July 1, 2008 |

UK Fundraising with DonorPerfect CRM

I spent the last week in the United Kingdom helping our new UK distributor, CSDM, get up and running to promote, sell and support our DonorPerfect customers in the UK.

Though we’ve never had a concentrated effort to build our business in the UK, we’ve always attracted non profits in the UK who bought our software. As you can imagine, supporting a client base with a 5 hour time difference is not an easy nor efficient task, so we realized that a local, established distributor was the way to go.

I visited CSDM in beautiful Ross-on-Wye and met with CSDM’s founder, (ahem, Managing Director as that title is more recognized in the UK) for several days of intense training, understanding, and sharing of our similar yet distinct markets.

For example, one of the largest differences in UK fundraising is the absence of a US system of using individual tax deductions to encourage individual giving and a use of GiftAid instead. GiftAid is a program set-up by the UK government that allows individuals to declare their status as a UK taxpayer. Upon this declaration, any registered non-profit in the UK can submit a form of these declared donors’ donations, and receive a rebate back from the GiftAid program.

Think of it as a government backed matching gift program that sends a check to the non-profit for approximately 28% of every pound pledged. For example, if a non-profit declares that 200 donors gave £10,000 in June 2008, then they are entitled to a GiftAid check of ~ £2,800.

Furthermore, if a donor declares GiftAid now and has given previously to the organization, the organization can declare those previous donations (to a maximum of 6 years) for GiftAid immediately. DonorPerfect easily identifies these previous donations, and automatically generates the correct report that matches the current GiftAid requirements- making it easy for our clients to generate 28% more in income.

In addition to supporting GiftAid, our UK version of DonorPerfect supports the European date format (DD/MM/YYYY) as well as the international currency (£) and addressing requirements (postal code) inherent to all UK non profit organizations.

We’re excited to expand our presence in the UK and look forward to serving the market through our relationship with CSDM. It’s fascinating to see the growth of DonorPerfect in markets outside the US, and perhaps sometime in the future I’ll be able to say again, “Can you help me get back to the M-5???”