17 Oct 2010 4 Comments
Managing online and offline donations in your donor database
Flickr image by pirate johnny
Donor management can be a bear, especially when you have donations coming in through both offline and online channels. Things get even more complicated with fundraising events when your participants are collecting online donations with personal fundraising pages and offline donations such as cash or checks.
While online fundraising is making giving faster and easier, many fundraisers will still collect a few offline donations. Here are some ways to make the process less of a headache:
- Clearly identify a contact person and address where offline donations should be sent in all communications about your fundraising.
- Encourage your event participants to add and itemize offline donations on their personal fundraising pages. If you’re using FirstGiving, these donations will show up in your nonprofit’s donation reports, where you can confirm them once you’ve received them in the mail.
- Keep track of all your donors in one place. To differentiate between offline and online donations (and whether or not they’ve been received by your organization), add a field called “donation type” to your report. You’ll then be able to sort or filter by donation type, without using multiple documents or sheets. If you’re using FirstGiving, these fields are automatically included in your reports.
- Send thank-you messages to everyone, and consider sending them using the same channel through which you received the donation. Use your comprehensive donor report to send thank you emails or letters to everyone. You may want to save paper by sending email messages to those who gave online, and paper letters to offline donors only.
- Create new categories for fundraising success. When spotlighting or awarding top fundraisers and teams, consider awarding people who have the highest fundraising totals (online and offline), the highest online totals, and the highest number of online donations. This rewards top fundraisers appropriately and encourages awareness-building for your cause and donation participation.
Learn more about how FirstGiving’s offline donation management tools can make your donor database management easier.
Katina Brooks
Oct 18, 2010 @ 20:46:46
I was very excited about adding my offline donations. Even after the confirmation asked me was everything correct and I said yes, I noticed and error, how can I correct my offline donation error??
Debra Askanase
Oct 19, 2010 @ 16:21:29
Hi Katina,
I’m forwarding your comment to the support desk, and they should be able to straighten out the issue. Please let me know if this continues to be a problem after they have contacted you. You can email debra@firstgiving.com (Debra Askanase, Community Engagement Manager).
Gen White
Oct 19, 2010 @ 11:50:58
I cannot ever attend the online seminars, is there any way I can go back and watch them after the fact? I work in a law office and they generally take place during the afternoon. This is usually a busy time for us and I am unable to dedicate or set aside the time. Please advise as I’d like to make the most of my firstgiving page for the next year.
Thank you.
Debra Askanase
Oct 19, 2010 @ 16:19:39
Hi Gen, great question. All of our online webinars are available to view here: http://blog.firstgiving.com/free-online-fundraising-webinars/. Additionally, if you sign up for the webinar, we will send you a set of the slides after the webinar. Check back with our blog for more webinars, e-books, and best practices that we’ll be offering in the coming months.