The Return on a GiftWorks Investment

Here's a little story for both our current and future customers.  For our current GiftWorks clients: If you haven't moved to GiftWorks 2010 yet, I would like to share how just one small feature can make a huge difference for your organization.  For our potential GiftWorks clients:  This is one small example of how a modest investment in GiftWorks fundraising software can be one of the best things you can do for your organization.

So here goes:

One of my volunteer projects (yes, I am a completely overextended volunteer!) is to run the annual fundraising event for the Lancaster inner city public high school's music department. The event is called Tag Day and every music student, accompanied by adult chaperones, goes door-to-door asking for donations.  They also play in small groups downtown with buckets for donations.  I was skeptical when I first took on the event, but now have seen how effective it can be and the potential for it to be even better.

What is good about it is that the students all dress in their music uniforms (marching band, choir, vocal ensemble, etc.) and basically blanket our small city.  It is very visible and very good public relations for the school. Diverse, earnest, and really nice teenagers ask people to give whatever they can to support their music programs. Some people give a dollar or two and some write $500 checks on the spot (really!). We leave "tags" on doors when people aren't home and then more checks roll in.  The Friends of Music have consistently raised about $15,000 from this one-day effort.

Unfortunately, when I took over last year, there was no recorded giving history.  The checks were deposited and thank you notes were handwritten and gone.  Every year the event started from scratch. 

So, I started maintaining a giving history by recording every check received in GiftWorks. It took several hours but was easy and I was able to generate the thank you letters in minutes (my poor predecessor must have spent days and days handwriting those!). 

This year - wow! I used our new GiftWorks 2010 SmartEntry pages and hundreds of donations were completely entered in an hour.  Thank yous still took just minutes.  I kept refining my self-designed SmartEntry page until I was literally flying through the data entry.  I hope all of our clients realize that the modest cost of the GiftWorks 2010 upgrade would be saved in time spent entering data after just one campaign appeal.

In addition, now that I have the donations recorded from last year and from this year, I am able to create a quick list in GiftWorks to see who gave last year but who missed giving this year.  I am doing a letter to each of them to ask for their support, and I expect a decent response.  This is how Tag Day can grow from it's previously flat level of donations.  By using GiftWorks to build a known community of supporters, I can leverage this community by ensuring that they aren't missed in our door-to-door effort, by inviting them to musical events at the high school, and by keeping up with them when they move out of the city. 

I am planning to increase donations by about $1000 this year and then more next year by truly creating a community of people who support music education for our young people. By using GiftWorks to empower my tracking, thanking, analyzing, inviting and cultivating, we can turn a successful, but "random" fundraiser into something so much richer in all ways. 

When I look at that $499 invested in a GiftWorks license, and the returns it will generate for this music department both this year and over time - well, it's certainly one of the wisest and most prudent decision an organization could possibly make during these challenging times.  

Below: The mayor of Lancaster, Rick Gray, joins members of the marching band in a drum circle during the 2009 Tag Day.