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Technology Leads New Fundraising Tools

March 31, 2009

By Paul Clolery

The nearly 200 exhibitors on the convention floor of the Association of Fundraising Professionals were showing their latest tools for raising cash.

Sage North America announced it will soon offer a new ePhilanthropy tool; has a renewed focus on adding next-generation technical capabilities to its Millennium fundraising platform; and has launched fully managed hosting services for its Sage Fundraising 50 software.

Sage will soon introduce a low-cost "viral fundraising" tool that will allow nonprofits to employ the concept of contextual giving. The new ePhilanthropy offering is designed to help organizations quickly create donation forms that can be placed within any Web page, as well as link their e-mails to the campaign-specific content page on their site. The embedded forms allow donors to fully complete the transaction within the content that inspired the gift, so organizations can secure higher conversion rates and larger gift sizes.

The tool requires no technical or programming skills on the part of the nonprofit, so an organization can have their campaign up and running in minutes.

Sage has renewed its focus on adding capabilities to its Millennium fundraising platform. It includes a with a Web-based design that can be set up as an Internet or intranet application to more easily manage campaigns and events, track donors, and create reports.

Sage also launched fully managed hosting services for its Sage Fundraising 50 software to help nonprofit organizations lower their total cost of ownership (TCO), while increasing flexibility and accessibility. With no need to deploy or maintain a server, hosted Sage Fundraising 50 can minimize an organization\'s information technology (IT) costs and resources. In addition to being easy-to-use and affordable, the software helps organizations increase productivity, strengthen and support the efforts of their fundraising staff, and more easily analyze and communicate their results to both their organization\'s leadership and constituents.

Blackbaud and PayPal announced the availability of BlackbaudNow™, an affordable solution to help new and growing nonprofits reach their fundraising goals. BlackbaudNow offers a point-and-click Web site builder with secure donation processing and the ability to send emails and record donors\' giving histories.

The firms announced the BlackbaudNow Donation Sweepstakes. From March 30 to June 30, 2009, nonprofits that sign up for BlackbaudNow will be automatically entered in the sweepstakes. The first place contest winner will receive a matching donation of up to $2,500 and 20 additional nonprofits will receive matching donations of up to $500.

Orange Leap announced availability of a new, eponymous, on-demand software solution that lets nonprofits highly customize their constituent and donation management, and even automate critical functions based on their unique business rules.

Orange Leap provides open source software for nonprofits to strengthen constituent relationships, accelerate fundraising and enhance other mission-critical operations. The company\'s newest offering, also called Orange Leap, overturns the current industry model for constituent management and fundraising by providing the first ever, nonprofit-specific active system - including business process automation functionality -- for getting the most out of donor and prospect relationships with maximum efficiency.

With Orange Leap, a nonprofit can build constituent management and fundraising best practices and business rules into its technology infrastructure. This automates important daily tasks and activities, eliminating the risks associated with relying on staff members to always remember what to do, when to do it, who needs to provide approvals or take additional action, etc. It also enables a nonprofit to identify and interact with specific constituent segments in the most appropriate way for optimizing relationships and giving.

For example, a nonprofit could implement a rule to: 1) qualify donors as major donors in real time as soon as they reach a pre-designated financial threshold; and 2) then automatically begin targeting them immediately with higher touch communications and a different level of benefits.

Orange Leap users also can easily generate very sophisticated reports for analyzing data in real time with a few mouse clicks. Orange Leap includes the wizard-based reporting tool, The Guru, another first-of-its-kind product that the company announced earlier this month. The database-agnostic reporting tool gives an organization the ability to create sophisticated reports in a simple to use wizard. The Guru also gives organizations with ability to report on all the systems they use, including accounting, Web content management, etc.

Convio announced the availability of the "Toolbox for the Modern Nonprofit." The free report helps nonprofits choose the best database for constituent management, discusses the benefits of using an online database solution and the value of using a modern database for nonprofits to build relationships, create new opportunities and integrate with other technologies and applications.

Below are five useful ways an online database, Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) tool can help nonprofit organizations increase growth and expand opportunities:

  • " Seize the Day and The Data" - CRM allows for collaborative access to an organization\'s data. Nonprofits have easy access to the information needed, and can control that access right down to who can run reports, who can edit records and even what fields are visible to whom.
  • " Anytime, Anywhere Access" - Modern CRM systems allow Web access from any browser at anytime. The right system is securely accessible to personnel at anytime from any networked device.
  • " A Better View, A Bigger Impact" - CRM allows nonprofits to keep track of constituents, networks, and how all actions, online and offline, toward a nonprofit's cause are interrelated. With CRM a nonprofit's volunteer management, campaign management and donor management systems would all be coordinated.
  • " Speaks a Nonprofit's Language" - CRM can be tailored to meet the needs of each department of an organization. Nonprofits can change their CRM to look like, "sound" like, and fit in seamlessly within an organization.
  • " Banish the Bottlenecks" - With CRM, nonprofits can create reports, modify existing ones, and choose how to share them. CRM ensures organizations reduced error rates, reduced turnaround time and increased consistency and team efficiency.

A nonprofit organization's constituent knowledge and relationships are keys to success. The ability to strengthen those relationships lies within understanding the people and their level of interest and engagement both online and through traditional channels. With innovative new systems like Convio's Common Ground™ now available, nonprofit professionals have asked what they should look for when choosing to adopt an open, online CRM solution tailored to their unique needs. The traditional database providers have created an environment where older offerings are accepted as being a "cost of doing business" rather than a tool for enhancing relationships and driving results. The new options require a new way of viewing constituent databases and their integration with traditional fundraising channels and online engagement technology.

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