So you’ve committed to running a regular annual giving campaign … but you don’t know how to manage it? Not sure how to build a culture of philanthropy among your constituents? As GIJP Mentors Dan Kirsch and Julia Riseman point out in their article:

Building the kind of loyalty that creates a strong donor pipeline requires a commitment to learning from each year’s results and refining future activities accordingly.  That’s why it is so important to have reliable constituent data and protocols for collecting, tracking, and analyzing the data most relevant to annual giving. The more you can learn about the communications preferences of your audience and the appeals that are most compelling to your various constituents the better you will become at personalizing and targeting your annual giving activities to maximize the return on your work.

Technology can help. Here are some quick tips for using technology to support successful, long-term annual giving campaigns:

• Make sure you have clean data
• Segment your data
• Promote using various channels

1)      Make sure you have clean data

Is your data up-to-date? If you sent a mailing to your entire donor database, what percentage would be returned as undeliverable? If that happened, do you have a process for updating your database as a result?

Your donor database is only as helpful as you make it. Use free or inexpensive processes and tools to keep it up-to-date:

• Always update your records when you learn of changes to contact information. If you receive a message from a new email address, add it to your donor database. If a mailing is returned as undeliverable, mark it in the database; if you have an email on record for that person, contact them to ask for an updated mailing address.
• Set up a free/inexpensive form to gather both long-lost constituents’ contact information and updates from those who move. A simple Google (free) or Wufoo (free and inexpensive options) form can be set up in just a few minutes to gather this info. The GIJP Technology Program team can also create a form on your Facebook Page to gather this information.
• Dedupe your data regularly. As new records are added, some will be duplicates. If you stay on top of this with a regular process, it will be simple to maintain. You can also use tools like the US Postal Service National Change of Address (NCOA) service to get updated addresses from people who have moved in the past couple of years. In fact, if you mail with the nonprofit bulk rate, you are required to scan your data with NCOA periodically.

TIP: Be proactive in reaching out to and reconnecting with your alumni and other constituents. Every alumni is a potential donor – reconnecting with and effectively tracking your alumni will help your annual campaigns grow stronger year by year. Engage with unofficial camp Groups on Facebook and other social networks. Use your human, off-line social networks to find long-lost alumni. And offer an easy-to-find way for your constituents to get their updated contact information to you; this process should be easy to find on your website and other online presences (blog, Facebook Page, etc.).

2)      Segment your data

To truly customize your communications – including cultivation and solicitation communications – you need to segment the data in your database. Three types of segmentation are highlighted here: biographical, giving, and e-communications.

TIP: Segment your data consistently. There should be processes in place to ensure that every new constituent and gift/pledge in the database is coded as listed below. Otherwise, there will be no way to effectively track and report on these segments in the future.

Biographical segmentation

You should categorize each constituent in your donor database by their “connection” to your organization. For camps, this can include alumni, board members, parents, grandparents, etc. Consider: What categories might I use in the future to help personalize a message to my constituents? These are categories you’ll want to use. Furthermore, implement a “hierarchy” of categorizations - you don’t want to inundate your constituents with extra communications. For example, if someone is an alum, a parent, and a board member, decide which communication will be most powerful for them and their connection to camp. Don’t send them three separate messages!

In DonorPerfect Online (DPO), the Flags field is the best way to segment your constituents biographically. Other donor databases use tags or simple drop-downs to meet this need.

Giving segmentation

You should also segment all of the gifts and pledges you receive. It is crucial to track who is giving to which funds; who responds to which campaigns; and to what specific type of solicitation did they respond? For each gift, this information should be tracked. Your donor database should allow you to track these using dropdown codes so that you can also report at a macro level of which funds, campaigns, and solicitations are effective.

In DPO, You can use the GL Code, Campaign, Solicitation, and Sub-solicitation dropdown fields on both the Gift and Pledge screens to track this information. Be sure to set up your codes in advance.

TIP: You can also use standard reports to segment your donors by their giving history. For example, we mentioned LYBUNT (Last Year But Unfortunately Not This Year) reports in a recent article. This report will show you all donors who gave to your organization last year, but haven’t given yet this year. This (and similar) reports help you segment constituents who may be especially likely to donate again.

E-Communications segmentation

Finally, it is helpful to understand who is opening your eNewsletters and which (if any) links they are following. eNewsletter tools like Constant Contact and Vertical Response give you detailed statistics on who opens your emails and what links they click on for more information. (Please see our reviews of these eNewsletter tools if you aren’t already using one.)

There is no simple way currently to integrate these stats with DPO. However, they have announced integration between Constant Contact and DPO that will be released soon – let us know if you are interested in learning more about this functionality when it is available. Note that there will be no additional charges from DPO or Constant Contact to make this integration work. Other donor databases may have similar integration – contact your database support team to find out more.

Whether or not this data is not integrated directly with your donor database, you can always use these details stats to ensure your communications are of interest to your constituents. You can even determine if certain stories are more pertinent for specific subsets of your constituent base.

TIP: Use an eNewsletter service to send out your mass e-communications. And use short intros to each section with a link for more information on your website or blog – this will help in two ways: 1) Readers scan emails so they’ll see all of your stories and 2) You will be able to collect stats about who read each type of story.

3)      Promote using various channels

What good is an annual campaign … if nobody knows about it? The internet offers easy, free ways to promote your annual campaign and keep it top of mind. Make it easy to find information about your annual campaign on your website, blog, Facebook Page, eNewsletter, etc. Research shows that multi-channel communications with donors result in more regular, larger donations.

TIP: Try to find subtle ways to remind your constituents of your annual campaign. Although there should be some direct communications, you want to engage your constituents online in a conversation – if you have too many direct requests, people will tune you out. The key is balance. For example, always keep a link to the online donation page on your Facebook Page, your eNewsletters, and your blog. It is also helpful to use personal stories in your communications. A story about someone impacted by your organization with a link to the online giving page can be very effective.

Do you have any questions about using technology to support your Annual Campaign? Let us know in the comments below (or email Kevin directly).

by Natasha Dresner

One Summer seven years ago, a major Jewish philanthropist had a few visits with a Jewish Summer Camp in the Berkshires. Those visits wound up putting nonprofit Jewish Camping on the map and changed its landscape forever. How? Well, for starters, the philanthropist was none other than Harold Grinspoon. But even more importantly than that, the camp scheduled the visit and then showed and told him their story in a way that resonated with his personal and philanthropic interests.

Soon after those visits, Harold created the Grinspoon Institute for Jewish Philanthropy, which at last count provides 74 Jewish nonprofit Summer camps and over 800 of their professional and lay leaders with free consulting services in Strategic Thinking and Planning, Board Development, Fundraising, and Technology, as well as Matching Challenge Grants, which to date have helped raise almost $60 million.

The point I want to impress upon you is that all of this started with a simple camp visit. I hear some camps say they’re too busy during the summer and can’t afford to do it. Well, I say you can’t afford NOT to. Not every camp has a Harold Grinspoon, but every camp has a major donor waiting to be invited, and you need to do it NOW!

Next to the fun, safe, and high quality summer camp experience you promised your campers and their families, engaging your major donors and prospects through special, individually tailored, and well-planned camp visits – whether for cultivation, solicitation, or stewardship – is the next most important thing lay and professional leadership must dedicate their time to. Now let’s focus on how.

The following five tips will help you have a successful visit. To learn more, join us on April 27^th at 1 PM EDT for a webinar, Show and Tell: Successful Camp Visits for Donors and Prospects.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good - all of the above tips should help ensure a great visit and a desirable outcome; a less than perfect visit is better than no visit at all.

Remember, it all starts with a single visit!

Image courtesy of Spakattacks on Flickr

Did you have parties before eVite allowed you to invite people for free online? Did you pay your bills before banks offered you online banking? Of course you did. The technologies only made the processes cheaper and easier. Similarly, your organization has been fundraising and building relationships with donors and prospects for years, even before the computer!

Stewardship – like cultivation – is really about relationships. Technology will never be used as the primary channel for stewarding your donors. But, like fundraising in general, technology can be used to make your nonprofit’s stewardship efforts more effective and efficient. The following are a few examples of how technology can help you steward your donors:

• Track donor values and interests

Donor Management Systems are great for capturing and reporting on what your donors and prospects care about the most. Why did they support your last capital campaign? What is their most indelible memory of camp? Are they married? Have kids? What other causes do they support?

All of this information - if it is stored consistently and easily accessible – can help your organization build stronger, more meaningful relationships with your donors.  Think about how much more meaningful your conversations are with someone who really knows you. Or simply with someone who listens and then is able to recall those details at a later conversation. Technology can help you retain those details.

• Track and schedule contacts with donors

A donor management system can track all contacts with donors – personal meetings, phone calls, emails, etc. This allows your organization to easily determine who has been in touch with a donor…and when. If used consistently, your organization will be able to ensure donors are contacted in the appropriate way and frequency.

Remember that a system is only as good as the data entered. Anyone involved in Stewardship activities must be trained to report back with updated contact information, details about meetings, and other information to be tracked in the system.

Most donor management systems will also allow your organization to assign future contacts with a donor to a specific person. This makes it even easier to ensure relationships are being built effectively.

And Board Management tools like Google Groups can help your Board coordinate donor/board member “assignments” and share documents to help them track their contacts effectively.

• Be transparent about how donors’ gifts are being used

Donors expect transparency more and more. They want to know how their gifts have been spent and what your organization plans to do with future donations. Your organization’s website is a perfect place to share detailed financial information, annual reports, and more specific details about donations. For example, for a capital campaign, pictures of buildings in process or finished will go a long way. For scholarship campaigns, pictures of recipients, parent testimonials, and total amounts given to a specific number of campers would be helpful for donors to understand the impact of their generosity.

eNewsletters also offer the opportunity to inexpensively send regular updates to donors about the status of fundraising campaigns and how those funds are being used. These eNewsletters can be personalized in a limited fashion - by including a salutation field with the donor’s name, or even including a short personal note in the text of the eNewsletter.

For example, Herzl Camp recently sent out an eNewsletter with pictures of a new building being constructed at the camp. Information about the construction was offered, as well as another thank you for the donors’ help. Finally a subtle link to give an additional gift was made available at the end of the eNewsletter.

• Ensure timely acknowledgements are sent to donors

Stewardship is above and beyond thanking your donors. However, sending timely acknowledgements is one crucial component of good stewardship. Donor Management Systems can help your organization quickly report on recent gifts, and even track which gifts have yet to be acknowledged. And simple mailmerges with MS Word can allow your organization to easily create and print personalized thank you notes in bulk.

Always keep in mind that the technology is there to help you with these processes. Stewardship can only be successful with the right processes and people in place to build and retain your donor relationships.

How have you used technology to steward your donors?