Selecting and Online Fundraising Technology: For Large Non-Profits

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Selecting and Online Fundraising Technology For
Large Non-Profits

• Donna Wilkins
• President, Charity Dynamics
• Ken West
• Director Marketing Communications and Website
• Prevent Blindness America

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Agenda

• Introductions
• What youd like to get from the session
• Selecting an Online Fundraising Technology
• Define Requirements
• Review Internal Readiness
• Review Available Solutions
• Case Study Prevent Blindness Americas
  Fundraising Solution
• Survey of Available Technologies
• Question and Answer

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Selecting an Online Fundraising Technology

• Triggers change within the organization
• Online giving is publicly visible to all
• Increased investment increases importance to
  stakeholders
• May bring new roles and responsibility
• Important to manage the project
• Requirements
• Schedule
• Staffing
• Cost
• Risk

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Requirements

• Requirements gathering has two roles
• Understand needs
• Begin communication with your customers
• Important to take a 360 view of requirements
• Development staff
• Finance / Accounting
• IT / Communications
• Current donors
• Potential donors

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Keys to Meeting Requirements

• Write requirements down and make them know across
  the organization
• Accountability for the team
• Communication to the organization
• Consider phased implementation to satisfy most
  urgent requirements first
• Note requirements that are not an immediate
  priority

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Review your Requirements

• What are your current donors asking for?
• Receipts for tax deductions
• Monthly giving
• Honor / Memorial donations
• Membership - new and renewals
• Special campaigns
• Specific credit cards
• What questions are causing phone calls to your
  office?
• Information requests about the organization and
  stewardship of donations
• Honor / Memorial donations
• Membership renewals
• Stock gifts
• Planned giving

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Review your Requirements

• How does your organization fundraise today?
• Individual donors
• Campaigns focused on current events
• Multiple giving programs
• Memberships
• Monthly giving programs
• Volunteer Fundraising
• EFT / Check
• Stock
• What process could be improved with current
  online donations technology?
• Data entry
• Information collected from donors
• Ease of reconciliation for accounting
• Fulfillment of memberships
• Fulfillment of honor /memorial gifts
• Management reports of online giving

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Review your Requirements

• What services will help retain current donors?
• Stewardship information
• Regular e-newslettter
• Opportunity to provide feedback and input to the
  organization
• Online advocacy
• Member directories
• More giving options
• How can new donors find your organization?
• Search Engine Optimization / Marketing
• Regular e-newsletter
• Ease of navigation within your site
• Ability to promote specific URLs
• Ability to track where site visitors are coming
  from

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Organizational Readiness

• Executive support and buy-in
• Understand roles and responsibilities
• Expectations and goals clearly understood
• Internal communication plan
• Process for feedback and decision-making

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Executive Support and Buy-in

• Needs to be clearly communicated throughout the
  organization
• Makes the initiative a priority within the
  organization
• Empowers the team implementing the solution
• Triggers involvement across the organization
• Spurs ideas and innovation across the organization

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Roles and Responsibilities

• Implementation
• Project leader
• Development lead
• Representatives from all stakeholders
• Giving Officers (Planned Giving, Major Gifts,
  etc)
• Finance / Accounting
• Donor Database
• Administrators
• Reviewers
• Ongoing support
• Online Giving Manager
• Administrator
• Donor Database Administrator
• Finance / Accounting

• Define Roles for
• Decision making and setting direction
• Hands on Implementation

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Team

• Ability to get decisions made within the
  organization
• Experience with online communication
• Less experienced team members can be successful
  in supporting roles
• Experience within the organization
• Clear understanding of mission and scope of
  services
• Understanding of departmental functions,
  priorities, and interdependencies
• Understanding of decision making process

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Consider Outside Help

• Project management
• Online fundraising expertise
• Creative design
• Web copy writing
• Increase bandwidth
• Hands on implementation
• Existing workload
• To successfully bring in help
• Define scope of work
• Define deliverables
• Schedule
• Transition plan to internal staff

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Manage Expectations

• Announce the project and state the goals
• Makes expectations clear to the implementation
  team
• Defines the scope throughout the organization
• Set realistic goals for fundraising
• Base goals on current online programs, staffing,
  and current giving programs
• Allow time to build awareness with donors
• Allow time to develop online relationships
• Set realistic launch schedule
• Plan how teams current workload will be covered
• Plan for holidays, vacations, organization events
• Plan tasks in detail
• Understand dependencies
• Get buy-in from team

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Internal Communication

• Communicate
• Announce the initiative state goals and roles
• Previews of design, functionality
• Changes in plans
• Launch of the new fundraising site
• Recognize all effected by the change
• Internal soft launch
• Clarify decision making
• Who will make decisions
• Process for making decisions
• When decision will be made

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Internal Communication

• Provide opportunities for preview and feedback
• Communicate how input should be given
• Communicate areas where input is needed
• Let everyone know how they can support the
  organization
• Announce schedule for previews

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Selecting a Technology

• Make a list of solutions for your organization
• Referrals from similar organizations
• Attend conferences showcasing online fundraising
  solutions
• Review industry lists of available solutions

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Questions for Every Vendor

• Demonstration
• Review features most important to you
• Review how you will use the product
• Current clients
• References
• Review current clients websites
• Service and Support
• Ensure theyll provide assistance at the times
  you need
• Review what help is available to you through
  documentation, online guides, FAQs, etc

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Who We Are

• Our mission To prevent blindness and preserve
  sight

• Founded in 1908, were the nation's leading
  volunteer eye health and safety organization
  dedicated to fighting blindness and saving sight.
  Focused on promoting a continuum of vision care,
  PBA and our network of affiliates touch the lives
  of millions of people each year.

• We screened 2.25 million children and adults for
  potential vision problems like amblyopia,
  strabismus, glaucoma, diabetic eye disease and
  AMD.

• We referred more than 10 to eye doctors for
  professional eye exams

• Working with VSP, we distributed thousands of
  vouchers for free eye glasses and free eye exams
  in communities around the country

• We advocate for better national public policy
  relating to eye health and safety new CDC vision
  program, helped found the Congressional Vision
  Caucus, and fought for increased funding to the
  NEI

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Some things on our to-do list in January, 2004

• Collect better information from the people who
  contact us through our website

• Do a better job staying in touch with the people
  who contact us through our website (and are
  interested in what were doing)

• Provide more and better opportunities for people
  who visit the website to contact us directly for
  help

• Provide a better experience to website visitors
  who make secure donations online

• In 12 months, PBA would be launching a new
  National Vision Screening Database. We had to
  find a way to manage our far-flung contacts who
  would be responsible for entering data from
  around the country into this system and
  communicate with them regularly about this
  process.

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Some questions our network of affiliates had
started to ask

• Why cant the national office provide us with a
  system for email communication(e-newsletters)?

• Why cant the national office provide us with a
  system for online event registration and credit
  card processing?

• About that National Vision Screening Database,
  how is the national office going to manage
  far-flung contacts at the affiliate level who
  would be responsible for entering data from
  around the country into this system and
  communicate with them regularly about this
  process?

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Some Initial Challenges thatShaped the Process

• How do we balance the need for a uniform national
  system with affiliates need for autonomy and
  customized solutions?

• How do we make the system affordable for the
  national office and for affiliates?

• How do we make the system useful for everyone
  despite a wide range of technological
  sophistication among our affiliates?

• How do we get buy in from affiliates that have
  already begun to explore alternatives on their
  own?

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The Basic Plan

• Work with a few key affiliate staff on the
  selection process

• Market the system heavily at our May 2004
  national staff conference

• Enlist the support of our national board chair to
  advocate the system

• Make the system free for affiliates, but
  require them to set up their own merchant
  accounts one for every affiliate.

• Enlist one affiliate to develop a pilot
  program/template program to serve as a model for
  all affiliates

• Provide national staff support to the process
  from two departments marketing and development

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Why the Plan Failed

• Although free, affiliates balked at the cost

• Pilot program was an unmitigated disaster

• Death of a national event

• Timing

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How we learned from our mistakesRoll-Out Plan,
Version 2.0

• Start small, but with multiple affiliates
  create success stories among affiliates for
  affiliates to share with each other.

• Share nationals own successes with affiliates

• Ask our provider to step up its service and work
  directly with key affiliates

• Hammer home the message at every board meeting,
  and on our Intranet, and make it a general
  session topic at the upcoming 2005 staff
  conference with key affiliates sharing their
  stories with the entire PBA network.

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Where We Are Now

• At the national level the system is fully
  integrated into our development and marketing
  communications plan several big successes to
  share with our network

• 60 of affiliates have either fully integrated
  the system, or are using the system to some
  degree. 80 of affiliates are trained on the
  system. Key affiliates are championing the system
  to the rest of the PBA family.

• Our goal 100 affiliate participation by end of
  fiscal 2005-2006.

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Some Lessons Learned

• Involve stakeholders in the decision-making
  process but keep the decision-making team small.

• Know what you want from the system going in what
  are your development goals, your
  marketing/communication goals.

• Do your research internally and externally.

• Make sure your service provider understands your
  organization and how it works.

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Available Technologies

• Product Solutions
• Blackbaud NetSolutions
• Convio
• eTapestry
• GetActive
• Kintera
• Custom Development

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Sharing of Experiences

• What lessons have you learned from new technology
  projects?
• What would you have done differently?
• What are the things youre glad you did?

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Question and Answer
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How to Contact Presenters

• Donna Wilkins
• donna_at_charitydynamics.com
• www.charitydynamics.com
• 512-342-8803
• Ken West
• kwest_at_preventblindness.org
• www.preventblindness.org
• 312-363-6034