“Direct mail is more often than not the backbone of a charity’s annual fundraising strategy. It’s also the most cost-effective way nonprofit organizations can build a stable base of donors from which they can leverage additional support.”

~ Heather Brown, CFRE, Hilborn Charity enews, March 21, 2018

While direct mail may not be the hot new fundraising idea, it remains responsible for a great proportion of money raised from individual donors. If your organization relies heavily on this fundraising channel, you’ll want to make sure you look at these considerations when selecting a new CRM.

Download our free executive guide for a look at the evolving role of CRM through the lens of fundraising best practices. 

Appeal tracking and management

It’s likely that your organization conducts several separate direct mail campaigns throughout the year. Each campaign may involve multiple touches, a variety of customized appeals and packages, and large and often highly segmented mailing lists. In order to understand the effectiveness and return on investment (ROI) of each appeal, it’s critical that you can track a number of different things, including:

• Which individual or household received which mail package
• What other touchpoints a donor person was exposed to (such as social media posts, email solicitations, etc.)
• When the donor gave in the campaign
• Which channel they gave in
• How much they donated

This information is not only helpful for tracking overall revenue, but also for learning about specific donors’ giving behavior. The most effective direct mail programs in today’s market leverage omnichannel marketing, reaching donors through multiple channels with highly coordinated messaging and timing. A well integrated direct mail fundraising campaign will result in multiple touchpoints for the donor, including two or more of the following types of outreach:

• A pre-mail drop email to prime them for the mailing
• The primary mail piece
• Exposure to coordinated messaging in social media
• Several follow-up email solicitations
• A branded digital landing page
• Compelling videos to encourage support
• Outbound calling to support the ask with a personal conversation

Your CRM should allow you to understand each of the various touchpoints your donor has with the campaign, as well as capture the last touchpoint and channel of giving. This allows you to understand “campaign influence” – which is critical to being able to truly understand the ROI of the different channels and elements.

This is also important because the more you understand which appeals a donor responds to, in which channel, and at what giving level, the more effectively you can communicate with them in the future. For example, if a donor has given significantly more than their previous donation levels, your CRM platform should be able to detect this change and respond accordingly.

Deep prospect and donor segmentation and personalization 

Today’s successful direct mail appeals take advantage of the ability to produce highly personalized appeal letters. By leveraging the data in your CRM about your donors and by using deep segmentation, you can move well beyond printing specific prospects’ names and previous donation amounts to customizing other elements such as individual paragraphs of copy and images, based on demographic data, giving history, type of engagement the person had with your organization in the past, and so on. For example:

• An animal-based organization can personalize content and images based on pet preferences, using images of dogs or cats to evoke emotion.
• Gift options and gift arrays can be introduced through inclusion or exclusion of entire paragraphs in the body of the letter based on the donor’s previous engagement history with the organization. Reach event participants with different messaging than donors, and even customize your messaging depending on the type and level of donor (one-time vs sustaining, corporate, recurring, peer donor, etc.).
• Use different stories for your audience based on which of your services they have used in the past by tailoring the stories included by audience.

Similarly, the ability to automate the generation of highly personalized acknowledgement and thank you letters can make a huge impact with donors as well.

The more precisely your direct mail fundraising platform lets you segment your donors and prospects, the better your ability to tailor your communication with them based on their past giving behavior, other engagement with your organization and various demographics, resulting in highly personalized content that can significantly lift your response rate.

For organizations that purchase lists, it can be very helpful to be able to segment donor names and addresses within their database that were purchased from list brokers versus donors acquired from other sources and prospects.

Another specialized function within segmentation is the ability to manage suppression lists. Separating out prospects who have requested that they not be contacted is a critical requirement.

For some organizations, a solid CRM, combined with highly knowledgeable staff, will provide sufficient capabilities for segmentation. But other organizations may need to consider additional options, such as the use of an external segmentation house or the integration of a deep segmentation tool.

Reporting

Another essential requirement to support a strong direct mail program is the ability to generate detailed reporting on campaign touches, response rates and revenue, as well as appeal effectiveness and ROI. Some platforms make generating the reports you need easier and more intuitive than others.

A related consideration is the quality and look of the actual reports. If you’re presenting reports to organization leadership, you may want to review how professional the reports look. If they don’t meet your organization’s standards, you’ll need to consider additional tools or build in additional time and effort to take the raw data and turn it into visually appealing reports, charts, etc.

Impact on existing processes and vendor relationships specific to direct mail 

Beyond the specific functionalities of a given platform, it’s worth considering whether moving to a new solution could change your current direct mail processes or your relationships with vendors. For example, if you currently use external managed services providers to handle such functions as caging, lockbox, reporting, segmentation strategy, or suppression files, you’ll want to understand how the new platform could impact that data flow and change existing processes between your two organizations. As we saw in part 2 of this blog series, some of your direct mail vendors, such as your printing house, segmentation specialist and caging vendors, may need to change how they work with you, adapting their systems and processes.

Digital integration

As omnichannel campaigns become the norm, direct mail fundraisers will want to understand your new CRM platform’s integration touchpoints with your digital marketing and fundraising tools. If your systems are disconnected and donations cannot flow from your online giving solution to your CRM and from your CRM solution to your email marketing tool, you won’t be able to suppress recent donors from future communications. This is not ideal for your donor experience and can result in frustrated donors calling your call center to complain and ask to be removed from future communications. If your CRM ecosystem does not support real-time integration, you may need to put additional manual steps in place to ensure you are respecting donor requests.

A Lot Is Riding on Making the Right Choice

For organizations that rely heavily on direct mail fundraising, the stakes could not be higher. Choosing the right fundraising platform boils down to understanding what features and functions your direct mail fundraising efforts require and making sure the new platform can handle them. For this reason, it’s worth taking the time before you start looking for a new CRM to conduct a systematic review of your current processes and integration points (system and third-party support vendors) for direct mail planning and execution, so that you can properly assess exactly how a new platform will handle each of them.

If you’re thinking about a new CRM, be sure to:

• Check out our Webinar Series CRM Options for Nonprofits
• Download our Executive Guides:
  • A Look at the Evolving World of CRM through the Lens of Fundraising Best Practices
  • Understanding CRM for Nonprofits

This post is Part 4 in our 5-part series that looks at the Evolving nonprofit CRM Marketplace through the Lens of Fundraising Best Practices.

• Part 1: The Evolving CRM Marketplace for Nonprofits
• Part 2: Shifts in Nonprofit Giving Trends
• Part 3: Considerations for Selecting your next Nonprofit CRM/Fundraising Platform

The post Special Considerations for Major Direct Mail Fundraising appeared first on Heller Consulting.

Are you with a nonprofit or higher education institution? We have a Project Communication Plan for Technology Change that is tailored to organizations like yours. Download today! 

It’s important to manage change proactively from the start if you want to ensure your employees adopt the new system and your project is successful. Nonprofits who recognize this and develop a change management plan from the start have a higher chance of success.

We’ve had the privilege of working side-by-side with the leaders of hundreds of nonprofit organizations as they guide their teams through complex and challenging technology change. Below you’ll find some tips and examples from our clients on the change communications they found effective with their staff leading up to and immediately after Go-Live day.

Pre-Go-Live

The pre-Go-Live period typically spans one to two months before Go-Live. Activities during this period typically include:

• Expectation setting
• Reinforcing awareness of the reasons behind the change
• Clear communication of changes to individual job responsibilities resulting from the system change
• Proactive and reactive identification and management of resistance
• Go-Live training
• Final pre-launch preparations

Below are some of the more common successful strategies we’ve seen from our clients around pre-Go-Live communications. Be sure to download our free guide for more details!

• Town Hall Meetings:
  One client arranged a town hall meeting two weeks before Go-Live day, hosting all stakeholders who would begin using the new system on Go-Live day. The meeting – an hour in length – included a mix of a celebration and information. Download our free guide for more detail, but the high-level agenda included:
  • CEO kickoff to reinforce the alignment of the project with the mission of the organization to relay the bigger picture view of why this project was important. (5-10 minutes)
  • Sponsor speeches – short speeches from key business leaders and sponsor (15 minutes)
  • Project Lead outlining Go-Live logistics (30 minutes)
  • CEO thank you and toast (5 minutes)
• Feature demos
  Hosting a few open house sessions leading up to Go-Live where your employees can get sneak previews of the new system can help build excitement and minimize anxiety about the unknown. These can be short videos, or live or virtual hosted sessions. They should focus on one or two areas or key features rather than try to do deep dive demos of the full system. This is also a great way to get your project team and sponsors out in front of the stakeholders ahead of time, allowing your users to see how comfortable these change leaders are with the new system.
• Internal newsletter or intranet posts
  Leverage your internal communication tools to build excitement. Interviews with project team members are a great way to highlight some key features – questions like “what are you most excited about in the new system?” and “what are you most looking forward to leaving behind?” are great ways to get people talking in a positive way. A Q&A doesn’t have to be long; even short quotes or testimonials can enhance a formal communication and make the system start to feel real for stakeholders who were not directly involved in the project implementation.
• Go-Live kits:
  Some clients prepare Go-Live kits and send them to key stakeholders a week or so before Go-Live. Some ideas include tips on how to survive Go-Live, one-pagers and some small fun mementos. Examples might include mugs, mouse pads branded with the internal name or logo of the new system.
• Follow Up Email (s)
  It might not sound as exciting as some of the other bet practices, but it’s important to send an email to all stakeholders immediately before Go-Live detailing the logistics they need to know. Knowing what to expect is critical to minimize employee stress.

Go-Live Period

The Go-Live period starts on launch day and typically spans one to four weeks after that. Key activities in this phase include:

• Building competency in the new system
• Support and enablement
• Issue resolution
• Monitoring adoption and proficiency
• Reinforcement training

The critical focus in this period is ensuring employees feel supported and can successfully adopt the new solution and business processes. Below are some best practice communications ideas we’ve seen work well during this phase.

• Using internal social messaging
  One client used Salesforce Chatter with their key power users to celebrate Launch day using a hashtag that celebrated the launch #NameofProjectLaunch. Users posted pictures of themselves on Go-Live day with positive notes. Clients have also used Yammer, Teams, and home-grown intranet tools to post encouraging messages.
• Launch Room
  Our successful clients clearly identify how to find the support team on launch day and the weeks after. A few of our clients have set up a specific room full of decorations, balloons, and put out food. This creates an environment is inviting and helps staff feel comfortable asking for help.
• Inspiring Daily Message from Executive Sponsor
  Consider having your executive sponsor and other key change leaders send daily inspirational emails during Go-Live week.
• Launch Celebration
  Many of our clients plan a Launch celebration happy hour, party, lunch, or dinner with the key project team members. This is a thank you for all the hard work from team members and to acknowledge there’s more work to continue. Some of our large clients with multiple locations have held virtual parties as well!

Post Go-Live

The Post-Go-Live period begins typically within one month of launch and expands out three or more months after Go-Live day. This phase typically includes a continuation of issue resolution as well as the beginning of the introduction of new system enhancements. Be sure to download our free guide to check out best practice communication examples our clients used with their stakeholders post-Go-Live.

In Your Words – Tips Directly from our Clients

“Communicate to your users that there will be “bumps” in the road and have them help you solve these “bumps.” We started this conversation a year before we went live, and we have had bumps after Go-Live. It’s to be expected.”

“I’m a big believer that repetition is the key to remembering, so we attacked this on all fronts. This attitude (repetition is the key to remembering) helped us stay positive about what seemed on our end to be over communicating and in some instances, repeating the same information over and over again. This requires a lot of thought and work but is critical to having your end users be part of the team.”

“Go over how you’ll prioritize new ideas and enhancements. Your users will want to know how the priority system is evaluated.”

“Make sure you take the time to thank the people that have worked on this project in many ways. They’ll need to be reminded often from the period leading up to Go-Live, the day of Go-Live, and after!”

“Make sure you include some fun and celebration. It’s too easy for us to focus on getting people up and running and forget to celebrate the accomplishment of Go-Live! Make a point of taking the time.”

Learn More

Read more tips and tricks in our guide, Project Communication Plan for Technology Change: A Guide for Nonprofits and Higher Education Institutions. In this free resource, we provide tangible examples from real clients who successfully used change management techniques to improve their employees’ experiences through technology change.

The post Nonprofit Communication Best Practices: Preparing for Change Before Go Live appeared first on Heller Consulting.

The bottom line is that the array of choices in CRM, and specifically among fundraising platforms, will continue to grow and develop. In the short- to mid-term, the ecosystem we have become used will continue to evolve. Both your constituents’ preferences for engagement and the technology that supports that engagement will require nonprofits to continue to adapt. To cite one obvious example, donors as a group demonstrate a growing preference for donating online and via text, using mobile devices, and some newer fundraising platforms are better able to accommodate this preference.

All these moving parts make it more important than ever to plan wisely in order to find the solution that is best for your organization and its constituents. Given the complicated, high-stakes nature of this undertaking, it may be worth consulting with an expert in the nonprofit CRM space to understand how the evolving market could affect your current platform’s continued availability, and at the same time, learn how different fundraising platforms might provide capabilities and features that your existing solution cannot.

Every nonprofit is unique, with its own mission, stakeholders and financial considerations. That being said, there are probably more similarities than differences between one organization and the next in terms of the broad required functionality and technological needs. As a result, there are several considerations that most nonprofits should keep in mind when deciding whether to move to a new platform. Below we offer five important factors to consider when you are looking at options for nonprofit CRM and fundraising platforms.

For more on how to amplify your fundraising, download our free guide: A Look at the Evolving World of CRM Through the Lens of Fundraising Best Practices 

1. Your Fundraising Strategy and Donor Mix

Your organization may rely primarily on major donors and grants, recurring donors, or individual, one-time donors. You may receive most of your donations online, or through traditional direct mail. More likely, your revenue pie consists of its own unique blend of all the above and more. Different fundraising strategies can result in different needs from your CRM or fundraising platform.

If direct mail, for example, represents a significant part of your revenue stream, there are specific capabilities that will be important, including campaign and package management, deep segmentation, data flow between print and mail houses and more. When preparing to evaluation potential solutions, it’s important to identify and document your requirements for support your current donor mix to ensure that you’ll still be able to capture and manage these donors, perhaps even more effectively. But avoid the pitfall of thinking too narrowly, and assuming that you simply need to replicate your current business processes in a new solution.

Focusing solely on your current requirements – or on your challenges with the current solutions – can result in a set of narrowly-defined criteria for evaluating solutions. While this approach may result in providing you with a solution that meets your current needs, it can limit your ability to pivot to support new fundraising strategies. Philanthropy is changing. As we saw in our last post in this series, giving patterns can change quickly as a result of economic and other factors, such as tax policy for individuals and corporations.

As you prepare for a new CRM solution selection, be sure to consider your fundraising strategy for the next 5-10 years and beyond. What types of campaigns will you rely on and what do you expect your future revenue mix to include? If you expect corporate giving and Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) to play a more significant role moving forward, be sure to capture their specialized needs, including those related to acknowledgements, recognition and financial reconciliation when looking at new CRMs and fundraising platforms.

2. CRM Ecosystem and Integration Considerations

One thing to keep in mind is that as the CRM marketplace continues to evolve, it’s not always necessary (or even possible) to find one solution that manages and addresses every one of your needs. It’s more important to find a developed ecosystem of supporting vendors and app developers that integrate effectively with your platform and related vendors’ apps. This may even entail, at some future point, having more than one tool that work together to achieve your objectives.

Prioritizing your engagement strategy, including your optimized end-to-end donor experience requires such an ecosystem. Your new CRM will be the cornerstone of your donor relationship management, but few modern CRMs can do it all. At minimum, you’ll want to integrate or build business processes to connect the data in your new CRM with your digital fundraising platforms and payment processor(s). You may also want to consider building connections with advocacy tools, accounting systems, and potentially call centers, direct mail warehouses, etc.

Your donors are often also advocates, volunteers and clients — and as a result, they probably engage with your organization in multiple ways. Limits to traditional fundraising systems have resulted in the evolution of siloed, specialized systems for different departments. But today’s donors don’t care about your department structure or the fact that you have their data in multiple systems. Instead, they expect you to recognize their full relationship with your organization. While platforms like Salesforce and Microsoft can be configured to accommodate your business processes for most of your needs, it’s often more cost effective to leverage your existing solutions for program and volunteer management and build integrations to your new CRM to ensure that key data points are flowing into the CRM. Meanwhile, the development of business intelligence and cross-platform reporting tools like Tableau and Power BI allow nonprofits to continue using their existing applications to not only meet ongoing business needs, but also to provide the elusive 360-degree view of their constituents.

You’ll also want to consider the integration of a marketing solution with your CRM ecosystem in order to support your cross-channel marketing efforts. The most effective fundraising is relationship-based. When donors feel appreciated and have a strong connection with your nonprofit, they are more likely to continue giving — and to give more. In the past this relationship-nurturing has relied on one-on-one, personal communication by gift officers. Today’s marketing solutions offer nonprofits the ability to scale that nurturing though highly personalized marketing automation that leverages the data in your CRM to send highly relevant and timely automated messages by email. Meanwhile, data analytics within your marketing solution and CRM ecosystem can surface the highest quality leads for leadership gift prospecting, allowing your gift officers to focus their time more effectively on building and nurturing the most promising donor relationships.

In order to provide a streamlined, user-friendly experience for your donors (regardless of the type of gift or the channel through which they choose to engage with you), you’ll need to ensure that your ecosystem can support data flow to and from the most critical interaction points and business areas to produce a 360-degree view of your constituents in your CRM. Not only will this support enhanced donor relationships, but it will also allow you to scale your efforts and prospect for new donors among your most engaged volunteers and advocates. Thinking about your integration strategy as you consider new CRM solutions helps to ensure that you are looking at your investment as an ecosystem — a perspective that will allow you to provide a better experience for your donors. Before you purchase a CRM, be sure you understand the landscape of supported vendors and apps, and the possibilities of both standard and custom integrations.

3. Impact on Your Donors

Your supporters want a level of confidence that you are stewarding their funds well and making smart, cost effective decisions about the technology that enables your organization to not only raise funds and manage your mission, but also protect their data. Beyond that, most donors don’t care what solution you implement. The exception to this, however, is when it impacts them directly. Donors don’t want to hear that something isn’t working because two systems are not talking to each other. Planning for the transition is critical to a smooth experience for your donors and failure to do so can result in revenue loss.

For example, if monthly donors are a large part of your donor portfolio, anything but a seamless transition of the monthly payment processing can result in a loss of donors. Sustaining giving is a “set-it and forget-it” giving experience for many people. Imagine having to call thousands of donors to essentially sign them up again to set up their payment processing in your new system. You’ll never get 100% of those donors back. Organizations with a large recurring giving portfolio might need to consider solutions and vendors that can work with existing vendors to port their donors’ credit card information into the new system securely and efficiently — without having to bother the donors themselves.

Organizations with a large event-based portfolio, on the other hand, will want to consider the participant experience in any transition. Your participants are key influencers who are responsible for bringing in your event fundraising revenue. If a platform switch results in a participant’s inability to log into or access key information in an event fundraising solution, participants may give up and decide to move their support elsewhere.

4. Data Security and Privacy

Today it’s a given that CRM solutions include some data security and privacy functions, but it’s worth noting that the requirements continue to change. Fundraising organizations must consider payment card industry (PCI) compliance to protect their donors from the risk of stolen financial information, as well as your nonprofit’s reputation as a steward of financial information. The ability to assess the PCI compliance of any single solution within your CRM ecosystem is critically important. Equally important, however, is that your organization is prepared to design business processes that are PCI-compliant in managing that ecosystem as a whole.

In addition to PCI compliance, you must safeguard personally identifiable information (PII). Changes resulting from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) authority, for example, forced vendors to update their solutions to meet these requirements. The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 is significantly changing things for organizations in the US. Not every platform can meet these new requirements, let alone adhere to the ever-evolving specific state and local laws. At a minimum, you need to have total confidence that your donors’ PII is safeguarded; but depending on your needs and specific requirements, you may also need security features that go even further. Organizations serving the health vertical, for example, also need to consider the security and privacy of health information.

5. Impact on Existing Processes and Third-Party Provider Agreements

Another consideration is how a new CRM will impact your existing business process and your relationships with the vendors who support your fundraising efforts. A new platform comes with the opportunity to reimagine your business processes, which can result in more streamlined and efficient ways of doing things. Since many nonprofits leverage vendor partnerships to manage different elements of their fundraising, any changes to these processes can have an impact on your existing vendor agreements. For example, you might have a vendor that does caging and gift processing for you, and another that does deep segmentation and direct mail printing and mailing. If you introduce a new platform, your support needs and requirements from those vendors may change. In response, some vendors may need to change what they provide to you, some may need to be flexible as they adjust to your new business processes, while others may become essentially irrelevant. None of these changes are necessarily good or bad in their own right, but all of them should be considered as you evaluate different CRM platforms.

If you’re thinking about a new CRM, be sure to:

• Check out our Webinar Series CRM Options for Nonprofits
• Download our Executive Guides:
  • A Look at the Evolving World of CRM through the Lens of Fundraising Best Practices
  • Understanding CRM for Nonprofits

This post is Part 3 in our 5-part series that looks at the Evolving nonprofit CRM Marketplace through the Lens of Fundraising Best Practices.

Part 1: The Evolving CRM Marketplace for Nonprofits

Part 2: Shifts in Nonprofit Giving Trends

The post Considerations for Selecting your Next Nonprofit CRM/Fundraising Platform appeared first on Heller Consulting.

Fast-forward to the present. Today people have a choice. Growth in the sheer number of giving choices has been significant, with the National Center for Charitable Statistics reporting a 28.4% increase in 501(c)(3) organizations between 2005 and 2015.

Looking for more giving trends? Download our free guide: A Look at the Evolving World of CRM Through the Lens of Fundraising Best Practices 

Nonprofits have had to be creative about finding new ways to appeal to donors who may once have simply written a check each year out of tradition. Peer-to-peer and event fundraising became growth areas in the early part of this century as nonprofits learned that a personal appeal by someone deeply connected to the cause could lift the gift amounts significantly, and event participation gave people a new way to connect to an organization’s mission. People began giving based on the influence of a trusted friend, however, their loyalty to the organizations they traditionally supported waned. As the number of events increased, participants began to demand an enhanced event experience in exchange for their support and fundraising efforts. This added growing pressure on event organizers to invest more heavily into the event experience, thereby reducing net revenue.

Direct mail, still a staple for many nonprofits, has seen increased costs as the US Postal Service systematically increased postage costs. This means fewer mailings per year, which could have a significant impact on revenue. As a result, fundraising strategists recommend strong integration between direct mail and digital channels as one way to mitigate these increased costs. Successful integration of these very different channels poses interesting challenges for managing donor relationships and experiences — especially when these systems are disconnected (as is commonly the case). The need for integration between fundraising CRM and other solutions, from both a technology and business process perspective, is becoming more critical.

One excellent source of insight into nonprofit giving trends is Giving USA 2019: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2018, a publication of Giving USA Foundation. Researched and written by staff at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, the report notes that after a steady increase in philanthropic giving through 2017, the overall numbers remained flat in 2018, although a detailed analysis revealed some significant changes in trends. Changes to tax policy, including a doubling of the standard deduction, combined with volatility in the stock market and other factors resulted in a decrease in individual and household giving from the previous year. Over the same period, fortunately, giving by foundation and corporate donors experienced healthy growth.

“The complexity of the charitable giving climate in 2018 contributed to uneven growth among different segments of the philanthropic sector. Growth in total giving was virtually flat. Contributions from individuals and their bequests were not as strong as in 2017, while giving by foundations and corporations experienced healthy growth.”

~ Amir Pasic, Ph.D., the Eugene R. Tempel Dean of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy

Donor advised funds (DAF) are the fastest-growing philanthropic vehicle in the US, placing them among noteworthy nonprofit giving trends. According to Giving USA 2019, in 2018 DAFs accounted for more than 3% of all charitable giving in the United States. Similar to a retirement investment fund, a DAF is a separately identified fund or account – one that is maintained and operated by a section 501(c)(3) organization, called the sponsoring organization. DAFs offer individuals a more hands-on way to give to a charity by offering them a say in where their funds are going. DAFs pose challenges for tracking within existing traditional donor databases — and as donors increasingly want these options, charities will have to adapt. A flexible CRM solution is critical to being able to capture and report on this type of giving and adapt to industry and market changes in general. Download our executive guide to learn more about how the evolving world of nonprofit CRM can support your fundraising strategies.

You might also be interested in:

• 5 Essential Tips for Crafting an Expert Fundraising Strategy

This post is Part 2 in our 5-part series that looks at the Evolving nonprofit CRM Marketplace through the Lens of Fundraising Best Practices.

Part 1: The Evolving CRM Marketplace for Nonprofits

Part 3: Considerations for Selecting your next Nonprofit CRM/Fundraising Platform

The post Shifts in Nonprofit Giving Trends appeared first on Heller Consulting.

Tableau

Product Description

Tableau software is a drag-and-drop tool with direct connection to various data sources that does not require pulling data into a data warehouse. Tableau’s strength is creating visual representations from large amounts of data that are easy and quick to manipulate. The software works with spreadsheets, SQL databases, or cloud applications such as Google Analytics and Salesforce. It can be deployed on-premise with a desktop report writer component and a server-based or cloud-based interactive end user component where users can log in and manipulate the reports. Once visualizations are created and published they can be viewed by logging into the server or can be published to the web.

Tableau also has its own foundation that offers free Tableau licenses to qualified nonprofits and Service Corps volunteers who offer pro-bono Tableau consulting to nonprofits who are eager to use their data more effectively.

At a Glance

How it Works

Data is pulled from Tableau Online or Tableau Server into the desktop application to design reports that can then be published for others to see and interact with. Although Tableau can connect to live data sources, users can create extracts to improve performance by taking advantage of the Tableau data engine or by reporting on a subset of data from a larger data source. While Tableau is not geared specifically toward nonprofits, as with most BI tools it should be able to connect to and create metrics for any tabular data. Data security for users can be set up in a variety of ways including database login account, authentication mode, and user data filters.

Usability

The desktop design tool is relatively easy to use, but as with other BI tools, Tableau requires a degree of understanding of the structure of the data source(s). Adding new data tables is intuitive, but it does involve manual linking of data files, which could be time-consuming for a complex data source. It is easy to change the view of the data and to change between various types of charts with a single click. Tableau offers many different ways to slice-and-dice information so it is recommended that any user spend some time reviewing tutorial videos to understand the full range of functionality Tableau offers to create visual representations of data.

Cost

Cost of the tool is dependent on what Tableau Desktop edition an organization selects and where they choose to store their data. Tableau Desktop Personal Edition is $35/user/month and Professional Edition is $70/user/month. The biggest differences between the two editions is that Professional offers connections to hundreds of data sources and the ability to publish reports and dashboards back to Tableau Server and Tableau Online.

The second cost an organization should consider is where to host their Tableau data. An organization could choose to select Tableau Online or Tableau Server. Tableau Online is a SaaS solution with maintenance, upgrades, and security fully managed by Tableau. It is a great option for organizations that do not have the bandwidth or personnel to manage information on in-house servers. Price for Tableau Online is $42/user/month. Tableau Server is an alternative to Tableau Online that stores data on an organization’s server or on a public cloud such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Price for Tableau Server is $35/user/month.

Tableau offers small non-profits and NGOs a free Tableau Desktop licenses allowing everyone in the organization to access information. To qualify, the organization must be an officially recognized tax-exempt organization, have an annual operating budget under $5 million, and not be a school/college, healthcare organization, government agency or religious institution.

The Bottom Line on Tableau

Tableau is one of the most straightforward BI solutions for users and administrators. Tableau’s accessible price point and free nonprofit licenses makes it a good option for small to medium sized nonprofits, though there is no deterrent to larger organizations as well. The company appears to have good software support including online manuals, tutorials, knowledgebase, case support, and a user support community. Nonprofits can also benefit greatly from Tableau Service Corps volunteers to aid in data interpretation and visualization.

If you have more questions about Tableau or how to get started with your own analytics initiative, contact us.

Introduction to Analytics for Nonprofits

Never before have nonprofit organizations had the opportunity to acquire, maintain, and effectively utilize vast quantities of information about their supporters, beneficiaries and advocates. To take advantage of this information, organizations must go beyond basic reporting and explore the quickly expanding world of “analytics”. But what does all this really mean to your nonprofit? Is it worth the effort and investment? Download Introduction to Analytics for Nonprofits now to get a clear overview of analytics for nonprofits, learn the primary barriers organizations encounter, and understand the key ingredients to a successful analytics initiative.

The post Business Intelligence Tools for Nonprofits: Tableau appeared first on Heller Consulting.

Einstein Analytics

Product Description

Einstein Analytics, formerly Wave Analytics, is Salesforce’s native analytics cloud designed to enhance standard reporting functionality. An organization can choose to implement Sales Analytics, Service Analytics or choose a custom solution through the Einstein Analytics Platform. All solutions offer Einstein Actions that are built-in action alerts that allow users to create tasks, update records, or share data insight based on reports. All reports and dashboards created on Einstein are mobile responsive and optimized for every Android and iOS device including  Apple Watch.

The most notable feature of Einstein Analytics is Einstein Discovery which is Salesforce’s built-in AI-powered analysis tool. Einstein Discovery can be run on an organization’s data to draw insights, find correlations, and make predictions. It can then present its findings in a way that’s easy to understand and make recommendations on next steps to take.

At a Glance

How it Works

Einstein Analytics analyzes any data on the Salesforce Service cloud, Sales cloud, or custom solution on the Einstein Analytics Platform. An organization can choose to work with a Salesforce Certified Specialist in establishing data load configurations for any datasets that live outside of the Salesforce CRM ecosystem. All information is stored on the cloud and can be accessed through any internet connection depending on security settings in place.  Users must have a full Salesforce license to be able to view any reports and dashboards created within Einstein Analytics. Einstein Discovery leverages the newest advancements in artificial intelligence and works to analyze information and identify trends and correlations. It then performs thousands of statistical checks to validate its findings. The pre-built algorithms used to uncover new insights can be accessed by any business analyst and modified to best fit an organization’s needs.

Usability

Salesforce Einstein Analytics comes with many role-specific, pre-built reports and dashboards that are specifically geared towards for-profit organizations. Nonprofits would need to develop their own KPI reports and dashboards using Salesforce’s intuitive point-and-click report builder. There are many online resources and tutorials on the report builder and users can also leverage the Salesforce community to ask specific report-related questions.

Cost

Licensing costs for Einstein Analytics for Service and Sales cloud are $75/user/month. If an organization were to develop a custom app for the Einstein Analytics Platform, user licenses would start at $150/user/month. These costs would be in addition to standard Salesforce licensing costs. Nonprofits should contact their Salesforce Account Executive for information on nonprofit discount pricing.

The Bottom Line on Einstein Analytics

Einstein Analytics super-charges native Salesforce reporting capabilities with enhanced functionality and business intelligence analysis. While the solution is geared towards for-profit organizations, nonprofits can leverage its power to gain new insights into their own KPIs and understand their data better. The solution would work best for organizations with large datasets that need help making sense of multiple data points. Given its sophistication, it would also best suit an organization with a well-thought out BI strategy and clear questions they want to answer from their data.

If you have more questions about Einstein Analytics or how to get started with your own analytics initiative, contact us.

Introduction to Analytics for Nonprofits

Never before have nonprofit organizations had the opportunity to acquire, maintain, and effectively utilize vast quantities of information about their supporters, beneficiaries and advocates. To take advantage of this information, organizations must go beyond basic reporting and explore the quickly expanding world of “analytics”. But what does all this really mean to your nonprofit? Is it worth the effort and investment? Download Introduction to Analytics for Nonprofits now to get a clear overview of analytics for nonprofits, learn the primary barriers organizations encounter, and understand the key ingredients to a successful analytics initiative.

The post Business Intelligence Tools for Nonprofits: Einstein Analytics appeared first on Heller Consulting.

Power BI

Product Description

Microsoft Power BI is a suite of business analytics tools that connect to over 50 applications and on premise data warehouses through the Power BI gateway. There is no need to transfer data to Power BI as it can be embedded in your app or rest over your data using SQL Server Analysis Services. Power BI can be accessed through the Power BI Desktop application, the cloud-based Power BI Service, and on the go with Power BI Mobile.

At a Glance

How it Works

Power BI connects to a data source of your choice, allowing you to query off the data set, and then build visuals to display on a report. A report is comprised of multiple graphs, essentially presenting many pages in a report. A dashboard is a copy of a report page that is interactive for end users. Dashboards can be shared with specific users via email and include varying privacy settings. Because Power BI is a Microsoft product, data can be exported to Excel to be manipulated further and visuals can be added directly into PowerPoint. A notable feature of Power BI is its Quick Insights functionality that runs an analysis on a subset of data to identify insights for the user and produces reports displaying the findings.

Usability

Power BI requires expert skill set to fully leverage its robust reporting capabilities. It is a powerful tool for large organizations with multiple data sources and especially for organizations that have their own data warehouse. Reports can be accessed through all three Power BI channels, with Power BI Service and Power BI Mobile being the most end-user friendly. Users can interact with reports by typing in a question of their data and having Power BI produce a visual answering their question based on chart titles, column names, and calculated fields in the underlying data set. A Power BI admin can also add featured questions to a data set to recommend to colleagues.

Cost

Microsoft’s Power BI offers both a free and paid subscription service. The paid service costs $9.99 per user per month and includes scheduled hourly sync, connectivity to live data sources, 1M rows per hour data streaming, and 10GB per user data capacity. The free version includes 1GB per user data capacity, daily scheduled data sync, and 10K rows per hour streaming data.

The Bottom Line on Power BI

Microsoft Power BI has extensive reporting capabilities that allow users to integrate multiple data sources and quickly draw insights from an otherwise disparate set of information. It will require an expert skill set to fully leverage all that the application has to offer but shows promising potential for any organization with a drive to dive into business analytics.

If you have more questions about QuickSight or how to get started with your own analytics initiative, contact us.

Introduction to Analytics for Nonprofits

Never before have nonprofit organizations had the opportunity to acquire, maintain, and effectively utilize vast quantities of information about their supporters, beneficiaries and advocates. To take advantage of this information, organizations must go beyond basic reporting and explore the quickly expanding world of “analytics”. But what does all this really mean to your nonprofit? Is it worth the effort and investment? Download Introduction to Analytics for Nonprofits now to get a clear overview of analytics for nonprofits, learn the primary barriers organizations encounter, and understand the key ingredients to a successful analytics initiative.

The post Business Intelligence for Nonprofits: Power BI appeared first on Heller Consulting.

QuickSight

Product Description

Amazon QuickSight is part of Amazon Web Services and can connect with multiple data sources, including other AWS data, to produce high quality visualizations and ad-hoc analysis. It uses an in-memory engine (SPICE) to rapidly perform complex calculations and allows users to leverage Amazon’s AutoGraph algorithm to select the best graph type for the visual representation.

At a Glance

How it Works

QuickSight enables users to connect to a variety of data sources and run queries using SPICE for fast, ad-hoc reporting. A user builds an analysis by creating and combining a maximum of 20 visuals together. Each visual can leverage a new or existing data set and can be customized to represent the data in whatever way one chooses. QuickSight also offers its AutoGraph algorithm that recommends the best visual to represent complex data sets. An analysis can be viewed immediately, or saved as a dashboard and shared with individuals via email as well. In addition to creating analyses and dashboards, QuickSight allows for data snapshots represented through stories. These stories capture images of the analysis at a certain time and can be used to show variance of information.

Usability

Some technical experience is required to set up and manage this tool. Depending on an organization’s reporting needs and data complexity, multiple analyses would need to be created and maintained. Once the initial graphics are set, users can easily customize visuals to slice their data any way they choose. However, new visuals, dashboards, and stories, will still need to be managed by a BI administrator.

Cost

Cost of the tool is dependent on the edition selected and storage requirements. The Standard edition is currently priced at $9 per month per user and the Enterprise edition is $18 per month per user. Both editions include 10GB of SPICE and any additional storage is priced at $0.25 per GB for Standard edition and $0.38 per GB for Enterprise edition. The biggest difference between the two editions is Enterprise includes a connection to AWS active directory and offers secure data encryption at rest.

The Bottom Line on QuickSight

QuickSight offers a straightforward implementation process that allows users to upload or connect data sets from various sources. The costs associated with storage might make this tool most suitable for small to medium organizations, or those with smaller data sets. The biggest appeal of QuickSight is its integration with other Amazon Web Services data and the SPICE feature. If an organization currently leverages other AWS products, QuickSight is a tool worth exploring to bring together all their data points into one powerful application.

If you have more questions about QuickSight or how to get started with your own analytics initiative, contact us.

Introduction to Analytics for Nonprofits

Never before have nonprofit organizations had the opportunity to acquire, maintain, and effectively utilize vast quantities of information about their supporters, beneficiaries and advocates. To take advantage of this information, organizations must go beyond basic reporting and explore the quickly expanding world of “analytics”. But what does all this really mean to your nonprofit? Is it worth the effort and investment? Download Introduction to Analytics for Nonprofits now to get a clear overview of analytics for nonprofits, learn the primary barriers organizations encounter, and understand the key ingredients to a successful analytics initiative.

The post Business Intelligence Tools for Nonprofits: Quicksight appeared first on Heller Consulting.