tools packs essential donor management features and advanced online functionality into an affordable, easy-to-use package. Donor Tools offers similar online functionality to eTapestry, but in a price range similar to GiftWorks. Unlike GiftWorks, Donor Tools is online, and can be accessed by any number of people within the organization at the same time, irrespective of geographic location. Unlike eTapestry, we don’t charge extra for Donor Self- service and Online Donations. Donor Tools is much easier to use than eTapestry, and doesn’t require training to get started. There are no restrictions on the number of donors that organizations can have in their database. There are no hidden fees, no setup fees, and no penalty for upgrading or downgrading.

By Ryan Heneise | Posted in Press Releases | Comments (2)

Thinking Globally, Acting Locally, Connecting Online

October 28, 2008 – 4:00 pm

Distance Need Not Separate REACH Polska From Their Data.

Round Rock, TX (October 28, 2008)
For immediate release

For non-profit organizations that work in multiple locations, affordable online software like Donor Tools can help shrink distances and lower costs.

Instant access to donor information is essential for international organizations like Gresham, Oregon-based REACH Polska. With personnel in the United States and Poland, REACH Polska used to rely on email to share information.

But email always proved problematic. Between time zone differences and geographic distance, information was often not available when it was needed most.

That was before Donor Tools changed the landscape of their world.

“Before Donor Tools we had random reports done in multiple pieces of software, that could not be accessed by people across the world”, says Travis Mielonen, founder of REACH Polska. “Donor Tools has made our donation tracking much more streamlined, and easily accessible from around the world. We can instantly access all our donors’ information from any place in the word, rather than waiting to be state-side, or asking someone to check the records who may or may not have quick access to the information. Accessibility is the key winning point for us, so our support team can access the same information from anywhere.”

Because REACH Polska accesses their donor and donation records online through Donor Tools, their data and reports are always available from virtually anywhere in the world. And since Donor Tools offers multiple users, REACH Polska can have several people online at the same time, all working on the same data or checking reports.

Donor Tools also offers Online Donations, which allows anyone to donate to REACH Polska online using PayPal, and Donor Self-Service, which lets donors sign in any time to check their own donation reports and print receipts.

With Donor Tools, shrinking distances is only part of the story. The real miracle happens in the hearts and minds of people reached by REACH Polska. Donor Tools lets REACH Polska keep their mind on their mission.

Donor Tools was created by Art of Mission, a small Round Rock-based software development firm specializing in Ruby on Rails.

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For information about REACH Polska, visit www.reachpolska.info or https://reachpolska.donortools.com.

For more information about Donor Tools visit www.donortools.com, or Google “Donor Tools”.

Contact:

Ryan Heneise
Donor Tools
Art of Mission, Inc.
3720 Gattis School Rd #800 PMB 245
Round Rock, TX 78664
www.donortools.com/about/press
support@donortools.com

By Ryan Heneise | Posted in Press Releases, Stories | Comments (0)

Press Release: Donor Tools for Nonprofits Helps Organizations Get To Know Their Donors

October 17, 2008 – 3:27 pm

Round Rock, TX (October 17, 2008)
For immediate release

Art of Mission, Inc., a Round-Rock, TX based software development firm, recently introduced Donor Tools, a new product designed to help small and startup non-profits manage their donors and donations. Donor Tools debuted at the Greenlights for NonProfit Success 7th Annual Crossroads Conference in Austin, TX.

Donor Tools is donor management software for non-profit organizations. Also known as Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) software, donor management software is an essential component of non-profit and charity organizations of every size. Donor Tools meets a need that small and medium-size non-profits have for good, easy-to-use CRM software.

Donor Tools is free for startup and entry-level non-profits. The free edition includes unlimited donors, online donations, donor sign-in, SSL security, and the ability to record up to 10 donations per month. For growing organizations, paid editions range in price from $15 per month to $60 per month. Pricing varies based on the number of donations that an organization needs to record. All paid plans include a 30-day free trial.

Donor Tools offers Online Donations, which allows anyone to use a credit card to donate to the organization online. The Online Donations feature is available to all Donor Tools customers at no charge, even on the Free plan.

Unlimited donors means that every organization, even those on the Free plan, can import their entire donor database right away to get started. There is never any additional charge based on the number of donors in the database.

Other valuable features include Donor Signin, which allows donors to sign in to organizations to check their giving history and print donation receipts, Quickbooks export, which provides easy integration with Quickbooks accounting software, integrated thank-you emails, PDF thank-you letters, multiple users, tags, the ability to split donations among multiple funds, and more.

Donor Tools is provided as Software as a Service (SaaS), which means that there is nothing to install, and no software to maintain. Organizations’ secure Donor Tools accounts can be accessed from any computer in the world with an Internet connection. Additionally, this means that there is never any charge for upgrades, and all upgrades and improvements are applied immediately, with nothing to install.

Art of Mission is a small Round Rock-based software development firm specializing in Ruby on Rails.

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For more information visit www.donortools.com, or Google “Donor Tools”.

Contact:

Ryan Heneise
Donor Tools
Art of Mission, Inc.
3720 Gattis School Rd #800 PMB 245
Round Rock, TX 78664
www.donortools.com
support@donortools.com

By Ryan Heneise | Posted in Press Releases, Stories | Comments (0)

Backup (New Feature)

October 16, 2008 – 12:37 pm

UPDATE: The backup feature has been improved, so this post is outdated. See the new post here: http://blog.donortools.com/2008/11/15/backup-improved-feature/

No matter what you do with data, it’s important to have backups. At Donor Tools, we have a backup system in place that would let us restore the entire system in the event of a failure.

But don’t just take our word for it. You can back up your own Donor Tools data yourself, and save it on your own computer. We provide an quick way to download your entire Donor Tools database to one big XML file.

Backing up is easy:

Sign in to your organization
Click “Settings”
Click “Download Backup Archive”
Download the file to your hard drive

Depending on how much data you have, downloading your archive may take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes.

By Ryan Heneise | Posted in Features, Help | Comments (1)

Donor Tools is Live!

October 5, 2008 – 7:00 am

And… We’re Live!

Donor Tools officially celebrated our grand opening last week at the Austin Greenlights Crossroads Conference (check out the video, you’ll see us a few seconds in)! So many interesting people came by our booth to check us out and wish us luck! This is a really awesome business to be in – the people that we get to meet and work with (you) are doing some of the most interesting work. I feel privileged to serve you, so it’s especially exciting to have a product that I really think will help organizations do what they do better.

Though we launched last week, our payment system was a little behind the game, so we didn’t actually go live until this past weekend. But thanks to some long hours and a little help from our friends, I’m pleased to say that Donor Tools has finally gotten real! If you stopped by the signup page recently, you might see something a little different. Our beta (testing) period is now officially over, and Donor Tools is now officially for sale.

Our Pricing Plan

How much will Donor Tools cost? We’ve put a lot of thought into how we can make Donor Tools affordable for even the smallest organization, while still packing in power and features for more active organizations.

Donor Tools is always available for free for startup organizations and individual fundraisers. Part of our philosophy read our Manifesto is that good software should be affordable and accessible for everyone who serves our community, regardless of size and budget. So if you fit that profile, and you need to record 10 donations per month or fewer, you can use Donor Tools for no cost at all.

Once your organization gets on its feet, you can upgrade to the Basic edition for only $15 per month. Growing organizations can use the Plus version for $30 per month, which gives you multiple users, plus lets you record up to 300 donations per month. The $60 Pro version gives you 600 donations per month, and the ability to export donations to Quickbooks. Our highest plan is Unlimited, which as you might expect, gives you unlimited donations, unlimited users, and Quickbooks export for $120 per month.

For more detailed information, see our pricing plans

Unlimited Donors

All plans, even the free version, include unlimited donors. That means that you can import your entire donor database at no cost. We have an easy to use Donor Import feature, so you can import your donors yourself and get started right away.

We also offer data conversion service. If you’d like to import your historical donation records, we can do that for you. Just drop us a line. Prices for data conversion depend on the number of records and the quality of your data.

Security

All plans include SSL security. That means that all communication between your computer and Donor Tools’ server is encrypted, all the time.

Online Donations and Donor Signin

All plans include Online Donations and Donor Signin. In just a few minutes, you can set up your account to accept online donations via PayPal. Additionally, your donors can sign in to check their giving reports and donate online, as long as they have an email address recorded in their donor record. It’s a great way to save on mailing costs, and provide a valuable service to your donors.

Thanks to our intrepid beta users

If you’ve been with us through the beta period we want to give you a big THANK YOU! We’ve gotten lots of great feedback and ideas from you. By way of saying thanks, we’ve upgraded all our beta users to the Pro plan for free until January 1, 2009.

Onward & Upward

Of course, getting real doesn’t mean that we’re finished. Not by a long shot. There are a bajillion features that we want to build. We’ll pick a few of the most important ones and roll those out soon.

Sign up today!

By Ryan Heneise | Posted in Business, Progress | Comments (0)

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