October 15th, 2008 by Susan Low Saadat
I ran across an interesting article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently (Chronicle of Philanthropy, September 18, 2008, “73% of Older Americans Volunteer, Survey Finds”). Based on the results of a survey, the article said that while 73% of older Americans volunteer, more than 70% of those folks said that they prefer not to do so on a regular schedule.
What is your organization doing to allow volunteers flexibility in when they volunteer? Are you communicating with them in ways that allow them to respond to a need quickly? Are you connected with organizations such as your local United Way or VolunteerMatch.org or Idealist.org to find volunteers?
Tell us how you are offering flexibility to YOUR volunteers in YOUR organization.
October 2nd, 2008 by Darla Hamlin
October 2nd, 2008 by Darla Hamlin
If you have been running your Sage MIP software with the MSDE version of SQL server, Soft Trac recommends that you upgrade to SQL Server 2005 Express Edition that is provided on your MIP Version 10 CD. Whether you have already upgraded your Sage MIP Fund Accounting software to Version 10 or are making plans to do so, following are some compelling reasons to also upgrade your MSDE SQL:
- The SQL Server 2005 Express Edition has a 4 GB database limit. MSDE has a 2 GB
database limit.
- SQL Server 2005 Express Edition comes with a graphical interface allowing users to
perform some basic admin tasks. MSDE does not come with a graphical interface.
- Once a Sage MIP Fund Accounting database has been opened with SQL Server 2005, it can no longer be opened with SQL Server 2000. This is not an issue unless you need for Soft Trac to repair your database or other task offsite. Since all of our production machines have been upgraded, special provisions would need to be taken to perform the work. This would add unnecessary cost to the project.
- Mainstream support for MSDE ends two years after the release of SQL Server 2005, in
accordance with standard Microsoft lifecycle policies.
For more information about upgrading your Sage MIP Fund Accounting software and SQL Server 2005 Express, visit Sage tech support online at http://www.sagesoftwareonline.com. Don’t have a login and password, contact Soft Trac to find out how to one can be obtained.
If your organization is running the Full version of SQL, Microsoft has released a white paper
outlining reasons for upgrading to SQL Server 2005. You can download the paper at
www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/why-upgrade.mspx
October 2nd, 2008 by Susan Low Saadat
For this newsletter, I was charged with the task of writing about one of Fundraising 50’s modules. As a result, I’m focusing on the most-desired and seemingly
east-understood module of all: Reports.
Reports in FR 50 fall into three main categories and several smaller ones. The main categories are constituent, financial and analytical reports.
Constituent reports give you information about individuals or organizations in your database. They’re typically used for creating mailing lists or donor profiles. People often use these to pull transaction information for constituents, as well. While this is okay, it’s important to note that a constituent will appear in the list for the report as many times as he or she meets the criteria being used to pull it. So, if Johnny gave three $50 gifts between June of last year and today, he’ll show up three times in the list (assuming you haven’t created a query in which he would only meet the test condition once).
Financial reports are designed to give you information about specific transactions. Here, you can pull a list of donors by their level, such as “Gold”, “Silver”, or “Platinum” for your annual report. You can also pull a gift acknowledgement report that will allow you to quickly and easily thank your constituents. Find out who gave last year but hasn’t participated this year with the LYBUNT report. There’s also the super-handy gift/pledge/payment log, handy for everything from checking on lists of donors to reconciling the month-end info with accounting.
Analytical reports give you a sense of the “big picture”. How is the fall solicitation
doing this year as compared to last? How many of our alumni from the class of 2000 participated in the annual campaign this year? These are the kinds of reports that get Executive Directors out of bed in the morning. (They live for this stuff).
I receive more questions about reports than anything else. I have a few pieces of advice to offer around them. The easiest and best thing you can do to help yourself understand reports better is to go to Help>Product Guides>Reports guide and download a copy of the reports guide to keep handy. This will give you a chance to look to see if the format of the report is close to what you need. Second, remember that even the reports guide is only a guide, your reports will look different based on the options you choose to include. Last, but certainly not least, be CLEAR about what you actually need in the report you are trying to run. Spell it out clearly for yourself, and ask questions of the people who requested the report. There’s a big difference between asking for a list of last year’s donors and a list of donors from the last fiscal year. Both you and the requestor need to be aware of that.
Happy reporting!
October 2nd, 2008 by Sharon Blakeslee
The utility found in the Administrations module is designed to reduce the size of the database. This is not for the weak at heart. Depending on the size of the database to be compressed it could take quite some time to run. The compress utility can be run at anytime but requires exclusive use of the database. It does not remove any data, but it does remove the empty pages in the tables and also re-indexes the file to make it more efficient. In other words, the SQL script is run to reclaim space that was allocated to the database but not used.
Sage recommends that you at least run this utility when the database gets to around 1.5GB. Run all data integrity checks and make a backup of the database before using the compress
feature. After compressing the database run data integrity checks again. Check in with your IT folks to see what size the MIP database is and to see if your MIP database might need to be compressed. We recommend your database administrator run this utility at a scheduled time.
October 2nd, 2008 by Susan Low Saadat
When an individual gives a gift, it can be matched at a certain percentage by an
associated company or individual. Typical matching scenarios are when an individual works for a company who matches gifts that the individual makes at .50 on the dollar or when a constituent agrees to match gifts made by other constituents during a certain period of time. The latter are generally known as challenge gifts.
Where do you find out if an organization makes matching gifts? HEP Development Services, Inc. offers a Gifts Plus, an electronic file of matching gift companies. You can locate HEP Development services on the web at hepdevelopment.com. I also located a free matching gift company lookup screen operated by HEP at matching gifts.com/demo.cfm.
To create matching gifts automatically in FR 50, you’ll need to create a resume card for your constituent and a record for the company the constituent works for. On the company’s card, you’ll check the box on the basic card that says they’re a match company and enter the ratio for their matching gifts. On the employee’s resume card, be sure to have the job at the matching gift company as the “current” job. When you enter a gift on this constituent’s card, the system will automatically remind you that the constituent works for a matching gift company and give you the option of creating the matching pledge at the same time you enter the gift. When you receive the gift from the company to match your constituent’s gift, you’ll simply enter the pledge payment on the company’s record. Voila!
Happy matchmaking.
