What is DonorPerfect?

Hello, and good afternoon to this webinar entitled What is DonorPerfect? My name is Arlene Berkowitz. And I’m a member of the training team here at DonorPerfect. So what we’re going to do today is understand the big picture, what is going on and Read More

Hello, and good afternoon to this webinar entitled What is DonorPerfect? My name is Arlene Berkowitz. And I’m a member of the training team here at DonorPerfect. So what we’re going to do today is understand the big picture, what is going on and DonorPerfect? Why do you need? How can you benefit from this database? We’ll talk about how to set up your DonorPerfect for success.

That’s going to be based on using the features as they’re intended, using the fields according to best practices. And what do you do after today, besides come to additional webinars? So what is your DonorPerfect database used for? Well, it’s used for many things in a development or advancement office. In terms of fundraising. Specifically, we can help you with tracking your donors and the communication sent to them. We’ve got lots of options for you in terms of getting reports out of DonorPerfect or data file and the term of an Excel file. If you have donors, that means there are gifts and donations as they’re called. And one of the tests that you’ll have will be to acknowledge your donors that can be done in letters or emails. And if any of you are a Canadian nonprofit, you’ll want to get out what we call receipts so that they have unique numbers. You may also be interested in customizing some online form templates, so that your donors can go to your website and make a donation and have that information, download into DonorPerfect. There are other options in terms of maybe mailing forms or event registration forms, not to mention crowdfunding. And maybe you’re also communicating by email, whether it’s one off emails, or a group or an email blast, as we would call it, using something like Constant Contact. And one other way we can help you is with an accounting interface or integration, if your organization uses QuickBooks as its accounting system. So if you have not heard this term before, DonorPerfect is one of many other software programs that are considered to be a relational database. Now what we mean by that is, there is a main table that contains at a minimum, the name of the donor or constituent. And every constituent in your database has one donor Id think of it as the social security number. But we won’t be putting social security numbers into DonorPerfect, nor will we put a tax ID for instance, for a nonprofit organization or a company. But think of that donor ID as their account number with you in your database. In addition to that, we hope at some point that you will have one or many gifts and or pledges from that same donor. And in that gift or pledge table. There are gift IDs. If you are reflecting different communication sent like eblasts or mailings, slash appeals, or engagements that have been held with or will be held with that donor, then there is an ID number on each of those items. And you may use another screen called the other info or just other and that will also have an other ID. So all of those things connect up to the same donor. So that’s why we call it a relational database. They connect the link all of the data is stored so that it’s possible to get a complete picture of about each of your constituents. Now you might notice or wonder, are we now call you’re using the word constituent. Well, DonorPerfect is a database. We can put in things or entities besides donors. But I hope the majority would be your donors. So each constituent in DonorPerfect has these entry screens. And at a minimum, you’re going to be using the main screen with every constituent in the system, because that’s where you’re going to put in the name. Notice the last name is required the name of each constituent, hopefully, the majority will have an address, you’ll have phone numbers, you’ll hopefully have an email, maybe not. You’ll also have something called a donor type. Now, this donor type might be called a constituent type. This is the broad category into which this constituent falls. So typically, we might see four to eight, maybe that’s just a rough estimate of selections or choices in this field called donor type. Again, it’s the broad category into which this constituent falls. Now, to the extent that Henry Arnold is an individual, but he has various roles at our organization, those roles, or maybe just one role that he has, are identified in the flags field. Now the flags field can have one role or affiliation or connection, or there can be many. He can be a current volunteer, he can be a current board member, if you are a school, or an institution of higher learning, you might have a current student or an alumni, you might have parents of current students, parents of alumni, etc. This gives you again, the different roles that somebody or some entity wears. And it’s very helpful. It’s not the only field. But it does play a very significant role. When it comes to getting reports out of DonorPerfect or targeting a certain group for a communication via email, or mailing. When you enter a constituent in DonorPerfect, you have a choice between two options. A record is either an individual record, meaning the relationship is with the person or persons, if it is a couple that is either married or lives together, while we don’t record the marital status, necessarily, but if we wanted to communicate to both members of that household, we could put them together in one record. And if there’s a donation, and if that gift comes from the person or persons, as opposed to it comes from their place of employment, then we call it an individual record, or we would need an individual record. If, however, we get maybe a matching gift from variable his employer, then we would need an organization record. An organization record is something that’s not a person, meaning the donor type that you could use in an organization record would be a company, a foundation, possibly an organization which stands for nonprofit organization. We’ve lately seen lots of donor advised funds. So that could be isolated as a donor type. Or you could have maybe schools or hospitals or partner agencies. As I mentioned, the list and don’t have it is usually not a long list.

Great question from Christine, can you link individual records to an organization by all means, if the ice cream palace were his employer, we could definitely do that on the link screen. We could Link, Mr. Smith, also to other individuals that he has relatives or friends in the database. So yes, thank you very much for asking that. In an organization record, what we’re saying is that the relationship if we’re trying to cultivate a relationship, it’s with this particular company or foundation, or nonprofit. And any monies or donations that we receive are from that organization’s checking account. Even though there is a particular person signing it, that particular person signing, it is most likely going to be your primary contact at that company, or the person who gets mail if you don’t have any donations from that organization.

All right. So speaking of donations, these words are going to be interchangeable donation, gift contribution. I could say income, but sometimes income has a broader definition. On your gift screen, this is where the contributions, donations etc, are recorded. Now, the majority of your gifts will be monetary, meaning there’s something here in this Gift Amount field. But some of you may collect what we call in kind gifts, whether those in kind gifts are used for the clients that you help, or those in kind gifts were received as donations to be used for bidding at auctions. So those unchain gifts also can be recorded in DonorPerfect. Typically, what we would record on the gift screen would be the date that the gift arrived in your organization, how much was it for meaning the base value of the check or the credit card transaction, you may want to record the payment method which we call type of gift. Then we get into some fields that have a best practice. And this is where I’m going to recommend and let’s discuss these for a little bit. But this will be re emphasized in the data entry one on one webinar. So the general ledger field is used to record the income account on the accounting software. Most of you will hopefully be using this and that will facilitate a reconcilement between DonorPerfect and your accounting software. For sure, I’m hoping that you’ll record something in the solicitation. This solicitation field means the appeal or the event. Or in general, the reason why the donor made the gift. Maybe the donor made a gift because he or she wants to support your cause. And it wasn’t I’ll say sparked by any particular appeal or event and it just came in the mail then you could have a solicitation of unsolicited. But you might also get solicitations that are in memory of someone or an honor of someone. Lots of different reasons but the solicitation field is used to track why the donor make the gift or in response to what you might be using something called the campaign field. The campaign field is the overarching strategy, or in this case, it’s the annual fund. And you might say that the majority of your gifts fall under the annual fun except that certain gifts might belong to the capital campaign. If you use the field sub solicitation, that is giving you a more narrower and narrower classification, to say specifically under the annual appeal, this money is for programs. Typically what would be in the sub solicitation is going to be the revenue stream for a special event. So whether it’s for tickets, or it’s golf registration, or its sponsorship IPs, or external ads, that is very often what is used in sub solicitation. Last but not least, assuming you want to get an acknowledgement merged for the donor, then you will indicate here in the field called Thank you template, which template you intend to use. And you’ll explore more on this in the receiving 101. This addresses which word and or email template that you want to send to the donor for this specific gift.

Or pledge screen has many of the same fields, they have the same exact meaning if they were on the gift screen, but if you additional fields, okay, we have a pledge date. First of all, up at the top, which is when did the donor commit to making this promise, when did they sign a pledge card, the start date could be the date of their first payment, or in the future may be one or two months down the road, whatever the case may be, when the first payment will come in. That’s the start date we see here and a screen capture of what we would call a recurring gift or monthly giving. This tells me that the donor is going to pay or allow for the credit card to be charged in the amount of $10. That’s the billing amount. How often, that’s your frequency. And that’s going to be every month. Now, because we would hope and the donor has indicated that this pledge will continue for ever, as long as that credit card works. And as long as he or she agrees with this commitment, then we use the total field as zero because we can’t predict how much we will get from this pledge. So we leave it as zero to really indicate that this is recurring, and is subject to the donors indication that he or she doesn’t want to continue paying. Otherwise, the four fields here have the exact same meaning as what was on the web screen.

Another important screen is the contact screen. I like to remember the contact screen as the place for communications. This is where we record either one by one or on a group basis, we can make several of these entries to reflect what mailing went out what email blast went out in constant contact, if you want to enable it to say when an acknowledgment was sent, those would be the ones that are done, I’ll say automatically or on mass, then you have more individual contact entries to indicate these touch points or engagements or interactions with your constituents. So this tells me that think of a couple years ago, the fact that there is nothing in the completed date. This means that Sarah was assigned the task of making a telephone call to this donor or prospect. And it needed to be done on or by December 13. That is the due date. This screen is also used if you have our moves management feature. If you want to track when grants were, I’ll say applied for then you can track the details in terms of how much you’re requesting of the program and the status of that grant. And that’s done here on the contact screen. As I mentioned email campaign in terms of Constant Contact Events Management. If you have that feature included The new DonorPerfect package, you can track who was invited to your event, and what their responses are, that would be reflected here on the screen. And for our clients who have DonorPerfect, and they are in Europe, there is the GDP, our Status section, which has various fields that allow them to record that a donor has opted into communications.

Christine’s asking, is there a place and don’t have perfect where you’re open or incomplete? Or the to be done? items are listed? Yes, Christine, that would be either a report in the contact listing, or if they are overdue, in this case, it would be on the homepage. Anything that’s overdue, even if it really did happen, but you didn’t go into DonorPerfect and fill in the completed date, then don’t have perfect interprets that as not complete or overdue. Thank you for that great question. All right. Another screen that you might have is the BIOS screen. This is a continuation of main, I like to call it name page two. On bio, which is completely customizable. We might have personal information like the birth dates, like the employer, the occupation. We might have, if you use volunteers, the their skills, their availability, their orientation, date. Plan giving fields are here if you’re going to launch a plant given campaign. And if you’re going to have a donor search, which is wealth engine, screening, it’s a wealth screening. Those fields would be populated here on the bio screen. And Bruno’s asking where and Donna perfect. Would the summaries of conversations with donors go? Good question. Let me go back quickly. Oops, this way. Up, back, back, back. Hold on, is my mouse gonna have work for me? Okay, yes. But contact screen think of contact as your communications. This is where you would enter the notes of a past conversation and or your goal in the upcoming conversation? What do you want to uncover or address? Okay, that would go into contact notes if it relates to stewardship conversations. All right. Now, one more screen. Other screen. This has other stuff. Besides financial, meaning non financial information is stored on the screen. But it has multiple purposes. You can enter a transaction to reflect the volunteer hours and the capacity or location where the volunteer worked on a specific date, a new shift that person volunteered would be entered as another item. On the other info screen. It’s also used if you’d like to record board and committee terms and involvement. If you want to record the names of your donor or constituents, children, usually minor children, if they are adult children grad you’re donating that would be recorded on the link screen. And if your organization delivers in person or virtual classes in terms of webinars, and you want to track all of the webinars that a constituent has registered for, but there is no fee involved than that would be here on the other info screen. Okay. Now one other point I want to mention to you where you see a.on The screens in the top right corner. That means that there is at least one if not several items or transactions on that screen. But the only two screens that won’t have a dot will be your main Name and bio, because there will always be one main bio file, think of that relational database diagram that I showed in the beginning, there will only be one donor ID that has that unique number. But that donor ID can have multiple gifts, pledges, etc. All right, what else do we have in DonorPerfect for you? Christine had asked about the links, this is a very, I’ll say clean, simple screen. Because all you’re telling here is the story of who this constituent is connected to. But somebody could be very well connected in the community, they could have many friends, they could have golf buddies, slash teammates, they could have relatives in your database, and they could have employer in your day, their employer could also be in your database. So these are examples of some links. And one thing to note about links is that they are what we call reciprocal. That means that if Adams McKinley is the employer of this particular donor, if I’m in Adams, McCain Lee’s record, that corporation will have a reciprocal link to say that their employee is John or Jane Doe. Okay. Similar, if we’re in an alumni record, and that alumni has a parent in the database, then we would say that Mr. And Mrs. John Doe, or whatever the relationship would be, or the parents of this particular alumni, and therefore they are the child of that couple, or a single person. Okay. I’m glad to have good questions. Chris is asking, is there a way to divide donors from members under gifts? Um, yes and no. On the gifts screen, one would hope that on the general ledger, there will be a fund or an income account, that is membership dues. Okay. Another way to distinguish them would be on usually on your main screen will be the what we call the membership category, as well as an expiration date and initial date. So well a little longer answer. But yes, there is a way, okay. But technically, you don’t have perfect members are donors, because it usually involves payment of money. But if your situation is something different than that can be explored in detail, either with your onboarding coordinator, or with support. Okay, and I’ll say last, but not least, is the addresses or other addresses where multiple things can be there. If we had a couple on the main screen, but one member of that couple is the board member, we could indicate specifically, which member and the address where that person wants the board mailings, if you send a board package. We can also put in seasonal dates. You might have some donors we refer to as snowbirds who go south for the winter when it’s cold, right, whether it’s Florida, California, etc. And you can put the dates that they typically go to that vacation home. And if you put them on this address, the screen don’t have perfect we’ll send the mailing during that time period to their home in Florida or wherever that may be. And another component is when we update the address on the main screen, their previous address is archived here. Last but not least, additional emails are also recorded on the screen. The primary email lives on the main screen, but should the donor have a work email that you want to reflect a news that’s reported here? Or the spouse has additional emails or partner has additional emails that all of those supplemental emails go on the address screen. All right, so lots of terminology. For probably the majority of you, this is the first time you’re hearing this terminology. But no worries, you’ll be able to see these fields in action. You’ll hear these words over and over used in our webinars. And if you would like to watch a recording of this session that was recorded

a few months ago, I’ll show you how to do that. So before I get to this, let’s kind of recap and go into DonorPerfect, because you’re probably interested in what does that look like? All right. So here I am at the homepage. Somebody who asked about incomplete items. When you have this version of the homepage, when it says show me the homepage? Oops, Yep, looks like I’ve never filled in the completed date for an email that was supposed to go to Roger. So all of my incomplete items will show right here in front of me. Okay? Fortunately, it’s only three. All right, here’s all the menus of the different features, tools, etc, that are available in DonorPerfect, as well as in the settings over here. In order to add someone in the database, unless your database is completely empty, you’re going to use the Quick Search. If it is completely empty, then it’s okay to use this. Otherwise, if you had constituents transferred, and from the previous software, or you might be a new employee, and you know, the DonorPerfect was used for a while before you came on board, please use this Quick Search. So books like Katy Perry was a record that I was looking at before. So here, I could go right back into Katy Perry’s record, or if I want to search, but say I look for just the word parry. Well, that could be the first name, or the last name, or the street name, or the city or something in the optional line. So this potentially could give you more results than you expected. Ah, because Edward Hobart, notice lives on Perry Street. Therefore, if it’s a unique name, you can put that in the Quick Search. Otherwise, you might want to put first base last name. Here we see that Katy Perry, and in this case, we see Orlando Bloom. Not sure their marital status, but I believe they are still together as a couple. If that’s not the Katy Perry, you have in mind, and yes, that could be other Katy Perry’s, then you would use the add individual to create a different KT maybe spelled p y. And then continue with the other information, you know, such as address, maybe phone number may be email, notice the donor type is pre selected as individual, you would save the record and this Katy Perry will get a unique donor ID and with a donor ID, even if she is a prospect or constituent. So we use that term donor ID for each and every constituent, be a volunteer, be a funder. be they a major donor, it’s called a donor ID, which we see over here. So that’s what you would do if that were a different Katy Perry. But no, I’m gonna go back and show you this Katy Perry. was entered in DonorPerfect. In this case, we’re not using the Title field. That’s something that you want to establish or discuss. Internally, whether you’re going to use the title field, we see the first name and last name. And in the situation where the spouse or partner has a different last name. We put the full name of that spouse or partner here in the optional line. Here is a fictitious address. Their daughter’s name is Daisy. So we put that in or street name, city state zip. If this were a real street, then you could use verify address to confirm the zip code and tell you if that is a viable address or number. And it will give you the plus four. But I’m not going to do it because I know that this is a fictitious Street. Here is the salutation. That’s what will go in a letter after the word dear. And you might see fields here that had been customized for our webinars. That’s because you don’t have perfect system is completely flexible. And here we see, in the flags, we’ve identified major donor, well, I might want to say that, too, I have something called celebrity. No, I don’t. But if you would like to add to the choice, I can click here to add a flag. Celebrity or singer, actor, etc. And then I save that choice. It’s indicated for Katy and Rolando great. And that to the extent I need to identify who were my celebrities in the database, I can query on anything that’s in the flags field. To keep that information, make sure that we save that as an update. The gift screen here is where all of the donations of any amount would be. Notice we’ve been doing a lot of practicing here, it goes into two pages. And each of these columns can be used to sort. But usually this will be the most recent gift is at the top. The pledges screen reflects any commitments to pay money in the future. In this case, that it this is a recurring gift, where they’ve agreed to pay five $50 Every one every month. And we have a credit card. This is a fake credit card that allows us to execute and charge this fictitious credit card as if it were a real occurrence every month. The contact screen shows if you would like it to reflect the letters that have gone out. It can show Constant Contact campaigns, it can show a mailing and it can show individual interactions or engagements. So Amanda put this in here. This is where you’re going to say the intention of the call. Okay. And then if you’re going to say what happened on that call, you would insert and say she is interested in making a pledge in July of 2023. Great, then make sure that you create a follow up item where the due date, ah, this actually was part of something called Moves Management. I’m going to okay. But these are the kinds of engagements and things that are found on the contact screen. The bio screen, completely customizable. Here we see lots of options in terms of volunteer possibilities to the extent that we want to identify when someone is able to volunteer, their languages, their skills, their interest in volunteering. If we want to have their employer their occupation, and information about a grant, about a funder, this is specifically profiling that foundation to save that they have made a grant that’s as low as 500 or as high as perhaps 25,000. So this is describing a funder and then there might be these donor search fields. If you have that wealth screening done. The other screen you would click add other info. If we wanted to say that Katie helped us with how many hours 3.5 hours the name So we know it’s either Katy or Orlando. So this is Katie. And in what capacity did she volunteer, that would be the project. And we might say in fundraising or add something if it’s not in the drop down. So every shift that she volunteers would be entered through this ad other info. The link screen is if we were to say that she is connected with someone else, or some other entity in the database, as in friends,

and addresses might reflect, they moved from to 29. Happy lane, they are now one Daisy lane, because they wanted to be honest street that has the name of their daughter. But this is an example of something on the address screen. The last screen here some of you might have, if you have applied for or will apply for our processing gateway, known as safe safe. This would have encrypted the credit card and or bank account number that the donor wants us to keep in the gateway in order to pay that pledge every month. So what is this, Aaron, the pledge screen is used two ways, either the pledges Katie’s promise to send us a total of $10,000. But she doesn’t want to do that in one lump sum check, she wants to do within maybe a check of 2500 every three months, that’s possible, or what you’ll see more often are smaller amounts instead of 2500. These smaller billing amounts that she says, I give you my permission to charge my credit card every month in the amount of $50. And Christine’s asking, when you add something to the drop down, does that become an option for all users? Most definitely yes. For all users to then use from that second going forward. And where’s the credit card entered Aaron? Well, it can either be entered on the pledge screen, or on the Account screen by adding a payment method to put in the name and address. And then here you’re going to put in the credit card or bank account credentials. All right, but more about that in our payment processing webinar. All right, so. And one last question from Chris, how do you indicate that a donor should receive mailings? Right now, just very simply, if it’s okay to send mailings to Katy Perry and Orlando, great, we would hope to do that. But if she or he have said, please do not solicit us, we do not want mail coming from your organization, we will do our best to support you. This is where you check, do not send mail, snail mail and the appropriate reason. All right. So hope that answers it. Okay, lots of fantastic questions. So let’s continue with our slides. So as you saw the flag field, or the general ledger, etc, many of the fields in DonorPerfect are dropped down, or in the case of flags, what we call a multi select. Why did we design it that way? Well, it’s for your benefit. Number one, it’s to allow for consistent data entry. Whether you have more than one person using the database or not. Because maybe one day, you could put in a flag of golf, if you would type it in. And another day, you might decide golfer or you might create another option and type and type in a field likes to play golf. Well, if we have them consistently identified with a flag of golfer in the flag field, then it’s much easier for filters, which are your queries and which are used in reports. All right. Well, There are other places those items are used in. So there they are created with intention because they will be used in other components. But what’s nice is there are a few places where we might suggest the codes like the donor type, we’re going to give you four codes. But you can add to any field where DonorPerfect has given you some samples. And you can delete those samples if they’re not relevant. But you and or your colleagues choose what choices need to be in which field. So as I mentioned, where they’re used in other places, the building fund here, well, you’re putting it in manually, let’s say. And the intention is that you were someone else wants to be able to run a report to look at the different general Ledger’s used in your gifts that came in in March or February, whatever the time period was. So using a drop down, will allow for cleaner reports clean data. But in this case, it also is connected to the use of an online form. So that when someone goes to your donation form, and indicates if they want to give $100, you can select that all of the donations from that form, go to one value, or you can have the donor make the decision in terms of where they want their money to go more about that in our payment processing webinar. Okay, so I haven’t impressed upon you. There’s this new terminology, this new lingo. Even if you’ve worked in another in another fundraising, CRM or software, then it’s a matter of transitioning to DonorPerfects window. And if this is your first job in a nonprofit, then maybe that’s good. You can just adapt these terminology. These terms. If you’re used to the word fund or accounts or income accounts, then in DonorPerfect. It relates to what we call the general ledger. If you previously heard of or used the word appeal codes, the words appeal codes, don’t a perfect translation is solicitation codes. And if you’ve heard of constituency codes, for the most part, it’s flags or flag codes. Some of you also that may be what we call affiliation. So constituency type affiliations, for the most part translate into flags. So it’s just a matter of learning this new language. Hopefully, it’s a lot easier than learning a foreign language. Okay, so what can DonorPerfect help you with whether it’s the software or one of many of us here at DonorPerfect, we can help you with tracking your donors and reaching out and communicating to your donors, tracking your prospects and hopefully giving you tips to turn them into donors, tracking your grants in DonorPerfect contact management. With just tracking all of the communications, such as specifically email and mail, or this kind of mail, contact management being other than this, of engagements or interactions. Definitely we can help you when the time comes to learn how to get your acknowledgments out, or specifically numbered receipts, we can definitely help you. We’ve got reports for you. So please make sure that you register for webinars to learn all of the different capabilities of reporting. And maybe you want to customize a template so that you can collect what we call electronic or online gifts. Just ask us for help. Were a chat or a phone call or an email away. So if you are just beginning the process of working with your onboarding coordinator, great, you will be working with that person to customize your entry screens. But if you’re don’t have perfect has been live and in production for quite a while, or even just a week or more whatever the case may be, you can still customize the entry screens to add fields, move fields, hide fields,

or where they’re placed on the screen. Maybe the search screens and you frequently find yourself trying to search on the previous ID from your old CRM, we can help you customize that what we call the entry screen grids can be changed so that when you first click on the gift screen, you get up to 10 columns, and you can swap out what’s there. Or the contact screen or pledge screen etc. We’ve got the ability to do special calculations and DonorPerfect. You’ll learn about that down the road. And you can also customize the donation forms so that you have the look and feel of your website, the branding the color scheme, have the suggested dollar amounts that you want. Just ask us. That’s what we’re here for whether it’s your trainer, whether it’s someone in support, or you’re starting out, ask your onboarding coordinator. So if you’re not sure if the contact info your onboarding coordinator can be reached at this number. If you’re working with support, this is the phone number provided that you have a support contract that is chat, email, and phone. Alright, if we have any final questions, I have a few minutes I can answer them. There is one other thing that I wanted to show you is if you would like to view the video of this content, but possibly from someone besides myself from the question mark, you can then go to on demand webinars. And we have several webinars that were recorded. Here is where your foundation series one and you’ll start off on the left with what is don’t a perfect so I want to thank you so much everybody. It’s been an extreme pleasure having you. I want to thank you for some outstanding questions. Having wonderful afternoon and evening. And thanks spring because it’s literally around the corner