May 2010 - Posts
From the Fundraising Success Advisor
by Katherine Swank, consultant, Target Analytics, a Blackbaud company
Historic philanthropy patterns of America’s affluent donors are giving way to a more complex and disparate population that represents our country’s patchwork communities. The systematic and predictable giving methods by the rich no longer dominate our donor bases. Diverse communities are emerging with new giving patterns and objectives.
Affluent African-Americans, Asian-Americans and those of Hispanic heritage are joining the donor ranks of many organizations. Their concepts of philanthropy encompass giving from all available resources including time, expertise, money and combined efforts. Nonprofit organizations will need to embrace fresh communication styles and adopt flexible stewardship, solicitation and recognition efforts to garner more involvement and support from these emergent philanthropists.
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Charleston, S.C. (May 18, 2010) – Blackbaud, Inc. (Nasdaq: BLKB) today announced the launch of Altru™ for general admissions arts and cultural organizations. Organizations including the Gibbes Museum of Art, South Florida Museum and Bishop Planetarium, and Tallahassee Museum have recently selected and will use Altru to gain a complete view of their organization, data, and visitors; streamline operations; and better engage and cultivate visitors and supporters. “We needed an affordable solution for all our data, one that provides a 360-degree view of the museum’s operations and everyone that walks through the door,” said Brynne Anne Besio, South Florida Museum and Bishop Planetarium, Inc.’s executive director. “This organization of data will allow us to better serve our customers, save staff time, and also provide critical information to our board for fundraising. We can now focus on donor development with an accurate picture of each person.”
Altru is the first technology solution designed to centralize all the information a general admissions arts and cultural organization collects. It instantly displays this information in a single view, and presents it in a way that helps staff members better plan and execute activities. It is the only integrated web-based platform that centralizes the information arts and cultural organizations need into a single view for all user roles.
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From Fundraising Success Advisor
Continuing our coverage of the Association of Fundraising Professionals 47th International Conference held in Baltimore last month, Steve MacLaughlin , director of Internet solutions at Blackbaud, shares his presentation, "Everything You Need to Know About Measuring Online Results but Were Afraid to Ask."
Our everyday lives are full of numbers and metrics. The hours and minutes on the alarm clock. The temperature of the water that hits our face. The expiration date on the milk. The distance to our offices. The posted speed limit on the road. The number of e-mails waiting in the inbox. We live in a sea of things that can be counted and metrics that can be measured.
Metrics provide us with a time machine that gives us insights into things that happened in the past and can help predict the future. Nonprofit metrics exist in categories that range from operational to programmatic, financial, and communication and engagement channels used with constituents.
This is especially true of the online world where there is a very unique set of metrics — hits, clicks, tweets, opens, page views, followers, forwards, actions and conversions are just some of them. This is very different from other communication channels, like direct mail, where measuring exactly what people did can be difficult.
Go through a handful of online statistics and they can quickly pile up. You had 13,217 page views on your website last week. You have 6,353 followers on Twitter. That last e-mail message had a 34.7 percent clickthrough rate; 298 people made online gifts to your organization over the weekend. The pile always gets higher and higher.
But there is a fundamental question nonprofits need to ask themselves: Are you counting, or are you measuring? Counting doesn’t actually count for very much. As it turns out, when you count things you’re usually successful. That is not always true when you start measuring things.
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From Fundraising Success Advisor
Continuing our coverage of the Association of Fundraising Professionals 47th International Conference held in Baltimore last month, Andrew Mosawi, vice president of international business development for Blackbaud, shares insights from his presentation, "The State of European Fundraising and What the U.S. Can Learn From It."
It is always a useful and productive experience to spend time in a new environment. That is the reason we fundraisers like to go to conferences. AFP, CASE, IFC, NTEN are great events that give us opportunities to get together, collaborate, learn and ultimately return home with ideas and best practices that will help our organizations achieve their goals.
What if we could extend this knowledge sharing beyond our own borders? What if we could learn how fundraisers in Bolivia deal with the lack of postal or banking systems? How did a Dutch organization generate more than 500,000 monthly donors? How are Italian organizations using digital media to drive results? How could we, wherever we are located, learn from our fundraising cousins on the other side of the planet?
Working for a global software company that only serves nonprofits, I am lucky enough to spend a great deal of time traveling and talking to nonprofits around the world. What has become obvious to me during my travels and my experience living internationally is the similar passion, drive and optimism that nonprofits around the world share with each other. There may be differences in fundraising styles and techniques from country to country, but the philosophy and passion remain the same. We also, as a global fundraising community, share many of the same challenges and concerns.
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Charleston, S.C. (May 4, 2010) – Blackbaud, Inc (Nasdaq: BLKB), the leading global provider of nonprofit software and services, today announced the launch of a new Nonprofit Leadership Circle, a group of employees who serve on nonprofit boards of directors, and several other employee-related philanthropic initiatives. Blackbaud is dedicated to its mission of making the world a better place both as a corporate citizen and as a catalyst for individual employees through a dedicated focus on philanthropy.
“The nonprofits we work with count on Blackbaud to be more than a technology partner, and our employees take that very seriously,” said Rachel Hutchisson, Blackbaud’s director of corporate citizenship and philanthropy. “Blackbaud lives the mission of ‘making the world a better place’ because our employees give back on both a professional and personal level through volunteer service.”
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