If you’re a senior-level fundraising professional, you know donor data is critical to your nonprofit organization’s fundraising success. Getting correct data analytics quickly can give fundraisers an advantage and assist in keeping donors happy. But how can you get this data without taking up too much of the database administrator’s time with manual tasks?
You might have dreamed about a report highlighting all gifts over $500 made that week, a list of major donors who have made five gifts or more, or even a list of LYBUNTs for the annual appeal, but how do you get this in real time? It seemed tedious to pull this data weekly, so you only ask for it once a month or once a year.
An automated fundraising report delivered each week to your inbox can be an impactful tool for any fundraising campaign and help strengthen donor relationships. Through data automation and a tool such as Microsoft Power Automate or AutomateGenius, nonprofit organizations can have weekly reports sent right to gift officers and senior-level staff with critical donor information.
Accurate donor data is essential to building relationships and ensuring donor retention.
A fundraising report could include data like the number of gifts of $1,000 or more made that week, a list of LYBUNT and SYBUNT donors, or the total number of gifts made to the annual appeal. Automation can do incredible things with data, enabling organizations to raise more money for their important causes.
Automation tools streamline functions of fundraising efforts that used to take hours or days. It can help with staff satisfaction and improve the work experience of donor database administrators. Streamlined data can help gift officers connect with specific donor segments almost immediately when gifts come in. Nonprofit development staff can build a workflow automation that saves time by creating a decision tree. The future of fundraising includes automated fundraising reports.
If your nonprofit organization has not yet used automation, consider beginning today. Tools like Microsoft Power Automate offer free trials, and options like AutomateGenius can help teams that want automation workflows prebuilt and ready to implement.
How Does Data Automation Work?
Data automation is like teaching a computer how to make a sandwich through small step-by-step instructions. A computer is not human, so you must tell it to open the bread bag, remove two slices, and then close the bread bag by twisting the tie. Building a workflow must include each detailed step, such as opening the jar before spreading mayo on the sandwich.
Many organizations can build automations using a tool like Microsoft Power Automate connected to a donor CRM database, while others will choose to purchase a service to build an automation for them.
Each automation is a unique flowchart of steps and if, then steps. As data flows, users can determine if they want a report or an action taken, such as a draft email. This happens faster than a staff member could search for data or build a query within the database.
Benefits of Automation Tools Vs. Staff Using Database
While some nonprofit organizations may think that every staff member is using the donor database, this is not a reality at many nonprofits. Whether it is a lack of knowledge, time, or limitations to database roles, it is unlikely every staff member who needs donor data knows how to access it.
For example, at a university, the athletic department might want to send special thank you notes to donors who gave to a direct mail appeal for new equipment. The organization needs a way to alert the athletic department staff when gifts are made because they lack access to the donor database.
Automation creates and sends a fundraising report via a weekly email to the athletic appeal. This helps get other departments involved in donor stewardship and a strong culture of philanthropy without risking data accuracy or database errors.
For data hygiene reasons, it is often best to limit who has full administrator rights within the database. To learn more about safeguarding donor data, visit How to safeguard donor data in your nonprofit donor database (askgenius.com).
Fundraising Report Example
A gift digest email report is one nonprofit report example. It might be sent weekly and contain specifically requested information, such as all gifts over $1,000 made by donors in a gift officer’s portfolio. This report lists the donor’s name, constituent ID, gift amount, and the appeal to which it was attributed.
With this data, the gift officer can determine the next steps in donor stewardship. They might decide who to personally email or which donors to call to schedule a visit.
What Can Automation Do for Development Offices?
Automation tools can help nonprofit fundraisers complete common day-to-day tasks in a more efficient manner. From personalized emails to donors to cleaning up donor email addresses, automation tools can be like an extra, very efficient staff member.
Using automation can assist nonprofit organizations in fundraising efforts and save time and money.
Examples of things AutomateGenius has done for customers are:
- Draft emails to donors for gifts that came in
- Draft emails to LYBUNT and SYBUNT donors
- Extract data and create tax statement letters which are emailed to donors in January
- Inform the database administrator if a duplicate constituent record is created.
- Improve data hygiene- fill in the blank preferred name field or mark a primary email
Every nonprofit organization deals with data from various sources but may not know how to automate fundraising data. When data is siloed, it can be cumbersome to keep the database clean and up to date. Things such as cleaning up deceased and duplicate records may fall to the bottom of the to-do list.
Data automation simplifies mailing lists, notifies gift officers of new donations, and assigns new donors to staff portfolios. These tools can be an extension of your staff and help build stronger donor relationships and clean databases today.
Learn More
To learn more about fundraising reports and automation, check out the recent webinar from Prenger Solutions Group: The Fundraising Director’s New Best Friend. This webinar provides real-life examples of nonprofit organizations that are using automation tools to increase efficiency in donor data reports and communication opportunities.
For more fundraising insights delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Prenger Solutions Group newsletter. This newsletter contains timely information on fundraising research, tools, and insights to help fundraisers work more efficiently and effectively to raise more money for their important nonprofit missions.
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