Mothers' donor database know-how: how MADD personalizes appeal letters with local chapter information

In honor of Mother's day, we're running a case study

Fundraising appeals for many MADD Florida chapters are produced and mailed from one central office, but donors won’t be able to tell. With personalization, these letters will look and sound local, addressing the local activities of the closest chapter.

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Tags: user spotlights, nonprofit fundraising, fundraising letters

3 Mother's Day Suggestions for FundRaiser Users

Non-traditional ways to honor mothers

Mother's Day was begun, back in the early 1900's, as a celebration of the person to whom we owe our very existence, but quickly became so commercialized that even the originator of the day became disenfranchised with it.  If we want to truly celebrate our mothers, we can do better than giving flowers or a dinner out, I think, and FundRaiser can be a part of that effort.

Tributes Module

FundRaiser recently got an upgrade to the Tributes module, in that there is now an "In Celebration of" tribute type, in addition to the usual "In Honor of", and "In Memory of" tributes.  You might consider an effort to solicit donations "In Celebration of Mother's Day", as an alternative to the gifts, cards, dinners, flowers, etc.  A donation to (your worthy cause here) can be a loving tribute that lasts longer that it takes to read a card, eat a dinner, or for those flowers to wilt.  Using the Tributes Module (optional in Select, standard in Professional) will let you easily track these types of donations, create lists of tribute donors for newsletters, as well as send appropriate correspondence to donors AND to the mothers they are honoring in this way.  If you don't yet have the module, you can learn more about it here.

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Tags: features, nonprofit fundraising, training tip

Case study: humane society keeps up with increased homeless animal population with the help of simple donor management techniques

They use simple coding and reporting to track the progress of campaigns. “We are just about to do our Masquerade Gala which is our biggest fundraising event of the year,” says Amy Reidesel of WHS. “In the database, I mark incoming donations with motivation codes. I use a code for:

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3 General FundRaiser Features to help track Events / Projects

General features you can use for event management

No matter which version of FundRaiser (Spark, Select, or Professional) you use, there are features that can help you track events.  While Professional has a Campaign Management component, it's not necessary for simple tracking, as I'll explain.  Using gift- and name record-based codes, along with TIckles, you can keep a better handle on planning of events, as well as their results.

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Tags: training tip, training, features, general

Case study: How one volunteer's excellent data entry routine helped turn around a fundraising downslide

Through steadfast attention to detail, volunteer Jim Hodges makes sure that correspondence goes out in a timely fashion and accurate data is in place when reports are needed for evaluation and planning.

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Tags: user spotlights, volunteering, fundraising letters