Excel is not a database.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Excel. It’s a powerful spreadsheet program and incredibly useful tool for data analysis. Pivot tables are like tiny miracles. When my first son was born, a friend sent a card congratulating us on “the birth of Adam.xls” because we used an Excel spreadsheet to organize and prepare for parenthood.
As awesome as Excel is, it’s not up to the task of tracking your donors’ behaviors and preferences in a meaningful way. The single most valuable asset you have when it comes to fundraising is relationships. You need software that was designed to track those relationships and move them forward.
A database provides a central place to track who knows your donors personally, and will have the most success reaching out to them. When a staff or board member has a conversation with a donor and learns about their interest in a particular program, that information can be added to the donor’s record and doesn’t get lost when the staff or board member is no longer involved with your organization.
There are other benefits to having a good database in place, such as accurate records that build donor trust. There are many worthy causes out there, and it doesn’t take much for a donor to shift their loyalty elsewhere. To an organization that doesn’t ask an existing donor to make their first gift, or ignore multiple requests to remove their deceased spouse from their record.
Having all of your donors and constituents in one place will help you prioritize who to spend the most time cultivating – you can run a report of donors who gave last year but who have not given this year. Or make thank you calls to those who have given several years in a row. Personalized attention goes a long way toward donor retention.
So how to choose? It’s hard to believe how many fundraising software options there are today. Prices range from hundreds to thousands of dollars a year, depending on how many users you have and how many constituents you need to track. Many are cloud based, so you don’t even need any special equipment or backup procedures to use them.
How do you make sense of all the choices? There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to databases. One great resource is A Consumer’s Guide to Low-Cost Donor Management Systems, released by NTEN and Idealware in 2017 (download for free at www.idealware.org).
Make a list of the primary functions you need (donations, event registration, membership, etc.) and use it to narrow down the list of options. A note about complexity – this first database doesn’t need to be your “forever database.” A basic system can always be upgraded a few years down the road when you have a better understanding of your needs.
Most products offer a free trial where you can poke around (sometimes an empty database, sometimes one that is populated with sample data). Choose 2 or 3 and take out a trial. Make sure the navigation feels intuitive to you and the reporting function has everything you want.
Once you’ve narrowed down the list, go to techsoup.org to see if it is available as a product donation. They often have deals to waive the cost of the first year for a small admin fee. Just make sure you know what the software will cost in its second year, and that you have room for it in your budget.
Not everyone speaks database, so if all of this is overwhelming, this may be one of those times when it’s worth bringing in an outside consultant to help you choose the right software and oversee the implementation.
Once your new database is up and running, you will wonder how you ever did your job without one!
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| Photo by Craig Chew-Moulding on Flickr.com |
A database provides a central place to track who knows your donors personally, and will have the most success reaching out to them. When a staff or board member has a conversation with a donor and learns about their interest in a particular program, that information can be added to the donor’s record and doesn’t get lost when the staff or board member is no longer involved with your organization.
There are other benefits to having a good database in place, such as accurate records that build donor trust. There are many worthy causes out there, and it doesn’t take much for a donor to shift their loyalty elsewhere. To an organization that doesn’t ask an existing donor to make their first gift, or ignore multiple requests to remove their deceased spouse from their record.
Having all of your donors and constituents in one place will help you prioritize who to spend the most time cultivating – you can run a report of donors who gave last year but who have not given this year. Or make thank you calls to those who have given several years in a row. Personalized attention goes a long way toward donor retention.
So how to choose? It’s hard to believe how many fundraising software options there are today. Prices range from hundreds to thousands of dollars a year, depending on how many users you have and how many constituents you need to track. Many are cloud based, so you don’t even need any special equipment or backup procedures to use them.
How do you make sense of all the choices? There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to databases. One great resource is A Consumer’s Guide to Low-Cost Donor Management Systems, released by NTEN and Idealware in 2017 (download for free at www.idealware.org).
Make a list of the primary functions you need (donations, event registration, membership, etc.) and use it to narrow down the list of options. A note about complexity – this first database doesn’t need to be your “forever database.” A basic system can always be upgraded a few years down the road when you have a better understanding of your needs.
Most products offer a free trial where you can poke around (sometimes an empty database, sometimes one that is populated with sample data). Choose 2 or 3 and take out a trial. Make sure the navigation feels intuitive to you and the reporting function has everything you want.
Once you’ve narrowed down the list, go to techsoup.org to see if it is available as a product donation. They often have deals to waive the cost of the first year for a small admin fee. Just make sure you know what the software will cost in its second year, and that you have room for it in your budget.
Not everyone speaks database, so if all of this is overwhelming, this may be one of those times when it’s worth bringing in an outside consultant to help you choose the right software and oversee the implementation.
Once your new database is up and running, you will wonder how you ever did your job without one!
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