Documenting and reporting on your anonymous donors and their gifts just got easier in LGL.

To document a donor’s wish to remain anonymous, edit their Constituent record and check the ‘Gives anonymously?’ box in the Categories section.

Or, if you only wish to indicate a specific gift that is given anonymously, check the ‘Anonymous?’ box in the Gift Entry screen.

And, when it comes time to generate your list of constituents for your annual report, you can exclude details about your anonymous donors with a single click.

Click on image to watch a 2 minute video explanation.

Introduction

This pyramid represents a simple segmentation you can use when planning your annual appeals. The higher up in the pyramid, the more important the segment is in terms of reaching your fundraising goals. That’s because the higher in the pyramid, the more likely these constituents will contribute to your organization. At the same time, however, the higher you go up the pyramid, the fewer constituents you’re likely to have in your database.

We’ve posted a two minute video explanation.

Definitions

• Invites: People you are asking to give at a higher level (you’re inviting them to invest more)
• Renewals: People you are asking to make a contribution equal to the last one they gave
• Recaptures: Lapsed donors you’re trying to get back
• Transitions: People who are engaged in your organization as volunteers or event attendees, but have never made a $ contribution
• First Time Donors: You guessed it; they’ve never contributed or volunteered at your organization

How do you use this segmentation?
First off, the pyramid tells you where to focus your efforts. You will probably write a letter to every one of these segments, but you should also have your executive director sign and add hand-written postscripts for the Invite and Renewal segments ahead of any others. And you should consider making phone calls to the top few segments, especially the high value prospects in those segments.

Secondly, the amount you ask for will vary by segment. Yes, you will certainly want to take into account past giving amounts and giving capacity, but the higher in the pyramid the more you can push toward a higher ask amount. That’s because as you move up the pyramid, the more engaged these constituents are with your organization, so the more they are likely to be willing to invest in your cause.

And last but not least, you should measure your fundraising results by segment. Measure your conversion rate (% that give of those you’ve asked) and median giving amount (the mid-point of giving amounts) by segment, and year over year. The reason is that if you blend all your metrics together, you’ll miss key insights. For example, if your conversion rate for your Renewal segment drops from 70% to 50%, that’s an indication of a serious problem. But if you only measure total metrics, that number could get lost among the more voluminous segments.

We’re delighted that a growing number of political campaigns have discovered that LGL can help them do all this work. With so many state elections due this year, it could be big: Out of the nearly 7,400 state legislature seats in the U.S., almost 6,400 are up for election in November 2012.

Steve Robinson is the treasurer for Oregon State Rep. Nancy Nathanson (District 13 in Eugene).  He said “LGL is a big step up from the database we used to use. It is much easier to keep track of communications with supporters of various types—individuals, organizations, lobbyists—and all the activities—letters, volunteering, fundraising—that are critical in a campaign.”

Shemia Fagan, running for District 51 in the Oregon House of Represenatives, has found LGL easy to use and helpful in tracking information about everyone involved with her campaign. ”I was amazed at how quick and easy it was to get up and running on LGL,” said Ms. Fagan, “and as our campaign starts to heat up, LGL is my only database management system and it will help me stay on top of the vast amounts of tasks, names, and information that need to be managed in a winning campaign.”

We hope we can be part of the winning formula for all of our customers who are on the campaign trail.

Here at Little Green Light, we use Little Green Light ourselves to manage our relationships with customers and prospective customers. It’s a great way to make sure the product works!

The Problem

We want to manage two ongoing mailing lists, one monthly and one that’s semi-annual. The membership of these lists will be determined by the status a constituent has, as well as other attributes. People should also be able to add or remove themselves from these mailing lists.

 The Solution

LGL uses several attributes to populate the two constituent Lists and syncs those lists to MailChimp. If people want to add themselves to one of these lists, they can do so on a Wufoo form, or if they want to unsubscribe, they can do that using the Unsubscribe link that’s always present in emails going out from MailChimp.

Step by Step

1. In LGL, define your List based on a set of attributes that capture the segment you want on your mailing list.
2. Sync that list with your MailChimp account.
3. Use MailChimp to send out beautiful-looking emails.

The Women and Girls’ Fund needed an efficient way to email invitations and track attendance to a variety of events each year. Being able to maintain all that information in their database is critical to effectively reaching out to their constituents for future philanthropic support.

The Solution

The WGF created an event in LGL, then designed an RSVP form in Wufoo. By embedding a link to that form in the email invites they sent out from MailChimp and syncing the RSVP form to LGL, they could easily see who was invited, who planned to attend, and who did not respond. And, they were able to generate quick reports for each event.

Step by Step

1. Manage appeal lists and segments in Little Green Light and sync that to WGF’s MailChimp account.
2. Create the email campaign in MailChimp, and embed a link to a Wufoo RSVP form.
3. Collect entries from the Wufoo form directly into LGL for easy reporting of RSVP status for each event.

Benefit

“Prior to using LGL, the volunteers engaged in the marketing and development work of the WGF did not have easy access to data regarding their donors, event attendees, or committee members.  That data was maintained by the WGF’s parent organization. With LGL’s integration capabilities with Wufoo and MailChimp, event committee members now have tools at their fingertips which allow them to better analyze the success of the event and their marketing efforts and will facilitate better planning of future events and activities.” Timi Paccioretti  (Timi, LGL’ s Account Manager also serves on the WGF board as their Publicity Chair.)

How To

MailChimp: Once you have a MailChimp account, you can connect it to your LGL account and start syncing up lists of constituents between your two accounts. Read our MailChimp how-to article to get started.

Wufoo: It’s easy to build Wufoo forms; the possibilities are endless. To see a list of forms that apply well to schools and nonprofits, including a volunteer form, see Wufoo community templates. You should also take a look at our Wufoo how-to article on connecting your Wufoo account to your LGL account.

The LifeBook Movement needed a simple, automated process to bring their one-time and recurring online donations into their donor database.

The Solution

The LifeBook Movement uses a Wufoo form that’s tied into their PayPal account. Donations are synced with their LGL account automatically. They’ve integrated their one-time donations directly from Wufoo to LGL, as well as their recurring donations from PayPal to LGL.

Step by Step

1. LifeBook collects online donations using a Wufoo form, tied to PayPal for processing.
2. Wufoo is integrated in their LGL account.
3. The details pass directly into their LGL account.

Benefit

Said Adam Malanga, Vice President, “We’ve been using the LGL and Wufoo integration for a while, and it’s been great for our organization. However, sometimes our agents need to process donations through Paypal. Now with the direct Paypal and LGL integration, our LGL account will stay up-to-date no matter how our agents process donations.”

How To

PayPal: Setting this up in your LGL account takes two simple steps: (1) activate your Instant Payment Notification (IPN) handler, and (2) configure your PayPal account to use this IPN. See our how-to article in the LGL Knowledge Base for more information.

Wufoo: It’s easy to build Wufoo forms; the possibilities are endless. To see a list of forms that apply well to schools and nonprofits, including a volunteer form, see Wufoo community templates. You should also take a look at our Wufoo how-to article on connecting your Wufoo account to your LGL account.

Like many organizations who perform phonathons each year, the tremendous amount of time it takes to organize calling efforts and then enter the call results into a database can thwart even the most dedicated development offices. Cornell Hillel faced just such a problem.

The Solution

LGL’s appeal segmentation functionality easily allows users to prioritize their calling efforts and produce individual call sheets. Pair that with a Wufoo form and volunteer callers can enter their call results directly into the online form. Once you’ve synced your form to LGL, your call results will automatically be added to your appeal and the constituents’ records.

Step by Step

1. Cornell Hillel uses LGL to create discrete segments for calling.
2. A Wufoo form allows for easy data entry by any volunteer.
3. That form maps to their LGL database so the data flows right in.

Benefit

Rachel Ossman, Senior Development Associate for Cornell Hillel, sees great benefit in this approach. “Utilizing this process made entering gifts and tracking the progress of the phonathon easy. In addition, by using LGL’s segmentation feature we were more effective in developing our phonathon strategy. Follow-up with pledges was very easy as everything became integrated and eliminated the need to ‘double enter’ things. By creating tags through the mapping we were able to track those people who had wrong numbers, declined to make a gift, or requested more information. Given that we held phonathons in multiple locations, this process ensured that our data was entered back into LGL in a quick and error-free way.”

How To

It’s easy to build Wufoo forms; the possibilities are endless. To see a list of forms that apply well to schools and nonprofits, including a volunteer form, see Wufoo community templates. You should also take a look at our how-to article on connecting your Wufoo account to your LGL account.

That’s exactly what you will be able to do with the new reporting features (to be released in April), which will be easily accessible from the Reports page or from any search results page. Here’s a short video preview, or you can read on below for more details.

What’s in a report?

Each report in LGL has two main ingredients:

• The search that defines which records to pull when exporting results
• The report template, which defines the format of the report (CSV or PDF) and the set of fields you want to include (for CSV reports)

Building a brand-new report is a four-step process, and the report building form walks you through each step, as follows:

1. Define your search criteria
2. Customize your report output
3. Preview the report
4. Save and/or export the results

Define your search criteria

Searching for records to pull in a report can be accomplished using the standard Advanced Search functionality.

Customize your report output

This is where the magic happens. You can add fields, remove fields, reorder fields, customize their field labels, and much more.

Preview the report

For CSV exports, you can preview the results either via the Quick Preview button (useful if you are in the midst of customizing a report) or in the Preview step:

Save and/or export the results

Lastly, when you are happy with the report, you can save it as a new canned or reusable report or just export the results (right away, or on a schedule).

Working with reports and exports

Most of your report management will take place on the new Reports page, which replaces the Exports page and adds many more features and functionality. On the Reports page, you can review and manage reports and exports for Constituent, Gift & Pledge, Goal, Contact Report, Task, Volunteering, and Note information.

Reports

All of your canned or saved reports for a given type of record will be listed on the Reports tab. To generate an export from one of these, click on the Export button, then Save Export, and a new export will be generated using that report. You can also edit reports, copy them and make changes, and/or archive reports you don’t intend to keep using. By default, we have included several canned reports for each record type, which correspond to all of the Export Types that were previously available in LGL:

Scheduled reports

The scheduled reports page lists all of your reports that are scheduled for automatic generation and email delivery.

Archived reports

You can archive reports that you don’t think you’ll use on a regular basis. This is a good way to get them out of the way but also keep them around in case you ever want to refer to them. For instance, if you don’t need or use some of the default LGL reports, you can archive them to get them off your main list of reports:

Exports

All of your exports (including those from before this release) are available for review and download. You can also take any previously run export and either re-run it or convert it into either a scheduled report or a saved, canned report.

Wrapping up

There’s obviously a whole lot more to say about these new reporting features, but we think you’ll find them quite exciting and useful.  We’ll be updating the knowledge base with more tutorials and videos prior to release and then will follow it up with some dedicated training group training sessions.

Simple by default, powerful when you need it to be

The new advanced search form looks a lot like the old advanced search form. The default behavior is unchanged, so if you just need to run a simple name search, you don’t need to jump through any hoops to get there. But, when you need to pull that perfect list of constituents, you will have many more options at your disposal, with a lot more power and flexibility.

Additionally, advanced searching is now available in more places; you can build the same kinds of advanced searches (and save them) for Constituents, Gifts & Pledges, Goals, Contact Reports, Tasks, Notes, and Volunteering info.

Here is a quick overview of the key advanced searching features and updates

Saved searches

This is a big time saver, as you can save any search that you want to use more than once. Saved searches are just a click away:

Searches can be saved so that they are visible only to you, or “Shared” with different user groups/roles so they are “Global.”

Combine multiple queries in a single search

You’ve always been able to combine multiple criteria in a single search in LGL. But now you can combine not just multiple criteria in one search, you can also combine multiple searches, each with its own set of criteria.

Let’s say we want to find everyone in our database who gave more than $50 total by this time last year, but has not given at least $50 this year.  This can be done quite easily by combining the results of two queries:

You can combine queries in the following ways:

• and all: results must match all of the criteria defined in the first query AND the second query
• and any: results must match all of the criteria defined in the first query AND at least one of the criteria defined in the second query
• or all: results must match all of the criteria defined in the first query OR the second query
• or any: results must match all of the criteria defined in the first query OR at least one of the criteria defined in the second query
• and none: results must match all of the criteria defined in the first query AND NOT match all of the criteria defined by the second query

Note: you can combine more than two queries together in one search. When combining more than two queries, order of operations becomes a bit more important. This is where adding nested queries can be useful, so that you could build a search like this one: (Query 1 OR Query 2) AND NOT (Query 3). In this case, Query 2 is a nested query, and will be evaluated together with Query 1 before evaluating Query 3.

Relative date searching

Searching by date is now easily accomplished for “Relative” dates. For instance, in the lybunt search above, we used last fiscal to last fiscal for the date values, which means that search will always be current, relative to whatever date you run it.

Additional search functions

Several new search matching functions for different types of fields are now available:

• Text fields. You can match on text fields with the following methods: Contains, Does not contain, Equals, Does not equal, Is blank, or Is not blank. The one special case here is the Constituent “Names” search, which queries multiple name fields, and only supports “Contains” and “Does not contain” searches.
• Numeric fields. You can query numeric fields for values that are Greater than/equal, Less than/equal, Between (a range search), Greater than, Less than, Equals, and Does not equal. The Between search is inclusive on both ends, so that a search for gifts between $50 and $100 will include gifts of both $50 and $100, and everything in between.
• Menu-driven fields. Menu-driven and multiple choice fields all support searches that Include a set of values, or Do not include a set of values.

Recap

All of these new features will make it easier to get the exact set of records that you want/need, and they go hand in hand with a major upgrade to LGL’s reporting functionality. We’ll cover the new reporting features in a separate post very soon.

Politz Day School’s Annual Dinner attracts hundreds of guests each year. Guests are honored, sponsorships are received, tickets sold, and advertising information collected. Politz needed to manage all of this information in one place easily and efficiently, as well as be able to track credit to school families for tickets sold to the event.

The Solution

Politz created a comprehensive RSVP form in Wufoo to collect and accept ticket, advertising, and sponsorship payments. By syncing that form to LGL, Politz was easily able to create and  manage custom event categories to track seating arrangements and the names of guests, and to assign ticket sales credit to school family sellers.

Step by Step

1. The Wufoo RSVP form can be placed on your website, shared in a link in an email, and even added as a QR code to a postcard mailing.
2. LGL tracks RSVPs to the event, conveniently showing counts for each attribute you care to track.

Benefit

Suzy Levenbrown, Director of Admissions and Marketing, was very happy with the integration. “The benefit of having everything integrated with Wufoo and LGL was a huge time saver. The ability to save the data from the integration queue as opposed to having to manually enter the data was one time saver. Having email confirmation of the payment automatically generated was another. One of the greatest benefits was the ability of team members to see what was going on in real time.  The event honorees loved being able to go in and see who had given so they knew who they needed to follow up with.”

How To

It’s easy to build Wufoo forms; the possibilities are endless. To see a list of forms that apply well to schools and nonprofits, including a volunteer form, see Wufoo community templates. You should also take a look at our how-to article on connecting your Wufoo account to your LGL account.