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!
Double the Donation and Classy Announce Enhanced Matching Gifts Integration for Nonprofits
/in Company Updates /by Adam WeingerThe partnership brings enhanced matching gift functionality to Classy’s nonprofit customers, allowing them to raise more and accelerate their organization’s impact
Double the Donation announces an enhanced matching gifts partnership with Classy, creator of world-class online fundraising software for nonprofits. The partnership brings enhanced matching gift functionality to Classy customers through native integration with the industry-leading matching gifts automation platform, Double the Donationby Double the Donation.
The Classy-Double the Donation integration provides a quick and simple matching gift process for donors. Through Double the Donation’s database of corporate matching gift programs, donors are able to confidently submit their matching gift requests. The enhanced capabilities of the new release identify more matching opportunities, drive the opportunities to completion, and ultimately result in more revenue for the nonprofit.
“We are committed to providing nonprofits and their donors with the most accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date information about corporate matching gift programs,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “The Double the Donation database is updated multiple times a day by the Double the Donation database team to ensure that all instructions, links, and program details delivered to donors actually result in increased revenue for nonprofits — not frustration at outdated information and broken links.”
Activate in Seconds and Start Raising More from Matching Gifts!
Getting started with the new Double the Donation integration takes less than a minute. Nonprofits with a Double the Donation account can simply navigate to the Double the Donation App in “Apps & Extensions” within their Classy account to connect the two services.
Activate Double the Donation from within Classy Manager.
No Double the Donation Account? No problem! Fill out the contact form, and a member of the Double the Donation team will be right with you to get you set up.
Once the integration has been set up, Double the Donation will automatically add the appropriate company-matching gift workflow to all Classy donation forms. That workflow is simple, streamlined, and highly valuable.
During the donation process itself, donors can select their company name from an easy-to-navigate autocomplete search box. Donors simply begin typing their company name and select it once it is suggested by the smart autocomplete functionality.
Double the Donationmakes it easy for your donors to search for their company name on your Classy form.
This search functionality allows donors to move quickly and confidently through the Classy donation form without stopping, which protects conversion rates while identifying opportunities for higher matching gift revenue at the same time.
Once Double the Donationknows where a donor works, it provides the immediate next steps the donor needs to take to get their gift matched directly in the donor’s inbox.
Double the Donation sends matching gift information directly to your donors.
Of course, all the features from the previous version of the Double the Donation-Classy integration are still included in the newly enhanced release. Double the Donationstill sends configurable follow-up emails to all donors to check their matching gift eligibility, even if they skipped the company name search field on the donation form, to capture every last opportunity for matching gifts.
Looking to learn more? Check out our in-depth integration guide to get started!
Drive More Matching Gifts to Completion with Double the Donation and Classy!
Double the Donation enhances the Classy donation experience by raising your organization more money from corporate matching gifts.
To get started on your matching gift journey with Classy and Double the Donation, schedule a private demo of Double the Donation today.
About Classy: Classy is a social enterprise that creates world-class online fundraising software for nonprofits, modernizing the giving experience to accelerate social impact around the world. Based in San Diego, CA, Classy is trusted by organizations of all sizes, from the fastest-growing nonprofits like Team Rubicon and The Trevor Project, to some of the world’s largest social organizations, such as The Salvation Army, Robin Hood Foundation, and Shriners Hospitals for Children. Classy also hosts the Collaborative conference, a three-day immersive experience designed exclusively for nonprofit professionals and social impact leaders to learn, share, and get inspired. For more information, visit www.classy.org or follow Classy on Twitter @Classy.
About Double the Donation: Automate your matching gift fundraising with the industry-leading solution from Double the Donation. The Double the Donation platform provides nonprofits with tools to identify match-eligible donors, drive matches to completion, and gain actionable insights. Double the Donation 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 about Double the Donation, visit https://doublethedonation.com and request a demo at https://doublethedonation.com/get-a-demo/
Luminate Online Matching Gift Integration Guide
/in Learning Center /by Adam WeingerIf you are one of the many Luminate customers looking to equip your website with matching gift functionality, you’ve come to the right place! Integrating Double the Donation into your Luminate pages will revolutionize your matching gift revenue, and we’re going to tell you all about it.
In this article you will find:
Read on to start raising that matching gift revenue!
The basics of matching gifts
In order to understand exactly how Double the Donation will revolutionize your matching gift revenue, you’ll first need to know exactly what matching gifts are. Matching gifts is a type of corporate philanthropy program often offered as an employee benefit.
When an employee makes a contribution to their favorite nonprofit or educational institution, sometimes their employer will also make a donation to the same nonprofit. Those donations made by employers are known as matching gifts.
Every company’s specific matching gift guidelines are different, but every program includes a standard set of elements:
Though each company outlines their own eligibility guidelines, the process for claiming matching gifts is always the same:
The most common breakdown in this process occurs at the second step. Unfortunately, a nonprofit can not request a matching gift, the original donor has to do it. Because the donor must do it, making sure that every donor knows about the matching gifts should be a number one priority for every nonprofit and educational institution.
Double the Donation: an overview
Double the Donation is a matching gifts super-platform. Double the Donation Matching provides automated outreach, actionable insights, and instantaneous donor information capture to drive more matching gifts to completion. This platform almost entirely removes the need for a matching gifts agent within an organization at all.
The Double the Donation dashboard offers actionable insights into your organization’s matching gift efforts. By presenting the figures of your matching gifts in plain figures as well as on an illustrated graph, it is easy to see where and how your matching gift efforts can be enhanced.
When using their tools, you are able to insert Double the Donation’s matching gift search tool straight on to your donation page. Plus, you can use the same embed code to place the search tool on your confirmation page as well as any other pages where you may want to incorporate matching gifts.
Donor employer information is immediately captured through two avenues: self-identification (donor entering their employer in the designated field) and email domain screening. Whenever a donor donates using their corporate email address, that information is stored along with the rest of their information in Double the Donation.
From there, a donor is automatically sorted into one of the highly customized email streams setup within Double the Donation. These emails are triggered based on donor eligibility and can be set for any amount of time after their donation is made.
For example, a match-eligible donor will automatically receive an email from the organization they donated to one hour after donating. This email will encourage them to submit their match request forms, with their company-specific forms linked directly. Then it will encourage the donor to report the submission of their matching gift request. This allows the nonprofit to stay on top of their match-eligible donations and the submitted match requests without lifting a finger.
With Double the Donation, your organization no longer needs to dedicate time to collecting employment information, sorting through donors searching for match-eligibility, or following up with match-eligible donors. All of that is taken care of instantly and automatically the moment a donation is made.
To learn more about Double the Donation, check out a demo!
Integrating Double the Donation into your Luminate Online pages: a step-by-step guide
Double the Donation can be integrated into your Luminate pages. Double the Donation has put together a step-by-step guide (complete with pictures!) to help Luminate users get their matching gift programs in gear!
What we’re going to walk through here is how to get the Double the Donation search tool onto your Luminate donation pages. If you need help creating the Double the Donation element, which will be incorporated onto your page, check out this full technical integration guide.
Step #1: Navigate to the form where you’d like to include a matching gifts field. For this example, we’re going to put it on the donation page.
Step #2: Click on “Design Donor Screens” in the menu on the left side of your screen. Then click “Edit” on the donation form, as illustrated below.
Step #3: In the editor, look at the column on the top left labeled “Select data elements to include in this form:” and click on the custom element “Double the Donation Company ID.” Then click “Add >”, one of the buttons between the columns, to move this element onto your form. Placement on the form doesn’t matter here, just make sure the element is in the column on the right.
Before moving on, make sure that the box next to “Yes, this field is visible” is unchecked.
Step #4: Add an “HTML Caption” to your form following the same steps you took to add Double the Donation. Then click “Components” and add your Double the Donation widget reusable page. Place this field where you want the streamlined search to appear on your form. We recommend including it somewhere in the billing section.
Note: For step-by-step instructions on setting up your reusable page, check out our full technical integration guide.
See the image below for a walk-through:
Step #5: Save the page and preview it. Make sure that the plugin appears on your form. If it does not, contact support at support@doublethedonation.com.
And that’s all there is to it! Now you’re ready to start raking in that matching gift revenue with Double the Donation!
Implementation of Double the Donation
Obviously, the first implementation option is for your organization to follow the steps outlined above (and in our full integration guide) and integrate Double the Donation into your Luminate pages on your own.
However, for those of us who are not so tech savvy, there is another way. At Double the Donation, we work with several technical consultants who are specifically trained in all things Luminate.
With the help of these tech consultants, your organization won’t need to lift a finger. You can leave it to the experts to get Double the Donation up and running as you sit back and watch the matching gifts roll in.
To learn more about Double the Donation and how it can revolutionize your matching gift revenue, check out this demo!
Now that you are an expert on matching gifts and Double the Donation, it’s time to get out there and start claiming some of the $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue that’s left unclaimed every year! Now all that’s left to do is inform every single donor you can about matching gifts and watch the revenue start rolling in.
3 Super Handy Worksheets For Year-End Giving
/in Learning Center /by Adam WeingerYou 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:
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
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:
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:
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!
Fundly Integrates Double the Donation Matching Gift Tools
/in Company Updates, Learning Center /by Adam WeingerAtlanta, GA (October 17, 2018) — Double the Donation is proud to announce a new integration with NonProfitEasy’s Fundly CRM. This Double the Donation integration into Fundly CRM will provide users with industry-leading matching gift functionality. Fundly is used by nonprofits to revolutionize the way they serve their communities.
This integration allows Fundly CRM users to fully automate the matching gift process, exponentially increasing their matching gift revenue while reducing time spent on collecting matching gifts. With this integration, Fundly users can turn on this functionality directly through their Fundly CRM account.
Looking to learn more? Check out our in-depth integration guide to get started!
“In deciding which matching gift tools to offer our customers, we found Double the Donation’s matching module to be the most comprehensive and easy-to-use platform,” said Lomesh Shah, President and Co-Founder of NonProfitEasy. “We are so excited to offer our users the opportunity to double their donations with ease, efficiency, and accuracy.”
Double the Donation allows users to automatically track the match-eligibility of their donors, the status of those potential matches, and the revenue raised in matching gifts. Most importantly, Double the Donation’s automated and customizable email follow-up vastly increases the amount of matching gift requests successfully driven to completion.
The biggest hindrance to matching gifts is lack of donor awareness. With Double the Donation, Fundly CRM users are able to automatically identify match-eligible donors through email domain capture as well as self-identification directly on their donation forms.
“We are so excited to see that Fundly has integrated our matching gift tools into their CRM, offering all of their users a chance to enhance their matching gift programs,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “There are 15 million people in America who are eligible for matching gifts, and we’re looking forward to seeing how Fundly CRM users connect with those donors.”
Double the Donation has the most extensive database of existing matching gift programs, including more than 20,000 companies, subsidiaries, and spelling variations. Use of this database affords organizations the opportunity to follow through on every possible corporate matching gift donation.
Match-eligible donors are presented with simple, streamlined information about the matching gift program that they qualify for. They are also presented with direct links to the appropriate online forms or downloadable PDFs required to submit their matching gift requests.
Find out more about Fundly CRM at https://www.fundlycrm.com/.
Top 9 Group Management Software for Smart Organizations
/in Lists and Rankings /by Adam WeingerManaging your association, members, or camp population can seem scary. How is your team supposed to keep up with the information and needs of thousands of people? Luckily for you, we’ve compiled a list of our favorite group management software options by specialty, so that you can learn which software is best for your organization.
Our favorites are:
Let’s dive in!
1. Fonteva – Top Group Management Tool for Associations
Group Management Tool Overview
Fonteva is a flexible and easy-to-use group management tool for mid-size to large groups. It can easily manage groups of any size (like trade associations, professional societies, and more!) due to its diverse toolkit of features in a lean and intuitive platform.
All Fonteva products are powered by Salesforce and come with full customer support so that your association can thrive.
Top Group Management Features
Some of the features that make Fonteva our top choice for associations are:
With these features, your Fonteva software can grow as your organization does. With software updates included in your subscription, you don’t need to worry about having to pay more if the system changes.
Takeaway
For an association that needs an intuitive and simple yet intelligent group management software, Fonteva is the right choice.
2. Salsa – Top Group Management Tool for Nonprofits
Group Management Tool Overview
This group management software from Salsa Labs is built specifically for nonprofits. By centralizing donor data and empowering users to seamlessly track relevant information, Salsa’s group management tool is perfect for nonprofits looking to optimize their fundraising strategy.
The donor profiles are easily customizable and allow for information like relationships, interests, demographics, and social media accounts, so that a nonprofit has a 360-degree view of their donors.
Top Group Management Features
Salsa’s group management software comes with valuable features such as:
These options allow a nonprofit to strategically target their donors and discover actionable trends, in order to maximize their fundraising capabilities and increase engagement with their community.
Takeaway
If your nonprofit is looking for a powerful and easy to use group management tool to maximize your fundraising success while strengthening supporter relationships, invest in Salsa’s software.
3. CommunityPass – Top Group Management Tool for Community Centers
Group Management Tool Overview
CommunityPass is a group management tool that provides solutions for aquatic centers and pools, sports leagues and teams, adult education, and more for community centers through their cloud-based software.
This group management tool is great for getting everything done: it includes features for communicating with members through text and email, creating class schedules and online sign-up forms, and creating and issuing key cards, member ID cards, and guest passes.
A community center can plan their season of classes, customize its registration forms, plan and implement their pricing structure, and accept payment all online through CommunityPass.
Top Group Management Features
CommunityPass has a lot of great features for running a successful community center, but some of our favorite group management features are:
CommunityPass’s engagement features allow community centers to successfully manage their guests and members, as well as create and plan the classes and opportunities those members want.
Takeaway
For a community center ready to streamline their group management strategy and combine all their administrative needs into one program, CommunityPass is the perfect software.
4. OmegaFi – Top Group Management Tool for Greek Organizations
Group Management Tool Overview
With OmegaFi’s easy-to-use and mobile-optimized financial management, member database, and website/communications solutions, it’s the clear winner for Greek organizations.
OmegaFi’s three software solutions—Vault, Compass, and GINSystem—are all important aspects of OmegaFi’s group management tool, but the most important for members is Compass.
Compass manages members from the moment they’re offered a place in the sorority or fraternity to their later status as a continuing donor.
Officers can customize their dashboard based on the data that they need to see, and the OmegaFi team and the officers work together to build a reporting process that works for their specific organization.
Top Group Management Features
OmegaFi’s comprehensive fraternity/sorority support system has too many useful features to name, but here are our favorite group management features:
OmegaFi offers Greek organizations all the tools they need to successfully manage their members as well as maintain relationships with graduated brothers and sisters.
Takeaway
Greek organizations who are looking to make their group management tasks easier and simpler, while raising more money for their organization, should look into investing in OmegaFi’s system.
5. CircuiTree – Top Group Management Tool for Camps
Group Management Tool Overview
CircuiTree, created by people who know and love summer camps, is an all-in-one cloud-based group management software designed specifically to make running a summer camp easier.
This software manages everything from housing requests and food allergies to medical records and emergency contact information, all in one easy-to-understand database.
Parents will be thrilled to sign up multiple children, register allergies and medication conditions, and choose camp activities all from their own computers at home. With CircuiTree’s integrated point-of-sale technology, a camp can guarantee secure payment processing and accurate data management.
Top Group Management Features
CircuiTree’s software offers a multifaceted solution to collecting and storing all the information a camp team needs to have a profitable, safe, successful summer. Some of the best features for group management include:
With all these features and more, your camp staff will be able to spend less time filing forms and more time making sure your campers have an excellent time.
Takeaway
If your team wants to spend less time tracking data and filing forms and more time having fun with campers and teaching them valuable skills, consider investing in CircuiTree for all your camp-running needs.
6. Doubleknot – Top Group Management Tool for Museum Membership Programs
Group Management Tool Overview
Museum membership management can be complicated, but they don’t have to be with Doubleknot’s group management software. Built with museums and other similar nonprofits in mind, Doubleknot is built for maintaining member relationships.
Doubleknot’s software provides integrated solutions for everything from ticketing and registration to reservations, donations, sales, and more. Their product is constantly being updated with requests and feedback from clients, which makes it a valuable investment for the future of your nonprofit.
Because it integrates well with other software products, you don’t have to worry about having wasted your money on other software.
Top Group Management Features
Doubleknot’s priorities are recruitment, rewarding, and retaining members for your organization, so their features are focused on helping those things happen. Some of Doubleknot’s best software features are:
With these features, your museum can ensure that your members remain members and that you continue striving towards your goals.
Takeaway
Doubleknot’s group management tools, in addition with everything else that its software does to ensure that your museum or similar nonprofit runs smoothly, can help you reach more people and maintain strong relationships with your supporters.
7. Morweb – Top Group Management Tool for Online Communities
Group Management Tool Overview
Morweb is the child of two companies: Morad Media Inc., which is an award-winning digital design agency, and Morweb CMS Inc., which is a website platform for nonprofits and associations.
Morweb’s group management tool is lightweight, yet functional: their cloud-based software allows online communities to keep track of members, manage events, allow or restrict access to pages based on membership level, and fundraising, all through the community website.
Top Group Management Features
In addition to providing beautiful, functional, and mobile-responsive websites to online communities, Morweb offers the following group management features:
Your online community can handle its group membership needs, all from your own website.
Takeaway
Online communities looking for a lightweight group management system with real-world fundraising and event functionalities will be thrilled to use Morweb.
8. Church Community Builder – Top Group Management Tool for Faith-Based Organizations
Group Management Tool Overview
Church Community Builder is a fully functional group management and event planning tool for faith-based organizations. With their cloud-based, Software as a Service group management tool, your church can make sure that all of your members are engaged and included.
Their software, which is accessible from anywhere with internet access as well as through their app, allows church ministries to build profiles for anyone from first-time visitors to long-term members and volunteers.
Top Group Management Features
In addition to Church Community Builder’s ability to track church metrics, build intuitive web forms, provide online giving options, and streamline process queues, they also offer the following group management features:
With Church Community Builder’s group management tools, your church can make sure that everyone feels at home and welcome, even from their very first visit.
Takeaway
Help your church family work better together, increase engagement with everyone from dedicated volunteers to new visitors, and encourage church growth by investing in Church Community Builder for your ministry.
9. Alumni Channel – Top Group Management Tool for Alumni Groups
Group Management Tool Overview
Alumni Channel is a dual-use database and website creation software that allows your organization to keep track of your alumni while also providing a beautiful and functional place online to communicate, network, and learn.
This software allows your alumni and your team to access the website from anywhere with an Internet connection, even from smartphones and tablets. You can invite alumni to events, post news updates, send out email blasts, and ask for donations all from the same place.
Top Group Management Features
Alumni Channel makes it easy to manage your alumni community and improve your university fundraising strategy by providing you with the tools to keep them engaged visit after visit to your website. Some of those engaging features are:
With Alumni Channel’s appealing interface for alumni and useful administrator features, you’ll increase engagement after graduation as well as giving alumni the tools they need to build an online community where they can network and grow.
Takeaway
If you’re looking to provide a functional and attractive website for your alumni to interact with others on while also creating an alumni database that your organization can use, check out Alumni Channel to see what else their software can do.
Top 10 Donation Buttons to Raise More Funds Online
/in Learning Center /by Adam WeingerAs 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.
If you’re ready to learn more, let’s get started!
Double the Donation – Best Matching Gifts Donation Button Add-On
Donation Button Overview:
Double the Donation offers a powerful corporate philanthropy database for your nonprofit, so that your donors can be made aware of their employer’s matching gifts policy.
Double the Donation offers two options: one is a widget included directly on your website or donation page, and the other is a webpage hosted by Double the Donation, branded to your website, that offers the same information.
Double the Donation’s easily accessible matching gifts database makes every donation button twice as effective.
Standout Features:
Because Double the Donation’s database can be included right where your donation button is, donors are encouraged to follow up with their employer about matching gifts and maximize the impact of their donation for your nonprofit.
The database is frequently and rigorously updated, so you never have to worry about having out-of-date or incorrect information.
Takeaway:
Double the Donation takes your matching gifts strategy to the next level by making the necessary information easily accessible for all.
Fundly – Best Crowdfunding Donation Button for groups
Donation Button Overview:
Fundly’s easy-to-use crowdfunding platform is a great way for both individuals and nonprofits to raise money for a good cause. This donation tool is shareable on many social media platforms, is mobile-optimized, and allows you to keep supporters updated easily.
Standout Features:
We love that with Fundly, you can add personalized messages, photos, and videos to your crowdfunding page. You can even update your friends with a blog-like style of posting, which you can do from anywhere with the free Fundly app!
Fundly’s support system is also stellar: they help you set up your campaign, and are available all the way through till the end.
Takeaway:
If you’re looking for a socially-driven donation button tool to help you reach your goals, Fundly is the platform for you.
DonorBox – Best Recurring Donor Donation Button
Donation Button Overview:
DonorBox is an online donation button provider that allows you to embed their donation widget directly onto your page or create a dedicated donation page with your nonprofit’s branding.
With their donation pages, you can pre-fill custom amounts with descriptions so donors know what their donation does, offer multiple language options, and include employer donation matching information.
Standout Features:
With DonorBox, your recurring donors maintain full control over their relationship with your nonprofit. DonorBox also offers donors the option to cover processing fees, and their donation buttons are optimized for all sizes of browsers.
Takeaway:
DonorBox is a great donation button provider for nonprofits who are looking to prioritize their recurring gift donor retention strategy, as well as those who need the option to have their donation buttons in multiple languages.
Snowball – Best Text-To-Give Donation Button
Donation Button Overview:
Snowball offers an innovative two-tap solution to nonprofits so that donors are less likely to abandon the donation process partway through. From their phones, mobile users can select the amount of money that they want to give and then confirm their donation through an email.
Their text-to-give and peer-to-peer solutions are also just as easy to use and secure for donors.
Standout Features:
In addition to their fabulously simple method of completing their donations, the donation buttons that Snowball offers are fully customizable to your nonprofit’s branding.
Snowball also keeps track of all of your donation data, so that you can manage your donor and donation information while assessing your progress towards your fundraising goals.
Takeaway:
Snowball’s inventive and simple donation button is a great feature for anyone who is ready for a more intensive mobile donation campaign.
Bonfire – Best Merchandise Fundraising Donation Button
Donation Button Overview:
Bonfire combines merchandise selling with fundraising through their unique online donation button. With Bonfire, you create your t-shirt design, choose your profit margin and customize your donation page, and then start your campaign!
Because Bonfire puts the donation button on the same page as the purchase button, supporters of your campaign can help your cause both through buying your t-shirt and donating directly to your cause.
Standout Features:
The best part about Bonfire is that there is no inventory necessary. Bonfire prints and ships your shirts after they’ve been ordered, so there’s no chance of your campaign running out of t-shirts.
Bonfire also offers empathetic and helpful support through their “Happiness Team”, who are happy to help make sure your fundraiser is successful.
Takeaway:
Bonfire’s combination of effective donation button and fun merchandise options are a great fundraising option for nonprofits looking to raise funds while rewarding their supporters.
Qgiv – Best All-In-One Online Donation Button
Donation Button Overview:
Qgiv provides nonprofits with the software they need to run all kinds of fundraising campaigns, from online donation buttons to peer-to-peer fundraising pages to handheld kiosks for fundraising events.
Their team provides support for your nonprofit as you build your donation forms and start your campaign, and the software easily integrates into your other programs so that you can make sure that you have a 360-degree understanding of your donors.
Standout Features:
Qgiv offers amazing features such as fundraising thermometers and other gamification techniques, as well as options for donation buttons such as GiftAssist.
GiftAssist gives donors the option to cover the processing costs on their donation, so that more money goes straight to their favorite nonprofit.
Takeaway:
Qgiv’s huge suite of features and easy-to-use interface for both nonprofit professionals and donors makes this a powerful donation button provider.
Donately – Best Custom Donation Form Builder
Donation Button Overview:
Donately provides beautiful online donation tools that are fully responsive with any mobile device, so that you can reach your followers wherever, whenever.
They provide donation buttons to both individuals and nonprofits, so whatever you need to raise money for, they’ve got you covered. You can easily share your donation page on social media or through email, too.
Standout Features:
In addition to their custom donation buttons, Donately offers beautiful fundraising pages and donor management solutions. By using their forms, you can track the important information from all of your donations, as well as the ability to input cash or offline donations into your data set.
Takeaway:
Donately’s pages are super customizable, so you can easily make your donation button match your individual needs.
iDonate – Best Donation Button for Large Nonprofits
Donation Button Overview:
iDonate makes donating super easy by embedding their online fundraising solution right onto your nonprofit’s website, blog, or Facebook page. Their donation buttons are easily customized to fit your brand, and everything is mobile-responsive.
Their multifaceted online giving platform offers everything from text-to-give to peer-to-peer fundraising, and all of their services can stream donor data into either the iDonate Backoffice CRM or into your nonprofit’s existing CRM.
Standout Features:
Our favorite part of iDonate is how easy it makes online and mobile giving for large nonprofits. They offer chapter management solutions so that each branch of your organization is able to fundraise to the best of their ability.
No matter where it needs to be or what it needs to do, a donation button from iDonate can help your large nonprofit optimize its online donation strategy.
Takeaway:
iDonate’s combination of hyperfunctional online giving tools and supportive staff are a boon to any nonprofit ready to try a new donation button.
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:
Double the Donation Benefits for NSFA Members
/in Uncategorized /by Adam WeingerDouble the Donation is pleased to offer special benefits for Members of the National School Foundation Association.
Are you an NSFA Member? Take advantage of $250 off a 360MatchPro plan.
Contact us to get started with your exclusive benefits!
Wilson-Bennett Shifts Functionality from HEPdata to Double the Donation
/in Company Updates /by Adam WeingerDouble the Donation is excited to share news of a new partnership with Wilson-Bennett Technology, Inc. (WBT), a leading provider of educational and nonprofit fundraising programs.
This partnership situates Double the Donation as the exclusive provider of matching gift services to WBT, replacing the legacy solution managed by HEPdata.
All WBT clients now exclusively have access to 360MatchPro by Double the Donation, the industry-leading matching gift automation platform.
The integration places 360MatchPro’s tools directly within Donor Connect call scripts for easy access and use. With 360MatchPro’s autocomplete search tool and matching gift information present directly in Donor Connect scripts, schools can start collecting valuable employer and matching gift data from their supporters, while those supporters get to double or even triple their contributions.
With 360MatchPro, callers can help identify more donors as match-eligible. A smart auto-complete algorithm dynamically pulls from Double the Donation’s comprehensive database of parent companies, subsidiaries, brands, and spelling variations to maximize the percentage of match eligible donors callers are able to identify.
“Building and maintaining our database of companies that offer matching gift programs is really the core of our business at Double the Donation,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “A full-time, onsite team is dedicated to making daily updates to the database so that more than 98 percent of the 15-19 million match-eligible individuals in the US workforce will find their company’s program guidelines in our system.”
The matching gift program guidelines returned by 360MatchPro are written for a donor, not for a fundraising professional. Tailored for callers who need to convey complex information quickly and accurately, Double the Donation and Wilson-Bennett ensure that callers can easily provide the right information that encourages donors to take the next step and submit their matching gift request.
Activate in Seconds and Start Raising More from Matching Gifts!
Getting set up with the Donor Connect and 360MatchPro integration is simple. All you need to do is get in contact with your representative at Wilson-Bennett Technology and they’ll take care of activating your account for you! No complicated IT work required on your end.
Once you’re up and running with your integrated solution, your callers will be able to inform donors of their eligibility in real-time, all while storing valuable employer data from your donors in your 360MatchPro account. All your callers need to do is ask the donor for their employer, enter their employer name in the autocomplete search tool, and relay back match program information and eligibility for the donor!
From there, 360MatchPro handles the automated follow-ups and stores donor data in the 360MatchPro dashboard for your later use. Link donors directly to their matching gift request form or employee portal via the automated email streams and start capturing those matching gifts!
Looking to learn more? Check out our in-depth integration guide to get started!
Drive More Matching Gifts to Completion with 360MatchPro
360MatchPro and Wilson-Bennett Technology use their powerful integrated solution to fuel your fundraising efforts through phonathons.
Some other features you should know about:
Ready to learn more or get started? Schedule a personalized demo to see how 360MatchPro can fit your organization’s needs and drive donations through company gift matching.
About Wilson-Bennett Technology: Our Mission: Providing our clients with the most efficient and cost effective phonathon services in the industry today. Our knowledge and professional staff will help inspire, educate and implement best practices for your campaign. We offer on-campus managed phonathon programs, off-campus calling, membership calling, admissions calling, as well as software leasing; each tailored to the client’s needs.
About Double the Donation: There’s an unnecessary gap between fundraising organizations and corporate giving programs, to the tune of $4-7 billion in unclaimed matching gift revenue annually. Double the Donation helps nonprofits and educational institutions increase fundraising from corporate matching gift and employee volunteer grant programs. Double the Donation maintains a database of employee matching gift and volunteer grant programs. With more than 20,000 entries in the database, Double the Donation presents match-eligible donors with their company’s specific program requirements, including a direct link to their company’s online matching gift submission portal or PDF download.
iDonate Reevaluates, Switches from Amply to Double the Donation
/in Company Updates /by Adam WeingerDouble the Donation is proud to announce a new partnership with iDonate, a fast-growing digital fundraising solution for nonprofits. Together, iDonate and Double the Donation are providing integrated corporate matching gift marketing automation to nonprofits and higher education institutions.
iDonate has enhanced both functionality and customer experience by substituting the previous solution by Amply with Double the Donation matching gift automation by Double the Donation, the leading provider of matching gift and volunteer grant software to nonprofits and educational institutions. All of iDonate’s clients who were using the Amply tool have been transitioned over to the enhanced Double the Donation offering.
Through Double the Donation, organizations can identify more matching gift opportunities, automatically drive those matches to completion, and take further action based on advanced analytics and reporting.
“We couldn’t be happier to provide advanced corporate matching gift automation tools to iDonate users,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “With more than $4 billion in matching gift revenue left on the table every year, automating the matching gift follow-up process is the key step Double the Donation makes easy for busy nonprofits and educational institutions.”
At its core, Double the Donation addresses a key lack of donor awareness about their employer’s corporate philanthropy programs. Donors want to make their support go further, they just aren’t always aware of the tools at their disposal. Through the native integration with iDonate, Double the Donation is more readily available to and affordable for more nonprofits and educational institutions.
Activate in Seconds and Start Raising More from Matching Gifts!
Your nonprofit can turn on Double the Donation functionality directly within the iDonate platform and get up and running with a quick message to the iDonate support team.
Once you’re set up with the Double the Donation tool on your donation page, donors will be able to search for their company and check their eligibility for a matching gift. The iDonate and Double the Donation integration provides donors with a direct line to their employer’s matching gift application form so they are more likely to complete a match.
Donors often aren’t aware that they could double or triple their contribution without reaching back into their own wallets, but the iDonate and Double the Donation integration bridges that knowledge gap by informing donors of their eligibility without ever having to leave your organization’s website.
Looking to learn more? Check out our in-depth integration guide to get started!
Drive Donations to Completion with Double the Donation!
Corporate philanthropy can have an incredible impact on your nonprofit if you know how to take advantage of the resources available to you. The integration between iDonate and Double the Donation makes corporate gift matching an easy process for the donor and the nonprofit and helps your organization increase its fundraising revenue so you can get back to helping communities in need.
The iDonate platform offers a simple, centralized, and secure way for your nonprofit to drive donations, and the Double the Donation plugin follows suit with the following features:
Don’t wait on the opportunity to double your fundraising revenue with corporate matching—request a demo today to get started.
About iDonate: iDonate is working to transform charitable giving by making giving simple and accessible for everyone, unlocking more ways to give, building tools that make it easier for nonprofits to make a bigger impact, and pushing the industry to innovate. Visit www.idonate.com for more information.
About Double the Donation: Automate your matching gift fundraising with the industry-leading solution from Double the Donation. The Double the Donation platform provides nonprofits with tools to identify match-eligible donors, drive matches to completion, and gain actionable insights. Double the Donation 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 about Double the Donation, visit https://doublethedonation.com and request a demo at https://doublethedonation.com/get-a-demo/
5 Tips to Making a Difference in Your Community This Summer
/in Learning Center /by Adam WeingerMemorial Day marked the unofficial start of summer. While most of us equate summer with pleasure and relaxation, many others look at summer with a sense of dread. If you are financially strapped, summer means no access to subsidized meals for your children and childcare headaches as they are home from school.
Summer is also a stressful time for nonprofits. Need is high and donations are typically low. The good news is that summer is actually a great time to get involved with your favorite local charity. With businesses in summer mode, kids home from school and retired people itching to get out and enjoy the season, summer offers plenty of opportunities to do fulfilling acts of charity and still have time to laze away in the hammock.
Here are some helpful tips to get you started in what may be your most fulfilling summer ever:
Sure, summertime relaxing is good for you but helping others is also proven to be good for the mind, body, and soul. So take the plunge this summer and make it memorable by adding philanthropy into your plan.