Robert L. Weiner, of Robert Weiner Consulting, recently posted an article titled, Year End Donation Processing, to help guide nonprofit organizations in the proper acknowledgment of year-end gifts. As Robert mentions in his article, it is the responsibility of the donor to preserve documentation of charitable gifts in the case of an audit, but it is the responsibility of the nonprofit to correctly acknowledge receipt of the gift to the donor.

As year end approaches, your donors may be requesting annual giving receipts. Even if you supply tax information on each thank you letter you send, some donors may want a year-end total when they are preparing their tax returns. Remember, providing a thank you is not the last step in your appeal process, it is the bridge to the next gift! Sending a year-end tax receipt is another way to reach out to your donors and thank them for their support of your organization. With LGL, it’s easy to produce a year-end tax letter. Just create a list of 2011 donors, save the list, and create a mailing. Use our sample letter as a template or create your own.

There is no doubt this fall is a stressful time for fundraisers. The economy is tough (are we up or down today?), and the competition seems to be one step ahead. So what can you do to make a difference in your fall campaign?

One thing is to take your time when you sit down to sign those letters to your most steadfast donors. Don’t rush through the stack of letters, wishing you could remember more about those folks. Give yourself a break and tap into the knowledge you already have in your Little Green Light account.

Email marketing is an incredibly effective tool for keeping your donors and supporters informed about all the great work you are doing, and how their contributions have made that possible. But it can be a challenge to manage contacts in both your donor management system and an email marketing system, especially if it means importing and exporting data between both systems on a regular basis.

This is why, back in August, we rolled out a two-way integration with MailChimp that lets you manage your email marketing lists from within LGL, and keep both sets of contacts automatically in sync. After a simple setup/configuration within MailChimp and LGL, you can begin syncing information from your LGL account to MailChimp.

Synchronization between MailChimp and LGL is a two-way process, allowing you to add and remove constituents from your MailChimp mailing lists, and automatically receive updates when constituents unsubscribe or have their email bounce (if the email address is no longer valid).

Once you have it all set up, the process looks something like this:

The full integration guide is available if you want to see all the details, and rest assured that setting the whole thing up is really quite easy. Before you know it, you can be off and running with a fully integrated email marketing service. To quote one of our customers who recently went through this process:

“Twelve minutes from having no Mailchimp acount to having one integrated with LGL complete with webhooks and I’m ready to start email campaigns. Twelve. Seriously, that was awesome. And the help document rocked.”

– Jan Nedelka, Our House for Girls (Dover, NH)

Note: MailChimp is not affiliated with LGL in any way. The MailChimp service is completely separate and carries its own pricing structure, terms of service, and privacy policy. Please see http://www.mailchimp.com/ for details.

Also note: You must have a paying subscription to LGL (not using a Trial account) and be an administrator to use this feature in LGL. If you are not an admin, you will not see any of these features.

As mentioned earlier, our integration with Wufoo Forms is quite a time saver. Today, we’ll take a look at how you can set up Wufoo and LGL to collect volunteer hours online, and have them automatically saved into your LGL database.

Step 1: Build your form in Wufoo

Assuming that you already have a Wufoo account, you can set up your form like this:

If you don’t have a Wufoo account, or if you have questions about how the integration works in general, see our full Wufoo Integration Guide for more information.

Step 2: Connect the form to LGL

From the Settings > Integration Settings page, you can add new Wufoo forms. In this case, we’ll select the “Volunteer Hours” form:

To ensure that all the data is transferred appropriately, we can map the fields from the form, like so:

As a final part of the setup, we want to “Enable” the connection between Wufoo and LGL for this form. To do this, we check off the “Enabled” checkbox, and then set the Queue to “Volunteering”.

Step 3: Review the volunteering queue

With all of this set up, now we can start collecting information from our volunteers. They can do this online at any time, and you can either embed the form in your website or point them to a version hosted by Wufoo. Once the submissions start rolling in, you will want to review and approve them individually.

To get to the volunteering queue, first click on the Activity tab and then on the Volunteering option, from which point you can select the Volunteering queue view from the View: menu:

If there is no match found for the constituent based on the record matching preferences you’ve defined (name and email by default), it is a good practice to manually look for and set the constituent for each record. To set the constituent, click on the icon next to the LGL Constituent field, search for the constituent by name, and select the matching constituent record you want to use for this record, as appropriate:

Once you have set the constituent, you can save the record by clicking the Save button, and the volunteering hours will be automatically posted to the constituent’s record:

Or, if you don’t want to save the volunteering submission because it is not valid or for some other reason, you can click the Reject button to remove it from the active queue.

Our recent integration with Wufoo’s HTML Forms means that you can now collect information from your constituents online and have it automatically entered into your LGL database. Common examples include:

• Donation forms: Collect donation details and payments from your constituents online. These donations can be set up to automatically create gifts entries in LGL.
• Event forms: Collect RSVP, additional guest, and payment information for any event.
• Volunteering forms: Collect information about volunteer interests and/or participation.
• e-Newsletter signup forms: Particularly useful when working with our MailChimp integration (http://assets.littlegreenlight.com/docs/LGLMailChimp.pdf).

Wufoo strives to be the “easiest way to collect information over the internet.” Forms can be hosted by Wufoo or deployed somewhere else (for instance, on your website). Our flexible and powerful form-mapping tool allows you to take almost any form submission from Wufoo and put it in the right spot in LGL.

To get a full picture of how the integration works, check out our integration guide:

http://assets.littlegreenlight.com/docs/LGLWufooIntegration.pdf

Note: Wufoo is not affiliated with LGL in any way. The Wufoo service is completely separate and carries its own pricing structure, terms of service, and privacy policy. Please see http://www.wufoo.com for details.

Also note: Wufoo has great discounted pricing for non-profits: https://master.wufoo.com/forms/z7p7a1/.

I recently read a good blog post by a group that adapts Salesforce for nonprofits, describing how a nonprofit board didn’t want to move into “the cloud” because they felt the cloud wasn’t secure enough. Six months later their town was hit with a major storm and their office was struck by lightning, which completely fried their servers. They had no backup, and their data was gone. We wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone, no matter where their data is, but it highlights a couple of reasons why a solution in “the cloud” is actually a more secure option.

Backing up your data is critical but often neglected

I’ve had experience working with many non-profits that struggled with backup plans for their servers and data. Unless your non-profit can afford full-time IT people, plus consultants for off-site and redundant backup, it is unlikely your staff will be in a position to do the kind of backup needed to keep your vital donor records intact. According to the 2010 Southwestern Pennsylvania Nonprofit Technology Survey, published by the Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management:

“More than 20% of organizations report a manual system for data backup. This statistic can send chills down one’s spine as manual systems tend to fall off in the face of more ‘urgent’ tasks despite the fact that data loss tends to the tragic and unexpected. If we add the Tape Backup, External Hard Drive and Removable Media responses, there may be over a third of organizations depending on a human to remember to back up mission-critical data.”

Like most web-based solutions, Little Green Light takes care of all this for you. We work with premier hosting companies who provide redundant systems and ensure that our servers are protected from unauthorized physical access, weather, and electrical damage. We also provide automated daily backups of your data, keeping each copy in multiple locations for at least 90 days, so no matter what happens to your physical plant, your donor data will be available at Little Green Light.

Access control can be improved

Beyond just peace of mind when it comes to backups, LGL gives you some additional security benefits that you might not get when you keep your servers in house. In my experience it’s common to have desktop computer passwords on post-it notes or simply to have no password at all. Often this allows anyone using the computer to have the same access as the computer’s main user, whether or not they should. For those using systems that charge per user it is also common to acquire a high level of access for the first few users. Then, when someone needs to use the system temporarily or on a limited basis they may be allowed to use one of those accounts, receiving entry to areas of the system they shouldn’t have access to.

With Little Green Light you can add unlimited users for no extra cost, and define the appropriate levels of access for each user. Deactivating and reactivating users is also easy; you can turn a seasonal employee’s account on and off at a moment’s notice. And lastly, we have password retrieval and reset mechanisms built in, so you should be less tempted to write down your password on a post-it note next to your computer.

Like any good donor database should, LGL makes it easy to keep tabs on your LYBUNTs. The first step, of course, is to identify the constituents that fall into this group. From there you can build a list to use in other areas of LGL.

This tutorial walks you through the following:

• Search for LYBUNTs in Constituents and add them to a dynamic, auto-updating list
• Use the list in Fundraising and pull reports for LYBUNTs

These concepts can be applied to many other kinds of list building and reporting in LGL.

1. Navigate to the Constituents tab and clear the list history (so you don’t include anyone you might have already selected today if you were working on something else).

2. Search for constituents who gave a hard credit (Gift) last year, and add them all to the working list by clicking the “Select 723″ button.

3. Now search for constituents who have given anything this year. We are including soft credits, matching gifts, and pledges in this one to ensure we don’t flag anyone as a LYBUNT who has given in another way. Then we can “Deselect 521 results” to bring the total number of selected constituents down to 444. Note that this number is not simply the difference between the 723 donors who gave last year and the 521 who have given this year, because some of this year’s donors did not give last year.

4. Save the list and set it to auto-update as new gifts come in, removing anyone from the list who is no longer a LYBUNT.

5. Now that we have this list we can do a lot with it, including taking a look at the detailed giving history for these donors. To do that, we will navigate over to the Fundraising tab and run an advanced search:

6. Then we can set the search criteria to search by the list that we just built.

We will also want to add some dates (say for the last 5 years):

Now we can see the full list of gifts for our 2010-2011 LYBUNTS, going back 5 years. From here, it is possible to view the data in several different ways and then export it for review and analysis in Excel or another program:

We recognize there are a lot of foundations out there and each have their own guidelines and procedures for applying for a grant. As one program officer said to me, “when you’ve met one foundation you’ve met one foundation.” We won’t try to tell you how you can succeed in your actual proposals but we will show you how you can manage and track deadlines in LGL.

Let’s assume you are looking through some other organization’s wonderful Annual Report (we all do it). In that amazing $100,000+ category you see the X Foundation and you know it is about time to apply for your organization. You research a bit and confirm that it will be a great fit, plus the deadline for the Letter of Intent is more than a month away – a lifetime!

You log in to LGL and make sure X Foundation has a record and the contact information is up to date. You put some of your research into the record so your colleague doesn’t have to search in ten places for it to believe you that it is worth applying for. Since you’re feeling bold you set up a goal for $100,000 and line up the initial tasks, with deadlines, for you and your team (if you have one). It would look something like this in LGL:

Goal for X Foundation

We’ll then presume success so here is the high level view of the relevant deadlines for the X Foundation:

• Oct 1st – Letter of Intent. When that is done and sent off – easy of course – mark it done and upload it into LGL for future reference. Record the confirmations and other information.
• On Nov 1st – Success, you’ve been invited to submit a full proposal.
• Dec 1st – Full Proposal. Written, submitted to foundation and uploaded in LGL.

Once you've actually submitted the proposal it is easy to see it, together with others, in a list of "pending" proposals.

• Jan 25th – Congratulations! The Board of X Foundation approved a grant of $100,000 for your organization! Enter the pledge in LGL.
• Feb 3rd – Agree to the terms of the grant, return the paperwork and set up the key tasks you need to meet the terms (interim report in 6 months, final report in 12 months).
• Feb 24th – Foundation sends check and you enter the gift against the pledge.

When the actual check arrives you can apply it against the installment you set up previously, set acknowledgment options, establish follow-up tasks, and attach files

• Jun 25th – interim report done and uploaded into LGL.
• Jan 25th following year – final report submitted and uploaded into LGL

Along the way all phone calls, emails, notes from site visits and other communications needed to cultivate and steward the grant are tracked and recorded in LGL. Internal deadlines and documents needed can be tracked as well – if your program and finance colleagues need to do certain things by certain dates you can manage those deadlines in there and upload their internal documents too.

At the end of 16 months you not only secured $100,000 for your mission, you created a comprehensive track record of how you did it in a web-based system you or your successors can reference anywhere anytime. Plus, putting each of those tasks and documents in LGL takes less time than reading this blog post!

Happy 4th of July weekend! To celebrate our nation’s independence, we’ll be rolling out some new updates to Little Green Light (LGL) on Monday, July 5th. Here’s quick overview of the major changes, with more details to follow below:

• Volunteering: Track volunteering commitments and time for any constituent. Volunteering information will appear as Activity, and will also be summarized on individual constituent records, where applicable.
• Lists on the go: Harness the power of lists from any constituent search, selecting constituents in bulk or individually. Then you can save them into a permanent list, or just do something like update the categories or add a task to them all.
• Relative date searches: Instead of typing in or selecting an exact date for search purposes (i.e., looking up constituents by Gift dates), relative dates like “1 week ago” or “5 years ago” or “today” or “5 days hence” are accepted. When used with a list that auto-updates, this can be a great way to keep tabs on lapsed donors, for example.
• Document updates: Assign customizable categories to documents (so it’s easier to see a Report or Proposal), and make particular documents “sticky,” so they’ll always be at the top of your list.
• Dashboard activity: On the dashboard, under the calendar (now compressed to save space), you can see the list of your activity by day. The default setting is for the current week, but you can filter by other date criteria as well.
• Activity sharing: Sometimes it makes sense to display certain activities (tasks, contact reports, and notes) on more than one record. For instance, if you are having a meeting with one representative of the bank, you might want the main bank record to note that this is happening, but it would be a drag to enter the same task twice. With activity sharing, you can display any task on multiple related constituent records.

Volunteering

Basic volunteer commitment and time tracking is now a standard part of LGL, for all accounts, so you can add volunteering information to any constituent in the Related activity section, like so:

Commitments

If it makes sense to track someone’s volunteer commitment, you can add a new commitment and time entries at the same time:

Volunteer time

Or, if you just need to add some volunteer time, you can do that as well. Commitments are not required:

Volunteering summary

All volunteering activity is listed in the Related activity section, and on the top-level Activity tab, but it is also summarized directly below the giving summary on the constituent details page:

Lists on the go

List building capabilities are now integrated with the standard search on the Constituents tab. This is handy for cases when you want to select a few constituents and update their categories, or add a task to them all in bulk, but you don’t need to keep the list around for a long time. It’s also a much more convenient way to start building any list of constituents.

If you want to save a list from this point, click on the Save list button. If you want to clear the list, you can do so from within the More actions menu, or from the History menu.

Relative date searches

Relative dates like “1 year ago”, “18 months ago”, or “2 weeks hence” can now be used in all of the date range searches. For example, if you want to have a current list of all donors who have not given for more than two years from today, that could be set up as follows:

1. Search for donors who haven’t given in the last two years

2. Select them

3. Save the list

Since this list will auto-update every day, it will always be current, and can be used as the basis for other lists. You can also use the following handy shortcuts for dealing with relative fiscal year dates:

• This fiscal start: The start of the current fiscal year
• This fiscal end: The end of the current fiscal year
• Last fiscal start: The start of the previous fiscal year
• Last fiscal end: The end of the previous fiscal year

These would be useful for setting up LYBUNT (donors who gave last year but not this one) and SYBUNT (some year but not this) lists that stay automatically up to date.

Document updates

We made several changes to the Documents tab, and also to documents in general.

Document categories

First and foremost, you can assign customizable categories to documents, and then filter by them. This allows for better organization of your documents. Categories can be edited on the Settings page, under Menu Items.

Sticky documents

Sometimes it is helpful if a document remains always at the top of your Documents list. This might be best practice notes or general coding guidelines that you’d like to have easy access to all the time. Now you can easily make particular documents “sticky,” which means they’ll always be at the top of the list.

You can make this change while editing or uploading a document:

You can also make the change while viewing the Documents list by clicking the star icon:

Dashboard activity

A listing of the current week’s activity, grouped by day, is now available on the dashboard, underneath the calendar.

You can filter the results by date range, and also by user. By default it shows the current week, and all users.

Entries for each day can be collapsed and expanded.

Activity sharing

To help better track communications with families and organizations, where relationships are key, you can now share an activity with one or more related constituents.

For example, when we add or edit a task for our contact at the fictional Accessible Arts Foundation, we can share that task if it is relevant:

Then it will display on the Accessible Arts Foundation Related Activity list, as follows:

That way another member of your team who looks at either record will see the most relevant recent activity. Additionally, if Marcy Boroughs leaves Accessible Arts to work somewhere else, the record of this task will remain. Shared activity will display with a highlighted background, and show the constituent that it is directly connected to.

Some organizations choose to enter each donation twice, once in their donor management system and again in their accounting system, as a way to provide checks and balances in their system. The upside is increased protection against errors while the downside is increased time by both development and finance to reconcile their records on a regular (usually monthly) basis. Little Green Light always allowed for the basic export of all the gift information you’d need for this kind of reconciliation, but we recently got a request from a customer to help her make the whole process a bit easier and more efficient.

Instead of the usual export in CSV format (that required extra cleanup and formatting in Excel), Megan Farkas, the development coordinator at the Sant Bani School, wanted to be able to pull a particular month’s deposits in a format she could just print or email without alteration. On the surface, those extra steps might not seem like a big deal, but they fly in the face of our belief that Little Green Light should give you the information that you want in the format you need without requiring you to jump through hoops. To that end, we worked with Megan to create a custom PDF export format that provides her with exactly the information she needs. Here’s what the new workflow looks like when she wants to grab the previous month’s deposit report from Little Green Light:

1. Go to the Fundraising Tab and select “deposit date” on the date filter, then choose “Last month” from the dropdown
2. Click the “Export results” button and select the “Deposits” export type; save the export
3. Download/print the results

Just like that, in about 30 seconds flat she has a nice-looking PDF with all of the information she needs in a format that she doesn’t have to re-create every month. Here’s what it looks like with some test data:

The only thing that’s missing now is automating the process so Little Green Light will email her the report at the beginning of every month. That’s a feature we have in the works, and it should be ready (along with a slew of other reporting updates) within the next month or two. We’d like to thank Megan for working with us to provide her with a better report. We encourage all of our customers to do the same, so please don’t hesitate to let us know when you’d like to do so.