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Chaverware June 2010 newsletter
Greetings!
For many of our clients, it's THAT time of year. The end of one fiscal year and the start of the next. As a result, many of you are in need of help from our support team in setting up your billing for the 2010-11 year. Please be patient as our wait times for support are longer than usual, but be assured we will get back to you and help you with your needs.
If you are using Chaverware 5.2 or above, please see the support column to the right with an issue regarding billing address in 5.2 and above.
***We will be closed for the observance of July 4th
on Monday July 5th**
Wishing you all an early wonderful July 4th weekend,
Rob |
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Utilizing Chaverware for Capital Campaign Tracking
Brought to you by Norm Pollack of Chaverware. Norm, former owner of TempleSoft, former Executive Director, and a valuable member of our team for 7 years.
The past few years I have been asked if there was any way Chaverware could help manage a capital campaign --- or any fundraising effort involved with the solicitation of funds. Without purchasing any additional (and often expensive) software, your own in-house software package might provide you with very adequate tools for managing your own campaign. Here are just a few ideas of how you might set up your solicitation procedures.
Below is a screen capture of a very modest start of a campaign utilizing Plain Categories in Chaverware. You can see that under the sub-category of "Campaign Solicitors," sub-categories have been set up and named for the actual solicitors. This enables you to then attach (add links) to each of your soliciting team members for their "assignees". You can also put ratings of the potential giving range of the donors in the comments or you could create a set of sub categories for that purpose as well.
To see the screen shot, and to read the entire article on how to use Chaverware for Capital Campaign tracking, click here.
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New Synagogue Business Models
With over 3000 synagogues in the United State touching more Jews than any other organization, many feel the synagogue is the most influential institution in Jewish Life. Yet leaders of even some of the largest congregations are concerned that the current synagogue business model, largely unchanged for the past century, may not be sustainable financially or strategically in the 21st century. While some synagogues are growing, overall synagogue membership has been dropping consistently as patterns of "belonging" have changed. Yet synagogue pricing strategy (significant up front membership fee, subsidizing the cost of other programs) and synagogue cost structure (heavy facilities cost, dozens of programs) has remained largely unchanged.
In 2009, Measuring Success was engaged by SYNERGY: UJA Federation of New York and Synagogues Together for a pilot project that couples analytics tools with consulting services to help 6 pilot synagogues explore new alternatives to their current business and community building models. The synagogues span Orthodox, Reform and Conservative affiliations and each has assembled a top-notch project team consisting of key lay, clergy and professional leaders. The goal of the project is to enable congregations to foster a stronger community and greater participation, while at the same time becoming more financially sustainable. Our hypothesis is that by providing synagogues with high quality analytical data about their community members and financials, we can help them adapt their model to be more strategically and financially sustainable.
To read more details about this important pilot program, click here to READ MORE. Sustainable Synagogue Business Models: a new data-driven and vision-driven approach for synagogue decision making that drives community building and financial sustainability. Based on the recently completed pilot project, we will be sharing our key findings of what drives synagogue success in community buildling and financial sustainability - as well as sharing many of the commonly held anecdotes that were rejected by the data. We will outline a revolutionary new approach for board and professional leadership to approach decision making using a set of tools, frameworks and data. Rabbi Moshe Steigmann of Westchester Jewish Center, one of the pilot synagogues, will join with Sacha Litman, Managing Director of Measuring Success who ran the project.
In conjunction with Sacha Litman of Measuring Success we will be offering two Webinars in order for you to learn more about making data driven decisions. |
Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?
brought to you by David Mersky
David A. Mersky is the Founder and Managing Director of Mersky, Jaffe & Associates, a consulting firm that works with congregations and other nonprofits to provide financial and human resource development solutions.
www.merskyjaffe.com
When I meet with congregational leadership to discuss fundraising to strengthen their synagogue, I ask, "How much money was contributed in the United States of America from all sources to all causes in the year ended December 31, 200X?"
And, the answers range from $10 million to $500 billion. But hardly anyone seems to know the right answer.
Today, I am going to tell you definitively what the "right" answer is. In fact, you may already know the right answer. In the last week or so, there was probably a small article in your local newspaper. It reported the publication of Giving USA-the annual report of the state of philanthropy in America for 2009. Giving USA 2010 is published by Giving USA Foundation™ and has been researched and written by The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. This is the 55th year in which such a report has been issued. It is an estimate of how much money was contributed from all sources to all causes in the United States.
To find out more about contributions in the US in 2009, click here. |
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Top 10 items from "Chaverware can do THAT? "
Each month we will present a capability of Chaverware that many customers are not using.
#6 Reminders
* Do you ever speak to a member who promises they will send a check next week?
*Do you ever hear about an illness and want to call in a few days to see how they are feeling?
With Chaverware's notes and reminders you will no longer forget to follow up. Simply create a note on that person's record (or family record), type in the text of what you need to follow-up on and select the "Remind" drop down on the bottom right of the screen.
You can then select yourself or any other user of Chaverware to be reminded on a particular date.
If you have reminders set for today or previous, when you start Chaverware you will be notified of these reminders. |
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Support Bulletin
Chaverware 5.2.18 through Chaverware 5.4.7 may create a situation where the billing addresses may get "blanked" out or set to one of the family's other addresses. To check if you have the problem, you can create a query that is simply
Billing Address equals Null
We can either fix the data for you "now" or we will have a hotfix that automatically fixes the data in the next few days.
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We expect to have Support for Peachtree 2011 by the end of next week.
DO NOT INSTALL PEACHTREE 2011 without first contacting support. |
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