Digital Donations for the Holidays

Allison Howen — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 08:00:00 GMT

’Tis the season of giving, and now it is easier than ever with the latest online fundraising tools.

Blackbaud Internet Solutions has partnered with The Salvation Army to strengthen the organization’s fundraising capabilities and extend its donor base. The organization’s Red Kettle campaign, which expanded online in recent years, raised more than $1.6 million last year. And the organization is hoping for an even better turnout this year.

“We are excited that our 2011 Online Red Kettle is the first full campaign to use Blackbaud’s next-generation Friends Asking Friends solution,” says Jason Wood, director of Digital Communication Services at The Salvation Army National Headquarters. “Our goal is to provide supporters with a new set of online tools that will help them become more effective fundraisers using proven online best practices. We also are aiming to engage younger donors with a fun and easy way to support The Salvation Army.”

The Friends Asking Friends product is a peer-to-peer event fundraising solution that is used by more than 800 nonprofits. The solution was developed through an evaluation of data from more than 45 million online fundraising participants and 38,000 online events, which gave insights to trends and best practices from successful online event fundraisers.

According to Blackbaud’s director of enterprise Internet solutions Mark Davis, an important aspect of success for peer-to-peer fundraising is social media and mobile.

“Blackbaud’s next-generation Friends Asking Friends solution will provide participants online tools that were designed based on proven techniques used by the best peer-to-peer fundraisers,” says Davis. “The power of this new technology is the ability for it to guide supporters through the fundraising process from appeal to follow-up to acknowledgement. Additionally, nonprofits will have greater access to more data by being able to track participants’ recruitment, retention and fundraising success over multiple years.”

And in addition to powering the 2011 Online Red Kettle, Blackbaud has helped The Salvation Army transition its email marketing and online giving operations to Blackbaud Internet Solutions, which enables the organization’s national headquarters to centrally manage email communication and distribute key marketing tools. Furthermore, the organization is also using other Blackbaud services, such as Blackbaud's CRM and services from Blackbaud's targeting anaytics.

Nonproft Software: RaisersEdge(i) Adds Giving Score

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:00:00 GMT

Nonprofit fundraising software is definitely an interesting space to watch. For example, BlackBaud (which offers fundraising software, accounting software and management systems for nonprofits) just released several improvements to its platform including the Blackbaud Giving Score™, a new prospect research tool that helps nonprofits target and identify potential supporters, then engage and cultivate them into donors.

BlackBaid’s Raisers Edge(i) platform might have been a viable option on its own before but it is the Giving Score, which analyzes supporters based on their capacity and likelihood to give to an organization using information from their financial background and affinity with an organization’s mission, which makes it stand out from the crowd. It segments a nonprofit’s contacts into four categories, assigning a score to the constituent records, tagging them with identities, and providing a fundraising strategy.

“The Raiser’s Edge(i) enables organizations to communicate with supporters the way they want to be communicated with. It enables organizations to send targeted appeals via email and direct mail, and publish eNewsletters based on interests,” said Kevin Mooney, Blackbaud’s president of general markets. “With the addition of The Giving Score, The Raiser’s Edge(i) helps nonprofits understand who to target and how to effectively communicate with them.”

Many nonprofits including the Angel Foundation are using Raiser’s Edge(i) currently to lead constituents through a journey with multi-channel marketing and engagement. Angel Foundation provides financial assistance for adult cancer patients to meet non-medical basic living needs, and its Facing Cancer Together program provides education and support for young families with a parental cancer diagnosis in the Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN metro area. Looking for a way to track donors, volunteers, and employees, Angel Foundation selected The Raiser’s Edge(i) to manage fundraising and development initiatives, process online giving, and multi-channel communications.

“The Raiser’s Edge(i) takes the best fundraising solution for nonprofits and adds a new dimension of online and analytics capabilities that we need to better reach our supporters,” said Patty Schulz, Angel Foundation’s development officer. “I’m really impressed with the recent email campaign I just sent from The Raiser’s Edge(i)—it is unbelievably intuitive. I look forward to learning more about the online giving functionality and The Giving Score to further enhance our fundraising.”

'Net Features : blackbaud

Digital Donations for the Holidays

Nonproft Software: RaisersEdge(i) Adds Giving Score