GiftWorks 2008 Standard Upgrade is Here!

As promised, the GiftWorks 2008 Standard Upgrade is available for our customers today!  We released GiftWorks 2008 Standard to the public on March 17, and now have it available as an upgrade to existing customers.  Many nonprofits have already ordered the upgrade and will receive it today.

Our team has been overwhelmed by the enthusiam for the enhancements delivered in GiftWorks 2008.  We are grateful to all of our customers for providing excellent feedback that has helped us shape this next generation of GiftWorks.  We are also grateful to our consultant partners.  This stellar group of professionals serving the nonprofit community has provided us with both constructive critism and praise, and has helped to steer our product and our company in direction that best serves the nonprofit community.   For their hours of beta-testing, review, instruction and more, well, it is really impossible to thank them enough.  Maybe the best thank you would be to remind you that you can find nonprofit consultants in your area on our website by clicking the Partners tab.

Finally, with GiftWorks 2008 we have some hopefully very helpful new resources.  I encourage everyone to check out the GiftWorks 2008 Guides.  From Donor Management to Campaign Management, these guides help nonprofits use GiftWorks 2008 to achieve their fundraising goals.  These guides are the result of a team effort:  Fundraising consultant Karen Schaller of Bangor, Maine; Chris Walker and the Mission Reserach crew; and editor Craig Lauer all collaborated to create them.  We also have some short videos created by our own Russ Burke, which highlight different GiftWorks 2008 features.  Check them out here!

Next up:  GiftWorks 2008 Premium.  Coming soon so stay tuned!

--Mary Pat Donnellon 

   

Help Your Donors

I know I’ve blogged about this now what seems like years ago but this issue has surfaced again.

In case you missed it, the IRS has tightened donor documentation requirements effective for all 2007 donations. Basically, they’re saying a donor’s records are no longer sufficient for documentation. Bank records or a receipt or letter from the nonprofit are the only acceptable documentations. So that means your donor’s donation list, checkbook register, MasterCard bill or Quicken/Money report is not going to cut it.

Here’s how can you help. After New Years, consider sending each 2007 donor a summary report of their giving for the 2007. GiftWorks makes that very easy. Just pull SmartList of all 2007 donations and Send Mail for these donations using a letter template with the donation table field inserted and…bingo…that’s it. With appropriate language around the donation table citing your concern for donor convenience and your deep appreciation for their commitment to the mission, you’ve provided a handy chart documenting their 2007 giving to you. You’ve also taken a nice first step toward cultivating your donors for 2008.

And Thank You for supporting us this year!

Importing Online Donations

First the news: our online donations offering has been delayed a bit and we don't have a solid roll-out date. The delay is unexpected, and I personalize apologize for it, because in a very real sense, as CEO it's my fault. I overtaxed the product team and under-supplied resources, which I'm sure you can understand, if not forgive.

But getting online donations into GiftWorks is easy! Our built-in importer can import from a variety of formats, and it's easy to map your online donation file or report to GiftWorsk fields. You can then save the configuration for the next time your import, eliminating the mapping step. You can set up online donations with United eWay's Click and Give, Pay Pal, or a variety of other online donation services relatively quickly. 

When we finally do roll out online donations, you will be able to skip this step as donations will be sent directly into GiftWorks. Now that's worth waiting for (I hope!). Thanks for your understanding!

GiftWorks 2006 Update Coming Soon

The product team has been working hard on getting this update out the door. We had planned on getting it out in December, but decided to include some bigger refinements in this version as it is the last major update planned before GiftWorks 2007 comes out. I just finished working with what might be the final version, and it looks really nice. We've improved the mailing process, the accounts and funds setup, and made a lot of less visible refinements and fixes.

I just had a meeting with Intuit--I'm on the West Coast this week. We've decided to do a deeper integration with QuickBooks with a target of mid-April for the enhanced functionality. If you have any specific things you'd like us to consider, please let us know. GiftWorks and QuickBooks go really well together, and it looks like by May, our side of the equation will be even better! Feel free to leave your comments by clicking Comments below.

End of Year Receipts Limitation & Solution

So yesterday Cindy Thompson of the United Methodists Children's Services of Wisconsin calls, and because most of the company is out this week on vacation, I answered the call. She's putting together end of year thank-you letters, and wants each donor letter to include both the total for last year's giving and a list of the donor's donations. Easy, right? Except that she wants the letters addressed to each household.

Ah yes, that households issue again. Except it's a different issue from usual. You only have access to a donations table through a donations SmartList, not through a donor SmartList. That's one of those rules we established so you can't generate donation letters for people who haven't donated. There are always tradeoffs in software, and that's one we chose that's painted Cindy into a corner.

So the problem is this. When sending mail to a SmartList of donations so you can show the table of donations, GiftWorks only allows you to send to the giver of the donation, not to the household of the giver of the donation. But Cindy doesn't want to send just to the giver, because most of the time it is in fact the household that's giving, not just the person on the check. We're working on revamping our households handling, but in the meantime, Cindy discovered a way to solve this while we were talking through it.

While you can't send to a household from a donations SmartList, you can send to households from an individuals SmartList, and can include Last Year's Amount or Current Year Amount in the letter. So Cindy realized she can handle it by generating two pages for the letter: create the receipts showing the table of donations using a donations SmartList, and create the letter with the total giving and the household addressing using an individuals smartlist.

Now, I think that's a pain. But it works, and we're going to figure out a simpler, more sensible way of handling that specific issue. Thanks to Cindy for figuring this out with me. You can can visit the United Methodist Children's Services here.