Sarah's Shortcuts: Preparing for Pledges

So I realize I'm probably starting a little late, but I'm finally beginning to map out a budget of sorts and am taking time to monitor my expenses. It's been rather eye-opening. For one, I don't make as much as I thought I did (good to know). Secondly, I spend far too much at coffee shops, but I am trying to cut back. Oh, Starbucks, how do I love thee?

Working on a budget is also helping me see what expenses I can reduce in order to keep my donations coming for the organizations that are close to my heart (even more so than my beloved green tea frappuccino). I used to rely on my internal  to remind me when to make another donation, but I'm realizing that's not a very effective method, and it probably makes it difficult for the nonprofits to budget with such sporadic donations.

If your donors are coming to similar conclusions, it's good to familiarize yourself with the process of adding pledges, setting up installment schedules, and rescheduling pledges as needed.

To set up a pledge with an installment schedule: 

1. Create a new gift, whether in Records or Batch, with Pledge as the gift type.
2. Open the Pledge Installment Schedule screen:
   • If adding the gift in Records, click Schedule on the Gift tab of the gift.
   • If adding the gift in Batch, select Gift, Installment Information on the menu bar.
3. Enter the appropriate frequency, the number of installments, and the starting on date.
4. Click the Distribute button.
   Note: If selecting Irregular as the frequency, the Distribute button is grayed out. Each installment date and amount must be entered manually.
5. Click OK to save the installment schedule, and save the gift (or commit the gift batch).

To reschedule pledge installments:

1. On the General tab or the Installments/Payments tab of the pledge, click Schedule.*
2. Click Reschedule to open the Reschedule Unpaid Installments Wizard.
3. Enter the adjusted installment frequency, number of installments, and start date.
4. Click Next to view the new schedule, and click Finish.
5. Click OK on the Pledge Installment screen, and save the gift.

*Note: If the pledge is marked as Posted, create a gift adjustment to change the pledge installments.

Getting a hold on these procedures will help your data entry go more smoothly as donors make pledges or modify their payment plans for existing pledges. As a little reading assignment, take a look at Knowledgebase solution BB69806: How to print, run, or send pledge reminders, and consider doing a test run to make sure you can create reminders for donors whose internal clocks have gotten a bit off like mine.

Who Was That Masked Donor?

"Who knows what altruism lurks in the hearts of donors? The Raiser's Edge knows."

Like Pip in Great Expectations, your organization may be patronized by an anonymous benefactor. Unlike Pip, you probably don't have an escaped convict as a benefactor, but even without a troubled past, sometimes people just prefer to remain anonymous.

If you have a constituent who wishes to give all of his gifts anonymously, mark the Gives anonymously checkbox on the Bio 1 tab or Org 1 tab of his constituent record. This will automatically mark the Gift is anonymous checkbox on the Miscellaneous tab of the gift record each time a new gift is added. If a pledge is marked as anonymous, all pledge payments made to that pledge are marked as anonymous as well.

For constituents who subscribe to the Joe Klein school of part-time anonymity, you can mark selected gifts anonymous by manually marking the Gift is anonymous checkbox on the Miscellaneous tab of a gift. When adding an anonymous gift in Batch, include the Gift is anonymous field in your data entry grid and select Yes for each anonymous gift.

When you are working in Reports and Mail, you can choose whether or not to include Anonymous gifts in your output. Select Tools, User Options and click the Reports or Mail tab, then select Gift preferences on the left. Here you have the option to Mark the Include anonymous gifts option. For Reports, you have the additional option of choosing name formats for the Anonymous donor. You can either display an asterisk (*) at the end of the line, use "Anonymous" in place of the donor's name, or leave the name intact, so that the constituent appears the same as any other donor.

All of this information is also available in Knowledgebase solution BB55748.

The answers to the Brain Buster in this month's edition of The User's Edge are 7 (Gaston) and 4 (Noel).

Create maps of your constituents using free online tools

This is a guest post by Nicholai Burton, author of The Patron Edge blog The Spotlight.

Have you ever wanted to create an interactive map of constituents based on a query in The Raiser's Edge?  One way to handle this (the most powerful way) is to get Microsoft MapPoint and the RE/MapPoint integration. If you're looking for more basic features though, like a visualization of where your constituents are spread out within a specific ZIP code, you can use a free online tool called Map a List. Here's how to get started:

• Create an export with name, address 1, address 2, city, state and zip, and export to a CSV file.
• Upload the CSV file to your Google Docs page. If you don't have a Google account, create one now.
• Go to http://mapalist.com and create an account.
• Create a new map.

• Select Google Spreadsheet as the source type.
• Select the desired spreadsheet and click Next.
• Map the address fields as needed, select a title field and another field for additional info if desired. Click Apply, Next.
• Let Map a List work its magic and click Next when it says that all addresses were found.
• Select Map All Addresses and click Next. You can play with the other options here as you become more familiar with the tool (giving different style pins by primary constituent code, for example).
• Enter your choices on the optional settings page if needed and click Save and View Map.

And you're done! Now you've got an interactive map to view constituents and get driving directions. If you want to take this a level further, there is also an option to download the file as a KML document so that you can throw it into Google Earth and do more fun things with it.

There are a lot of steps to follow the first time you use this solution, but the map can be set to automatically update when the spreadsheet is updated. After the initial map is created, just upload new copies of the spreadsheet and the rest takes care of itself. You can even set up Firefox to drag and drop spreadsheets into the browser (http://hackhowto.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-to-upload-google-docs-in-batch-mode.html) and have them auto-upload to your Google docs page, turning map maintenance into a two-click process.

You don't need to be super-techy to set this up, but please note that the Support team can only help you as far as getting the data exported to CSV. If you have any issues with the rest of the setup, try using our Forums to get help from other users.

Does your organization make use of maps or other data visualization tools? Share your experiences in the comments.

Sometimes it's Good to Repeat Yourself

Like the tides, the cycles of the moon, and the inevitable sequels to popular action movies, some donors give gifts with clockwork reliability through payroll deduction or other means. Re-entering these gifts each time busies hands that could be doing other work. Fortunately, it is possible to enter these gifts only once and commit them many times through the magic of the recurring batch.

Creating a recurring batch does not involve deviating significantly from the standard batch process. When you are creating a new batch, simply mark the Batch is recurring checkbox on the Batch Header tab. If you have a saved or committed batch that you would like to mark as recurring, go to Tools, Edit Batch Setup to access the Batch Header and mark the checkbox.

Once the recurring batch is created, you can add, edit, or delete gifts from the batch each time to commit it. When you are ready to commit the batch, select File, Commit Completed Batch from the menu bar. On the Commit Gift Batch screen, select the Recurring Batch tab and select specific date for the gift date and GL post date fields. Your date selections here will overwrite the dates entered in the batch data entry grid. This saves you the trouble of changing the date in the grid each time you commit the batch.

Each time you commit the batch, it will commit with a unique number. If you make Batch #101 a recurring batch, it will commit with the next available number each time.

For more information, check out KB solution BB41948.

Grr...Newman.

Wow...where did the time go? It's been a while since my last (which was my first) blog post, and I'm sure my teaser at the end left you wanting for more!

If you have seen the sitcom Seinfeld, you know that Jerry growls a greeting to his nemesis Newman -- "Grr...Newman." There's a personality conflict, but they coexist because of their mutual friend, Kramer. We all have our own Newmans to deal with.

When it comes to the Development Office, who's the Newman? More often then not, it's the Finance Office!!

Development officers and finance officers just seem to speak a different language. You say "designated." They ask "temporarily restricted, permanently restricted, or do you really mean unrestricted?" You say "pledge."  They ask is it an "unconditional promise to give" that should be recognized as contribution revenue or are there conditions which may require it to be booked both as an asset and a liability? When you're working with numbers, it's all very black and white. But when you're working with prospects and donors, there are many shades of gray and a lot of "it depends."

So how can you improve that Seinfeld-Newman dynamic between your development office and the finance office? Treat your finance team like a prospect. Build your strategy and cultivate the relationship. Find out more about GAAP (Generally accepted accounting principles) and FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board). Learn how FAS 116 and FAS 117 affect the financial practices of your non-profit organization. I recommend reading Not-for-Profit Accounting Made Easy by Warren Ruppel. It's a great resource for nonaccountants who need to know the fundamental principles of not-for-profit accounting. Learn to speak the language of the finance office.

Language Lesson #1: I offer you a quick tip for providing the finance office with the reports they want in their language -- specifically, gifts to funds with or without restrictions. In The Raiser's Edge set up your funds and require a Fund Type of Unrestricted, Temporarily Restricted, or Permanently Restricted. Create three Dynamic Fund Queries with the criteria of Fund Type equal to each of the three types. Open a new Gift Detail & Summary Report. Choose your date range to report on and Report Type of Both or Summary. Filter on Funds and choose Selected Funds: Query. Search for and choose one of the three queries.  Select any other report parameters you may need. Be sure to Format your report with a subtitle for the Fund Type and choose the Detail to Summarize by Fund. Run your report. Your finance office will be happy to have a summary of gifts by fund type. 

As a development officer, you will never completely step over to the dark side of finance where everything is black and white. But learning and speaking their language goes a long way to enhancing the development office-finance office dynamic.

Speaking of "the dark side," do you think my next blog post may have a Stars War theme? Hmmmm....

What's up with my Query? (Part 3)

In our last episode, we explored the doors and windows that a simple set of parentheses can open (or close, depending on the circumstance) in your queries.  In this episode, I want to go down another heavily trafficked road of query frustration that will hopefully lead you to the bliss of querying on total giving!

Here is the scenario: Your Director of Annual Giving has asked you to pull a list of donors who have given at least $5,000 to last year's annual fund.  She wants to use this list for a mailing to ask those donors if they will increase their giving to this year's annual fund.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Then how come in your results you see donors like George Finley (who proudly resides in the Sample Database), who have donated over $5,000 to your organization, but not specifically to last year's annual fund?  What's up with the query this time????  Well, let's take a look at your query filters first. Your criteria tab looks like this:

--Total Amount of Gifts_1 greater than or equal to $5,000
--AND Fund Description equals 2007 Annual Fund

Those filters sound just about right...but are they?  What this is actually finding is anyone in your database who has given a total of at least $5,000 EVER, and who has also given anything at all to the 2007 Annual Fund.  George Finley, who has only given a grand total of [drum roll] $75 to last year's annual fund, clearly meets this query's criteria, but your Director of Annual Giving would not be pleased to find him on the list that is turned into her.   So what's missing? 

The Total Amount filter has its own criteria that can be defined.  When you query on Total Amount of Gifts (whether pulling this from Gifts > Total Amount of Gifts or Summary Information Total Amount > Summary for Gifts > Total Amount of Gifts), you will see a different 'Edit Field Criteria' screen than what you would normally see if you weren't trying to query on anything related to totals. What makes this screen different, now that we're querying on Total Amount of Gifts, is the addition of the Criteria and Filter tabs.  The Criteria tab is simple enough - this is where you declare that you're looking for anyone who has given 'greater than or equal to $5,000'.  The Filter tab is the one that is usually neglected - but it's equally as important in defining the Total Amount as the amount itself.  On this tab is where we need to indicate that we are only looking at the 2007 Annual Fund.  Once we give the poor little Filter tab the attention it longs for, this is what the query filters should look like:

+ Total Amount of Gifts_1 greater than or equal to $5,000 (notice the plus sign - this indicates that there are subfilters for this guy)

If the plus sign is clicked on, you should see this:

--Total Amount of Gifts_1 greater than or equal to $5,000
        --Fund Description equals 2007 Annual Fund

Take a look at your results, and you should no longer see George Finley, or any of his buddies.  Instead, donors like Andrea Tidwell and our old pal Robert Hernandez appear, who have given over $5,000 each to the 2007 Annual Fund.   So what's the moral of this story?  Just keep in mind that when you are looking for totals in a query that the totals have their own needs.  Define the criteria for the totals before moving on to the rest of your query criteria.  For more on this, check out the great blog by Katy McGinnis, Let RE Total Your Gifts for you! - Making the Most of Summary Filters. Or, check out the tips and tricks in our Knowledgebase solution on this topic.  Until next time....happy querying!!

Fundraising Effectiveness Project - have you done it?

When I first learned about the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP), I thought it was a wonderful idea.  For those of you who haven’t heard of the FEP, it is a project organized by the Association of Fundraising Professionals aimed at helping nonprofits assess their current fundraising efforts, identifying areas where they can improve and ultimately increasing their giving level.  The FEP analyzes data from nonprofits to look at the overall health of the nonprofit community.  Organizations that participate in the FEP receive a report that analyzes their own giving compared to that of the overall sector.  This is a great opportunity for nonprofits to help both themselves and other nonprofits.

Blackbaud has partnered with the AFP to make it easier for nonprofits to participate in the project.   In the Plugins section of The Raiser’s Edge there is the Fundraising Effectiveness Project Plug-in.  This plugin allows you to easily compile the required information for the survey and submit it electronically.  The survey does not transfer individual donor information, only statistics of your overall giving program (number of new donors, repeat donors, lapsed donors, etc).

The Fundraising Effectiveness Project Plug-in only takes a few minutes to fill out and run, and not only will it give you a better idea of your giving but you will also be helping the entire nonprofit community by contributing your data to the overall project.

To submit your Fundraising Effectiveness Project data to AFP, click on the Send button at the bottom of the window.  The survey data will automatically be sent to AFP via a secure FTP connection.

Have you participated in this project in the past? How has it helped your organization? Leave a note in the comments.