Atlanta, GA (January 22, 2019) — Double the Donation is excited to announce a new partnership with Beracha, a leading provider of custom technology solutions.

Beracha has integrated 360MatchPro, Double the Donation’s enterprise matching gifts platform, into nSpire, a social donations and donor portal engine. This integration will allow nSpire users to collect every possible corporate matching gift.

With 360MatchPro, nSpire users can present each donor with clear and simple information about their employer’s matching gift guidelines. These guidelines can be found on the donation confirmation page and through an email automatically sent after each donation is made.

When donations are made using a corporate email address, that company’s matching gift guidelines are presented to the donor automatically. If a personal email is used, the donor will be presented with a matching gift search tool where they can search for their employer.

“When we were looking for a matching gifts partner, 360MatchPro stood out as both the most comprehensive and the easiest platform to use,” said Dana Dunmyer, CEO and President of Beracha. “We want it to be easy for nSpire users to collect as many matching gifts as possible, and we know 360MatchPro will help them do that.”

Every year, $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue goes unclaimed because donors don’t know that they are eligible to claim it. With 360MatchPro, each donor is automatically emailed and encouraged to check their match-eligibility.

“Our mission is to help as many organizations as possible collect that unclaimed matching gift revenue, and we’re excited to be working with the great team at Beracha,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “nSpire is such a great platform, and we’re proud to offer matching gifts as a new enhancement.”

The 360MatchPro integration provides each user with a 360MatchPro portal. This portal stores every donation, tracks the match-eligibility of each donor and the outreach they are sent, and offers actionable insights that organizations can use to enhance their matching gift efforts.

Find out more about Beracha at https://beracha.org/.

Double the Donation is excited to announce to announce a new partnership with NeonCRM, a cloud-based software suite providing invaluable tools to nonprofit organizations.

NeonCRM can be fully integrated into 360MatchPro, Double the Donation’s most robust matching gifts tool. By simply inputting an organization’s NeonCRM Organization ID and API Key into their 360MatchPro account, donations begin to flow automatically from NeonCRM into 360MatchPro.

“Matching gifts are a huge untapped revenue source. By providing our users with the most effective matching gift tools out there, we are offering them a chance to claim some of that revenue,” said Tim Sarrantonio, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Neon One. “Double the Donation not only offers the most user-friendly tools available, but also the most extensive and comprehensive tools. We are very excited to see what our NeonCRM users do with all the extra revenue.”

360MatchPro provides donors with company-specific matching gift information. This information is presented simply and clearly so that each and every donor understands what they qualify for and how to claim it.

“There is $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue left on the table every year, and our goal is to help as many organizations claim as many of those dollars as possible,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “We are very excited to see that number go down as NeonCRM users begin claiming more and more of that revenue.”

The biggest hurdle to collecting matching gifts is a lack of donor awareness. By automatically following up with donors and encouraging them to check their match-eligibility, 360MatchPro and NeonCRM are narrowing that gap.

Activate in Seconds and Start Raising More from Matching Gifts!

Activating 360MatchPro with NeonCRM is a great way to increase donations without increasing your workload. The set up is simple and automated so you can start driving more matching gift request submissions as soon as possible.

To get started, simply enter your NeonCRM Organization ID and your NeonCRM API Key into the “Integrations” tab under “Settings” on your 360MatchPro dashboard. Once you have completed this step, the activation will be complete. All donations and donor information will now flow automatically from your NeonCRM account into your 360MatchPro account.

Enter your NeonCRM credentials on the 360MatchPro integrations page for an easy activation.

As these donations flow into 360MatchPro, email automation will begin instantly. Each donor will automatically receive a follow-up email encouraging them to check their match-eligibility. Donors will then be able to report the submission of their matching gift request back to the organization.

Help donors take advantage of their company’s gift matching programs.

Donation information will be imported from your NeonCRM to 360MatchPro. These insights include the donor’s name, donation amount, email address, phone number and campaign (if applicable).

The 360MatchPro portal will then track insights from this process such as email deliveries and open rates. These insights will help you plan gift matching communication efforts for future outreach initiatives. 

Looking to learn more? Check out our in-depth integration guide to get started!

Drive More Matching Gifts to Completion with 360MatchPro!

360MatchPro features excellent tools for a successful gift matching experience.

This integration will provide more revenue and less work because it can: 

• Identify more matching gift revenue opportunities: 360MatchPro enables you to automatically collect matching gift eligibility from donors using email domains, within donation forms, on confirmation screens, or by email. The more matching gift opportunities 360MatchPro discovers and shares with donors, the more matching gift requests your donors will successfully submit.
• Drive more matches to completion, from form submission to corporate payment: Direct donors immediately to their matching gift forms after the donation process is complete. Then, provide the right information to the right donors at the right time with custom emails based on match eligibility. Target follow-ups drive more completed submissions than ever before, bringing exponentially more matching gift checks from companies through your door.
• Reallocate your time from routine follow-up to your top opportunities: Your time is valuable, so why spend it chasing small dollar-value matching gifts? Let 360MatchPro automate your matching gift outreach while flagging your highest-value opportunities, allowing your team to personalize follow-ups to the most valuable match-eligible donations. Rest easy knowing that 360MatchPro can handle the rest.

This valuable integration will identify matches and drive them to completion so that you can focus your energy on other tasks.

To check out this integration in action, visit the 360MatchPro demo page. This resource will allow you to schedule a personalized session to discuss your organization’s goals, functionality options and more. 

About NeonCRM: Neon provides technology with a purpose to further your mission. Their nonprofit tech solutions help grow communities, inspire audiences, and scale impact. Since 2004, NeonCRM has helped thousands of organizations reach their full potential, raising millions of dollars for great causes along the way. If you are interested in learning more, check out their website at https://www.neoncrm.com/

About Double the Donation: Automate your matching gift fundraising with the industry-leading solution from Double the Donation. The 360MatchPro platform provides nonprofits with tools to identify match-eligible donors, drive matches to completion, and gain actionable insights. 360MatchPro integrates directly into donation forms, CRMs, social fundraising software, and other nonprofit technology solutions to capture employment information and follow up appropriately with donors about matching gifts. To learn more visit https://360matchpro.com/demo-request/ 

You know the old saying: “When the leaves turn brown, some serious fundraising’s about to go down.” OK, so maybe I just made that up; but that doesn’t make it any less true. The average nonprofit can expect to receive about half — or even more — of its fundraising revenue in the fourth quarter. And if you haven’t thought about your year-end giving plan before the pumpkin spice lattes hit the shelves, you might not be making the most out of this critical time of year for nonprofits.

At Click & Pledge, we definitely notice the giving spirit come out at this time of year. And while it might seem more appealing to wear a parka in a steambath than to create a year-end giving plan, it doesn’t have to be so stressful. In fact, we put together this guide (and a few simple worksheets) to help you knock out the basic components in just a couple of hours.

So, ditch the parka for a chair and a nice pumpkin spice latte, and let’s dive in.

1. Outline Your Objectives

A plan is only as good as its goals. That means you should look to accomplish something feasible, concrete, and measurable with your year-end giving plan. Start by considering these questions:

• How much fundraising revenue did you earn during last year’s campaign?
• What could be done differently to make this year’s campaign better?
• How much do you expect your budget to grow this year?
• What, if any, holes do you foresee with your programming budget that need to be addressed?
• Why is it important that we address these budgetary concerns with our year-end fundraising?

For something more concrete, try filling out this sentence:

“For this year-end giving plan, our organization’s priority is to insert specific result to insert specific organizational need(s) to address.”

There’s another important aspect here: timing. How long do you plan to run your year-end giving campaign? On one hand, your end-date should almost unanimously be at least January 1. That’s because every year, the most donations happen in the last week of December. You can even extend the deadline for those patrons participating in corporate matching gifts programs that usually implement a grace period.

Whether you choose to kick off your campaign with a Halloween Haunt, or a Giving Tuesday marathon, or a donation drive starting December 1 — it totally depends on your organization’s preparedness and donor base. Go back to your data from last year’s campaign to see when it was launched, and whether donations played a significant impact during a specific time frame.

2. Tell The Story

Most donors are driven by an organization’s mission, not necessarily the numbers. It’s a lot easier for people to digest your mission with your organization’s story, rather than plain statistics.

Stories create social bonding experiences, which cause your brain to release oxytocin, a chemical partly responsible for creating lasting memories and strong emotions. Even the most beautiful annual report infographic doesn’t compare if it’s flooded with statistics.

What are some of the stories that have popped up out of your organization over the last year? What’s the real-life, human story behind your fundraising goal? Instead of talking about X number of people you’ve served or plan to serve, focus on one person’s story.

There are endless ways to tell that story. Maybe it’s a mini-documentary, or a blog post, or a podcast, or a photo collage. It’s up to you to decide what’s both powerful and feasible for your organization. However you do it, there will be multiple ways to let donors know about that story. Which brings us to…

3. Define Your Communications Channels

So now that you have an idea of what you want to do, you’re going to need to find out how you’re going to accomplish it. At this point, it’s a good idea to look at how patrons interact with your organization. Who are they? What are their goals for your organization? What interests them the most? If you’ve never developed a donor persona before, it’s time to make like a high school biology student and dissect.

A good place to start is with traditional demographics like age, gender, and income; but don’t stop there. Get to the nitty-gritty, and you can even be a little imaginative. Is your typical donor a tennis enthusiast who checks her email between sets? Perhaps they’re really into drone-racing and watch how-to instructional videos. Whatever their thing may be, use those insights to carefully craft and deliver your message.

Also, try to create at least three donor personas. Your organization may have subsets of typical donors interested in different aspects of your organization.

Once you have these personas mapped out, that’s when you can start determining how you’re going to deliver your message. Make a list of all your communications channels. That might include social media, email, your website, direct mail, or more.

This is where your donor personas come in handy. Review these channels and see where each persona may spend most of their media time, and what channels are best received. From there, you can determine how often you’re going to reach your segmented audiences on what specific channels.

Try using the worksheet below to help you identify your donor personas.

4. Determine How You’ll Measure Results

Your year-end fundraising plan needs to be measurable, or else you won’t know how well you’re doing (or how to improve for next year). To measure your success, you’ll need to introduce Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, to your objectives and communications plan.

No two communications tactics will have the exact same KPIs. For example, you wouldn’t measure the success of your email sends via Facebook Likes. Rather, KPIs are measurements of end-goals you want your donors to take when interacting with that medium.

Go back to your goals and objectives and map them out next to your communications plan. Then, take each component of that plan and define your KPIs. Try to go beyond standard vanity metrics like email open rates or page views. Get specific.

Example

• If you have paid Facebook ads and your goal is for your social audience to donate to your website, one KPI would be to measure the number of donations that came through your website via social media referrals.

Use the handy-dandy worksheet below to map out your objectives, strategies, and KPIs to keep track of your year-end giving plan.

5. Set Your Budget & Determine Costs

So you’ve done the first half of your year-end giving plan. Now comes the part that many love to loathe: budgeting and timekeeping. This should be an estimate of everything you’ll need to pull of your campaign. That may include determining costs for:

• Staff time and salaries
• Tools and software usage
• Design and print materials
• Logistics (stamps, shipping, etc.)

The most important part here is determining your return on investment, or ROI. If you’re spending more to run your year-end campaign than you expect your goal to achieve, you’ll need to adjust your communications plan to be more practical.

Ideally, your budget should be somewhere in between a rough estimate and hyper-precise. If you spend too much time and analysis estimating the project, you won’t have any wiggle-room if your plan needs to be more flexible. On the other hand, too rough of an estimate means your budget has too much room for margin of error.

Here’s another worksheet to help you determine your year-end campaign costs for each item. You can also revisit this worksheet later to review your year-end campaign’s revenues.

6. Compose Your Calendar

Once your budget’s in order, it’s time to map out your deliverables, or when each piece of your campaign will go into action. A couple of things to keep in mind:

• Schedule your campaign around key dates like Giving Tuesday, Christmas, or New Year’s Eve. These affect the timing of your creative materials and their efficacy.
• Work smarter, not harder. If you try to communicate too-much-too-often with only a handful of channels or creative materials, that may have the opposite effect of what your organization wants to achieve.
• Be flexible. There will likely be a point during your campaign where your plan isn’t going as expected. Make sure you monitor your results regularly and be ready to make changes if that’s the case.

You will also want to share your calendar with your team so everyone stays on the same page. Google Calendars are a great way to go. We also use HootSuite to map out and schedule our social media posts.

7. Visualize, Analyze, & Improve

You’ve executed every deliverable with ease, and you’ve made your schedule flexible enough to give a Cirque du Soleil acrobat a run for their money. But: did it work?

It’s easy to get lost in the planning and deliverables and forget that meeting your goal was the most important item. As with any major campaign, it’s crucial to follow up and review what worked and what didn’t.

There’s a number of ways to accomplish this. Go back to those KPIs you created at the beginning of your planning phase and see how well they stacked up. A good donor management and event management system will help you readily look up your transactions, and determine which avenues through which they came.

You can also run a post-mortem meeting with your team so everyone has the chance to review and make suggestions for next year. This piece comes highly recommended, because it brings the team together and serves double-duty as the official end of a project.

Whatever you decide to do, pat yourself on the back. Get excited for the upcoming year, because you have another 9-10 months before you do it all over again!

As more and more nonprofits are focusing their fundraising efforts towards online campaigns, the versatility and functionality of donation buttons has grown.

The features required of these buttons have shifted as online fundraising has increased in popularity, but how can you know which product is right for your nonprofit’s needs?

We’ve chosen 10 of our favorite online donation buttons and explained the best features, so you can choose which donation button is right for you.

Use the navigation tool below to make finding what you need even easier.

• Double the Donation – best matching gifts donation button
• Fundly – best crowdfunding donation button for groups
• DonorBox – best recurring gifts donation button
• Snowball – best text-to-give donation button
• Bonfire – best merchandise fundraising donation button
• Qgiv – best all-in-one online donation button
• Donately – best custom donation form builder
• iDonate – best donation button for large nonprofits

If you’re ready to learn more, let’s get started!

Congrats! You’re now prepared to choose the right donation button for your nonprofit. If you’re interested in learning more about some other fundraising best practices, don’t hesitate to check out these additional resources:

• 10 Best Salesforce Apps for Nonprofits. Step up your tech game with these great apps. Take any strategy, from charity auction management to accounting and beyond, to the next level with these suggestions.
• 15+ Best Crowdfunding Websites. If you’re looking for more information on Fundly, or on any other crowdfunding websites, check out our list of favorites for more options and information.
• Online Petitions Guide. If you’re engaged in any sort of advocacy, you’re going to want to read this guide from Salsa on the 5 best tips to building your electronic petition. Don’t miss out on these smart strategies!

Did you know that 360MatchPro can be integrated into your Luminate Online pages? Check out our integration guide!

Luminate Online Marketing is a comprehensive online fundraising and marketing solution that can equip your nonprofit with the tools to better understand and engage supporters as well as enhance your online fundraising performance.

As you likely already know, Luminate can help organizations like yours do a lot.

But when you know how to maximize your Luminate experience, you’ll be able to get even more out of this expansive platform—and you’ll have the fundraising results to show for it.

In this post, we’ll walk through 5 steps to get the most out of your Luminate Online platform:

1. Start with a clear plan for using Luminate Online.
2. Clean up and migrate your data effectively.
3. Take advantage of Luminate add-ons.
4. Customize your Luminate Online platform.
5. Thoroughly train your staff on Luminate Online.

With our help, you’ll be a Luminate Online expert in no time!

1. Start with a clear plan for using Luminate Online.

Before you can get started with using Luminate, you need to know exactly what you want this software to do for your nonprofit.

Because Luminate is so multifaceted, your nonprofit must develop a plan for how the platform will support your goals specifically. This plan will not only give you a starting point for using Luminate, but it will also provide a clear direction for any customizations or integrations that you’ll require.

To devise your Luminate Online fundraising strategy, get together with your nonprofit team to answer the following questions:

• What are our fundraising goals? In addition to an overarching monetary goal, your organization should also set secondary fundraising goals for each quarter, specific campaigns, or fundraising events.
• What online fundraising tools will help us meet our goals? Do you need customizable online donation or event registration forms? What about more specific giving channels, such as eCommerce stores, peer-to-peer fundraising, or mobile giving? (Hint: you may need to integrate solutions to build your ideal platform.
• What aspects of our current strategy have worked in the past? Which need to be revisited? Generate reports on your most recent campaigns to analyze where you’ve fallen short and where you’ve exceeded expectations. Then, determine which Luminate Online features you’ll use to enhance (or refocus) your existing fundraising strategy.

If you have a general idea of your fundraising goals but aren’t sure where or how Luminate can fit in, consider seeking the help of a specialized nonprofit technology consultant.

A consulting firm with experience helping nonprofits utilize Blackbaud products (particularly Luminate) can provide the insight you need to map out a strategic plan for your new software.

Plus, your nonprofit tech consultant can help bring that plan to fruition by helping you customize, develop, and implement Luminate to meet your unique needs.

2. Clean up and migrate your data effectively.

Data is at the core of nonprofit organizations.

Think about it: without accurate, complete sets of data, it’s almost impossible to understand your supporters and design engagement and fundraising strategies that respond to their lifestyles, preferences, and goals as a part of your organization.

With that in mind, your organization should take the Luminate Online data migration process very seriously.

As you transfer constituent information from your existing fundraising software or CRM to Luminate Online, you’ll inevitably run the risk of losing or damaging data. To mitigate that risk, there are a few considerations to keep in mind prior to the data migration process:

• Work with a data migration specialist. Especially for larger organizations with massive stores of donor information, the data transfer process can be complex. By working with a nonprofit tech consultant who focuses on data migration, you’ll alleviate some of the stress associated with migrating data.
• Clean your database beforehand. Transferring messy data (such as outdated information, duplicate profiles, or lapsed donor data) will only set you up for more work going forward. You should go through your data with a fine-toothed comb before migrating any profiles to your new Luminate system.
• Establish data entry best practices. When multiple staff members are responsible for inputting data, there’s always a chance that their practices will differ, leading to a greater chance of inconsistencies and errors. Combat that by creating a well documented data entry standard and training staff on your current best practices.

When your data is neat and well organized, you’ll easily be able to use it to inform your fundraising strategies. And after all, what good is data that you can’t use?

3. Take advantage of Luminate add-ons.

Luminate Online is highly versatile on its own, but you still may find that you need more specialized online fundraising features than what the base product provides.

If that sounds like your nonprofit, you’re in luck! Luminate Online offers helpful add-ons to expand the core product and give organizations like yours exactly the tools they need for fundraising success.

If you’re a veteran Blackbaud user, you may already be familiar with these add-ons, but let’s recap what the tools can do:

• Luminate Advocacy was designed for nonprofits with grassroots fundraising initiatives in mind. With this add-on, you’ll have access to tools such as the letter-to-the-editor generator, integrated vote data, and personalized action centers for your supporters.
• TeamRaiser is Blackbaud’s powerful peer-to-peer fundraising platform. With tools to help you plan your peer-to-peer event, communicate with supporters, and personalize your fundraising pages, TeamRaiser can connect with Luminate or be used on its own.
• Luminate Content Management System offers a fully integrated web design and content manager for nonprofits using Luminate. With Luminate CMS, you’ll be able to holistically manage your web presence alongside your other online fundraising efforts.

Because these add-ons were built to work seamlessly with the Luminate Online system, you won’t have to worry about cumbersome integrations or headache-inducing data migrations. The platforms will naturally sync up to your existing Luminate platform and extend its functionality without any extra work on your end.

Bonus: Like the rest of your Luminate system, you can customize your add-ons to develop a personalized fundraising experience. Learn how to get started with TeamRaiser configurations by reading this resource from DNL OmniMedia!

4. Customize your Luminate Online platform.

Established nonprofits need unique solutions to meet their digital fundraising and marketing needs. Enter Luminate Online!

One of the greatest perks of the Luminate platform is that it can be customized to meet your organization’s needs in a truly unique way. Essentially, there are two paths through which your nonprofit can adjust your software:

• Configurations, i.e., developing a custom solution by making adjustments in the backend of Luminate Online.
• Integrations, i.e., combining your Luminate Online system with other Blackbaud solutions or third-party platforms.

You’ll likely need to implement both types of customizations to develop the most well-rounded solution.

But before you get started shopping for new software to pair with Luminate or making changes in the software, you should make sure your nonprofit can answer these important questions about how you’ll handle the customization process:

• What configurations or integrations will you implement? Common integrations include nonprofit CRMs and dedicated fundraising software, but you’ll need to assess your own organization’s specific needs to determine what customizations are most important to achieving your fundraising goals.
• Who will take the lead on customizing Luminate? For both configurations and complex integrations, you’ll need the help of either a robust IT department or an experienced nonprofit tech consultant.
• Can your budget accommodate the customizations? Not only will you need to purchase any external software you want to integrate with Luminate, but you’ll need to ensure you can afford a web developer or technology consultant to help manage the process.

Once you’ve adapted your software accordingly, your nonprofit will be left with a totally one-of-a-kind software solution that was built to meet your needs and help you achieve greater success than ever before.

5. Thoroughly train your staff on Luminate Online.

Some lightweight online fundraising solutions are easy to find your way around with little-to-no guidance; generally speaking, Luminate is not that software.

While Luminate Online is certainly user-friendly, your organization will almost definitely need some assistance when you implement the platform and begin to use it for the first time.

Look at it this way—with software that can do so much, wouldn’t you feel more comfortable knowing every member of your staff is well-versed in how to make the most of it?

Luckily, training doesn’t have to be a guessing game. There are a variety of resources at your nonprofit’s disposal to learn everything you need to know about using Luminate:

• Blackbaud training. Blackbaud offers specific training courses to help nonprofits of all skill levels understand and implement their products. By subscribing to Blackbaud Learn, your organization can gain access to on-demand training videos and online classes.
• Online community and support. For one-off questions or implementation help, you can crowdsource support through the Blackbaud community forums. Or, seek help from Blackbaud’s team of experts via their online support chat.
• Nonprofit tech consultants. If you’re in need of comprehensive training to get up and running on Luminate, your nonprofit would likely benefit from working with a nonprofit tech consultant who can train your staff on any and all areas of the Luminate system.

Without some form of training and expert counsel, your nonprofit won’t know the extent to which Luminate can impact your fundraising strategy—and you won’t be able to reap all the benefits!

Luminate Online is a powerful tool for your nonprofit (if you know how to get the most out of it).

With these tips, your team should be well-prepared to implement Luminate and propel your organization to total success. Now it’s time to start fundraising like never before!

Author Bio

Carl co-founded DNL OmniMedia in 2006 and has grown the team to accommodate clients with on-going web development projects. Together, DNL OmniMedia has worked with over 100 organizations to assist them with accomplishing their online goals. As Managing Director of DNL OmniMedia, Carl works with nonprofits and their technology to foster fundraising, create awareness, cure disease, and solve social issues.