Love them or fear them, the story of your Fundraising Program comes down to the numbers. As a Fundraiser, there’s increasing pressure to tell that story, not only internally, but also to be transparent to your stakeholders.

Not surprisingly, a good deal of what is useful in your Fundraising Stats is dependent on how you input the information into your database. Yes, you can put all of your transactions into an undifferentiated lump, but you miss out on important analyses that allow you to make data driven decisions regarding your future efforts. It’s also possible to go too far the other way and not only waste time entering your data, but also make it more difficult to access your information in a meaningful way when you need it. [More]

Too often when researching fundraising software, we get caught up in the technical features and forget to step back and examine the companies behind the technology. There are real people at those companies, and ultimately that is who you are entering into a relationship with. It’s wise to evaluate the potential providers of your nonprofit's CRM software the same way you would a romantic interest. But how do you find the perfect match? [More]

You've just become Executive Director of a nonprofit organization. Like it or not, fundraising - especially raising money from large donors - is one of your most important responsibilities. Your donor database can be your best friend here. It will help you zero in on a few important fundraising tasks that make a large impact.

Whether it's your style to enthusiastically dig in to your donor database, or avoid it at all costs, you need to ask it these three questions: [More]

Disclaimer Preface – any perception that this post is talking about you is purely coincidental. These myths are based on common lore and may or may not be true for you. But if you can relate to these myths it might be a sign.

I’ve been helping people use fundraising database software for over 2 decades, yet I continue to be surprised by some of the comments and questions I get from those users. Many of these questions I will attribute to myths people have about databases and software in general. Today I’m going to talk about a couple of these myths to try and understand why and how these myths began, and what we can do to bust them for good. [More]