| Have a question or problem using DonorPerfect Online? Don't forget that DPO has its own tech support services available to answer your questions. This support is included in your annual maintenance agreement, so take advantage of it! Email them at
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| Submit a question about fundraising and alumni outreach to be answered by the Tech Program Team, a Mentor, or one of your peers! We'll include one Q&A in each future issue of the eNewsletter. Check out this issue's Q&A below. |
| Now you can find all of our previous GIJP Technology Program eNewsletters online! Click here to find a list of all our previous eNewsletters.
Let us know if there is any content you'd like to include in future issues! |
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Attention DPO Users!
Did you know DonorPerfect Online offers a regular eNewsletter with tips for using the system as well as information about updates to the system?
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Online Event Registration Tools |
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Is it difficult to process registrations for your various alumni, parent, and donor events? Are your processes rife with data entry errors? We have been receiving many questions about how to more effectively register attendees for events.
There are many tools available to help with this process, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. If your web provider offers online event registration that is integrated with your constituent database, that's great. And, if you use DonorPerect Online and the Alumni Portal, let us know if you are interested in using the integrated Online Event Registration forms. For the rest of you, we have reviewed a number of tools available online to help improve the event registration process for both the organization and participants. Please click here to view our blog entry with all the details... |
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Message from Sue Kline, Director, GIJP |
 Welcome to our latest Technology Program eNewsletter. We continue to refine our offerings to best support the needs of all GIJP participants.
Thanks to Holly Guncheon from Herzl Camp, who helped us learn how to utilze DonorPerfect Online filters for tracking gifts and other activity up to the current date (i.e., to report on total gifts received for the current Fiscal Year). See below for more details. If you have any tips you'd like to share with the team, please contact me or the Technology Program team.
P.S. Don't forget that all of our conference materials are available on our Conference Resource page. In addition, due to popular demand, we have created a Channel on YouTube to show the three keynote addresses from the first day of our conference: Michael Steinhardt, Nancy Winship, and Rabbi Ethan Tucker. Feel free to share these links with anyone who will find them helpful. |
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The Technology Program Team |
 Kevin Martone, Technology Program Manager
 Joe Ruotolo, Business Systems Analyst |
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Tip of the Month from Holly Guncheon, Herzl Camp |
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Holly Guncheon of Herzl Camp wanted to prepare a list of all donors who have given to Herzl for the first time during the current Fiscal Year. She could use one of the many Standard Pledge and Gift reports in her donor database (DPO) to find the information she needed, with a little extra sorting in Excel. However, she noted that this is a report she will be running frequently and wondered if there was a better way to filter her results.
Her solution? A filter. Filters are simply tools that restrict the data that is shown in a report or spreadsheet. For example, you may have a report that shows all donations for the current Annual Campaign. A filter could be applied to that report to only display online gifts for that Campaign. Most donor databases should offer some sort of filter functionality. Even Excel has filters. Please let us know if you need any help using filters in your database.
In DPO, you can create custom filters on any field(s). In addition, there are Standard Filters that already exist. For example, the "New Donors this Month" and "New Donors this (Calendar) Year" filters show only those consistuents who gave for the first time over the specific time period. These filters use the INITIAL_GIFT_DATE field, which stores the date of the first gift entered into DPO for each donor.
Holly wanted a similar filter that would only give her gifts from the current Fiscal Year. To do so in DPO, she opened the Filter selection screen by selecting Utilities --> Filters. Holly selected "Set Selection Filter" and clicked on "Build New Filter." Next, she selected Main/Bio -->INITIAL_GIFT_DATE --> Between --> <the first day of the current Fiscal year> --> <the last day of the current Fiscal Year>. She saved the filter and selected "Share across all Users" so that all Herzl Camp staff can use the filter for their reporting.
Now Holly has a filter she can use to report only on those donors who have given to Herzl for the first time this Fiscal Year. She will need to create a new Filter for next Fiscal Year, following the same steps.
Note that Holly also discovered that you can create a Filter that will automatically compute today's date. For example, if you wanted to report on all gifts given today, you can create a new Filter that uses "Exactly Equal to" TODAY (instead of Between). If you would like help creating a filter with this type of automated computation, please let us know.
Have you found any other great uses of Filters in DPO (or another donor database)? Have you learned any lessons along the way? Let us know! We are sure that others can learn from your experiences. |
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This Month's Q&A - How can I use technology for sending out Pledge Reminders or Invoices? |
Question: It takes us a long time to process Invoices each month, and we still seem to leave out a few by mistake. Is there a way to make this process easier and less mistake-prone?
Answer:
Most donor databases include functionality to help you manage this process, as it is a core fundraising practice. At the very least, a donor management system should allow you to report on all pledges due over a certain time period, export that data, and then use Mail merge to intregrate the data with an existing Word template. Some systems will also track when reminders have been sent for a particular outstanding pledge. If you are using a donor database, check with their support department about how to process these reminders. If you are maintaining your donor and gift data in Excel or some other self-created database, we can help you use your data in a simple mail merge to create your reminders - email us for help.
If you use DonorPerfect Online, we have reviewed their Pledge Processing functionality, which is located in Mailings --> Pledge Processing. The Pledge Processing function basically creates a file to be merged with a Word template as decribed above. In addition, it calculates a Delinquent amount due for each donor and tracks when the last Pledge Reminders were processed in the system. However, please note that Pledge Processing must be run consistently for the Delinquent Amount field to be calculated correctly. If not, it could be under or over-reporting the actual amount due from the donor. Therefore, you may want to instead use their Custom Reporting functionality to prepare a mail merge. Click here to review a document that discusses these two options and how they work in DPO...
If you have any other questions you would like us to answer in a future eNewsletter, please let us know! |
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What's Next? |
In our next eNewsletter, you MIGHT find:
- Information about technology tools to help your Board run more effectively.
- Information about our upcoming User Group!
- and more!!
Is there another subject you'd like to learn more about? Please contact us with suggestions. | |
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