Inform: Communicating with your constituents and sharing with them how your mission comes alive in your organization is vital to the first “I” in cultivation. Begin by developing a comprehensive outreach strategy for all your constituents. Your data can play an important role in helping you define the messages that will be most meaningful to them. Segmenting by groups and attributes and crafting messages specific to interest and affiliation will help you be more effective in engaging constituents in the life of your organization.

Imagine that your school needs a new gym floor. Instead of sending out the same information to everyone, consider breaking your database into segments and crafting a message specific to those in each segment. Sample segments might include former student athletes, parents of current athletes, coaches, state championship team members, past Athletic Fund donors, or vendors. The better you code your constituents in your database, the better your personal outreach opportunities are.

Don’t forget to collect current and complete contact information for your constituents, including their communication preferences. It’s important to adhere to their wishes—i.e., do they prefer to be contacted only by email? Do they wish not to receive a solicitation request via a phone call? Be sure to capture this data and use it when planning your outreach efforts.

Involve: Now it’s time to invite your constituents to be involved in the life of your organization. This can take many forms—invitations, events, or activities; recruiting assistance on volunteer committees or boards; asking for advice or to speak to your organization’s members—the possibilities are endless. There’s no need to add a bunch of new activities to your already busy calendar; look for ways to invite your constituents to activities you are already doing. Then be sure to track these invitations in your database and document responsiveness. You will learn valuable information about your constituents that will help you further understand their interests and their willingness to be engaged with you.

Using the example above, let’s look at how segmentation can also be valuable at this stage. When inviting constituents to be engaged, consider their interests. This could be as simple as inviting vendors to a basketball game and allowing them to set up a business display. Or inviting the members of your State Championship team to a playoff game with this year’s team and coaches during half time. You could ask a former coach to join your Athletic Committee, or invite a former team captain to give out the MVP award at your upcoming athletic banquet. During this invite stage, you are providing opportunities for them to experience your mission and interact with you, not asking them to give financially.

Invest: Ah, the moment you’ve been waiting for! Your constituent has been informed about your organization, its needs, and how they can be involved in its mission. They’ve begun to be actively engaged in the life of your organization. Now, they are ready to be asked to invest in your mission by making a gift. And, yes, they do need to be asked. Be careful that you do not get stuck in the “inform and invite” stages and forget about the ask. You’ve been doing a great job cultivating them, now use the knowledge you’ve gained (and documented) to ask for a gift in the most personal way possible. For ideas on developing a comprehensive appeal strategy, check out our recent video on the Six Steps to a Successful Appeal.

Now that you’ve gained a new donor, remember that proper stewardship will help ensure they remain an active donor. Acknowledging gifts promptly and personally and sharing how the gift will benefit your organization are paramount. In fact, 84 percent of donors said they would give again to your organization if they received a personalized thank you that acknowledged specifically what their gift benefitted.

Does your donor database help you cultivate and steward your prospects and donors? Do you need a way to manage those relationships more efficiently? Take advantage of Little Green Light’s 30-day free trial today and see how it can help you develop stronger relationships with your constituents and be more effective in your outreach efforts.

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.

Here are some ways you can utilize volunteers in your fundraising campaigns and promote their involvement:

• Invite volunteers to serve on your campaign’s leadership committee. Note that a request from the head of your organization or a respected member of your community increases the likelihood that your volunteers will say yes! (Be sure you clearly define expectations and the time commitment involved.)
• Create campaign-specific letterhead that includes the names of your leadership volunteers, showing donors that your volunteers are invested in the success of your campaign.
• Upon receipt of a gift, ask volunteer leaders to make a thank you call within 24 hours.
• Ask a volunteer to host a reception for prospects in their home or office.
• Profile a leadership volunteer in your organization’s newsletter or magazine.
• Invite volunteers to send a hand-written note to first-time donors.
• Ask volunteers to be a table or team captain for your next event. (Volunteers can extend invitations to others within their circles of influence, thereby increasing your reach.)
• Invite leadership volunteers to participate in a prospect rating session—they should be able to provide valuable first-hand knowledge about your prospects.
• Include volunteers in your personal solicitation visits. Donors are influenced by volunteer commitment to your mission.
• Hold an appeal kick-off event, inviting the previous year’s donors, and introduce the members of your volunteer leadership committee. Creating opportunities for your donors to meet and interact with your volunteer leaders will increase donor interest in giving.

Volunteer leadership is integral in any successful fundraising campaign. When planning your next event or appeal, consider how the use of volunteers can expand your reach and increase your fundraising efforts. You’ll be glad you did!

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.

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.

• 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/.

- Call it Advancement, not Development. The role of the fundraising professional is to advance the mission of the organization. This is a much broader responsibility than simply raising money, which is just a means to an end. There needs to be a strategic plan that lays out what the organization will accomplish and what it will take to accomplish that mission. Then seek contributors to join on the path to deliver that mission.

- Similarly, seek investments, not donations. We’re not begging for money, we’re asking people to invest in the mission, to join us.

- All donors aren’t equal. We don’t want to dismiss any of our donors, of course, but the truth is that a very large percentage of gifts come from a few people. One speaker said the old 80/20 rule has become more like 95/5 … 95 percent of contributions will come from 5 percent of donors. Every community has contributors with big potential to give. There are 9 million Americans with over $1 million “in the bank” (not including real estate).

- Techniques that will get small investments are direct mail, phonathons, events, online donations. Large investments always rely on personal meetings. Ideally the advancement director and the head of the organization meet in person with the donor individually (or with their spouse, whichever they prefer). Think about the proper setting and spend a lot of time cultivating that relationship before making the ask. Narrow your list of major donor prospects to just 10-15 people for the entire year.

- Get out there. One speaker said he heard this long ago and still does it … put an index card on your desk that says, “if you can read this, you’re not doing your job,” meaning you need to be out meeting with people. At schools it’s very easy to get caught up doing all the smaller things (like running events). Don’t let the principal (or executive director) suck you into managing events, etc. because then you’ll never be out developing those personal relationships that will result in the major gifts. Tell the principal what you are doing and how you prioritize your work.

- Build personal relationships with your constituents. Building a relationship is reciprocal (give and take), just like building personal relationships with friends. Consider the people in your own life. You might have a large group that you interact with through annual holiday cards. That’s a great way to reach a lot of people. But if your only interaction with them ever is sending Christmas cards, then pretty soon that’s all you’ll get back in return. Nobody would call you to go and see a movie (let alone other activities and commitments indicative of a growing relationship). You need to develop that personal connection by meeting in small groups and one-on-one and by giving the person something of value to them.

- State a good case for your cause. You can start with the logical fact-based case (such as “We are short $800 per student so we need donations”), but you have to make an emotional connection with your donors. “The world needs people like those who come out of this school” goes much further to get at the benefit, and “you can help make this happen” ties it back to the donor’s actions. It’s also critical to inspire action, and often recognition can do this. For really large gifts, it’s putting a name on a new classroom or lab.

- Make the ask. One presenter said he wants the head of the school to be the one making the ask. The advancement director helps lay the groundwork and moves the relationship along, but the ultimate ask should come from the ultimate authority at the school (at least for the biggest gifts). Holy Cross has also come up with a “rule of 7,” meaning there should be seven touches and “thank you’s” to the contributor before asking them for money again.

- Look to your most loyal contributors for planned giving (bequests in a will). People who give consistently year in and year out are likely to be good prospects to make legacy gifts in their wills. Stories abound of the faithful contributor who gave consistently but in low amounts, who surprised the organization with a large gift in his or her will. Go meet with these loyal contributors. Ask why they give. Cultivate that relationship. In line with recognition, create a legacy society of some sort in which you honor those who have made that ultimate gift.

- Sign your letters by hand. Hand signing letters is critical in direct mail campaigns. Personal P.S. notes are even better. Use real postage, not indicia.

Primary contributors to these pearls of wisdom include:

- Larry Furey, Partners in Mission (www.partnersinmission.com)
- Schuyler Lehman, Mission Advancement Partners (missionadvancement.com)
- Michael Guillot, Gadd Guillot (www.gaddguillot.com)

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:

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!

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.