Nonprofit News by Soft Trac

Fundraisers using Sage Fundraising 50 sometimes struggle with how to code gifts that come in after the end of the fiscal (or calendar) year properly. I hope we can clear this up here.

Let’s suppose your organization’s fiscal year runs from January to December. We’ll further suppose that your organization runs an annual campaign each year; we’ll call this campaign the 09 Annual Campaign. The 09 Annual Campaign is made up of two solicitations: the 09 Spring Mailing and the 09 Fall Mailing. All set?

Now, let’s suppose that it’s January 3 and two donations arrive on your desk.
Donation A is a check dated December 31 and is in response to the 09 Fall Mailing.
Donation B is a check dated January 1 and is in response to the 09 Fall Mailing.

How should these gifts be coded?
BOTH gifts should be applied to the 09 Fall Mailing (and, consequently, the 09 Annual Campaign). The GIFT DATE for each should be the date on the check. While the tendency is to want to create an “overflow” or “after year end” solicitation, the truth is, there is no need.

The Result
Donation A is properly contained in tax year 2009 and Donation B is properly contained in tax year 2010. BOTH gifts are in response to the 09 Fall Mailing and the 09 Annual Campaign.

How should you report on these?
When the E.D. asks for a report of all donations to the 09 Annual Campaign (or the 09 Fall Mailing solicitation), you can simply use the criteria 09 Annual Campaign (or 09 Fall Mailing solicitation).

When he/she asks for a report of donations to the 09 Annual Campaign (or the 09 Fall Mailing solicitation) for the fiscal year (or another set of dates), you will use the DATE of the gift, along with the campaign and/or solicitation to report.

YES, these numbers will be different, but now you know why and can explain to him or her why this is the case. Part of your responsibility, too, is asking the right questions of the person who is asking you for reports.

If you’re still skeptical about not needing to recode the solicitation, the following situation might help you to understand a bit better. Suppose your organization has undertaken a capital or major gifts campaign. A donor has agreed to make a gift to the 09 Major Gifts campaign. She will pay this donation over five years. Each time a gift comes in, it will be coded to the 09 Major Gifts Ask and the 09 Major Gifts Campaign. This will be true for every pledge payment made over the course of those five years. You wouldn’t recode the gifts to come from a different solicitation each year in this scenario; why would you do it to any other gift?

The training database is now a choice in the drop down menu of databases available when you log in to Sage Fundraising 50, as shown below, rather than being a separate icon and login, as it used to be. The user name and password should be: admin, sagefr50

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.

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

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!

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.

As we watch the nonprofit software choices become more limited with yet another acquisition by Blackbaud we worry about nonprofits feeling as though they are being herded into what appears to be a company who thinks “one size fits all”. Last year it was GiftMaker Pro and eTapestry, now it’s Kintera along with their accounting product Fundware. If history continues to repeat itself, these nonprofits will be forced to make yet another change in software.

As these organizations begin to evaluate their choices we want to remind folks that one size does not fit all and it’s important to have software that fits your specific needs. As the market space changes we continue to reassure our clients that they are with an organization that puts the client’s needs first and foremost.

Sage Software is a world class software publisher understands that part of providing good customer support is having local experts to service their customers. Soft Trac has been specializing in nonprofit technology for over a decade and continues to partner with Sage Software to provide their Sage MIP Fund Accounting and Sage Fundraising solutions. With Soft Trac you are not just another name on the list. We work with you on a day to day basis, understand your mission and goals and are here to support you.

Based on Soft Trac’s years of experience Sage MIP Fund Accounting, Sage Fundraising and Sage FAS Nonprofit, provides the information you need to make decisions to keep your nonprofit organization functioning smoothly and to keep you focused on your mission.

We’ve learned some things about FR50 Version 8 and the installation process that we thought you should be aware of.
First and foremost: When you install the software, Fundraising 50 will create a folder in which the databases and its log file (paradigm.db and paradigm.log) are stored. The default location is: C:\Sage Fundraising 50 Databases – For most people, these files used to live in the same folder as the program, but they no longer can (I won’t bore you with the details, but know that it has to do with Vista compatibility).

Potential Consequences of this Change
You will want to make a note of this change for your IT support team. It can affect the way that they perform any automated backups, i.e. they will need to change them or the backups WON’T be automated!!!

For The Complete Guide to FR 50 V8 Installation
Please visit Sage’s Website at: http://www.sagesoftwareonline.com/eServices/Main/frmLogin.aspx. From there, go to Support > Knowledgebase > Sage Fundraising 50. This will bring you to a screen where you can download article 264429, aka the Installation Guide.

Sage Software has recently released Sage Fundraising 50, version 8.0, which features new Donate Now capabilities for Sage Payment Solutions customers, reporting enhancements, new user defaults, and enhanced security and system options – all to help meet nonprofit organizations’ donor and relationship management needs, while increasing the productivity of their development staffs. Easy-to-use and affordable fundraising software, Sage Fundraising 50 is designed for all nonprofit organizations needing a complete set of fundraising and development tools to help them with donor acquisition, fundraising, and operational efficiency.
“We are excited to offer donors the ability to donate online through our Web site, without us having to deal with complications that come with using a third-party payment service, such as importing, exporting, balancing reports, and additional fees,” said Joanne Boyer, development manager at Waveny Care Network, a New Canaan, Conn.-based organization providing a progression of living options, programs, and services for the senior community and their families, and a premier healthcare resource for most issues related to aging. “With Sage Fundraising 50, we can easily accept online donations and then neatly integrate them into our exiting database with a few clicks of the mouse.”

The new Donate Now functionality in version 8.0 allows Sage Fundraising 50 users with Sage Payment Solutions accounts to create donation forms on their Web sites. The constituent information and donations are then pushed into their Sage Fundraising 50 database for review and eventual upload. This seamless integration reduces customers’ duplicate data entry, because gift, recurring gift, and Donate Now data is transferred directly to Sage Fundraising 50. Sage Payment Solutions maintains PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance for every payment processed to keep donors’ sensitive data secure.

Users can customize their organization’s Donate Now page to offer donors options, such as specific gift amounts, organization-specific designations, honor and memorial gift tracking, recurring gifts, and more.

“The new Donate Now feature will make it so easy for people to donate to our organization online,” said Abigael Okelarin, event coordinator at the Jewish Foundation for Group Homes, a non-sectarian, 501(c)(3) organization providing support and services for adults with disabilities in the Washington, D.C., area. “The donations will be processed automatically, so we can say goodbye to typing long credit card numbers into bulky credit card machines. Even better, duplicate data entry will be reduced, since all donation information will be transferred straight to our Sage Fundraising 50 database.”

Reporting enhancements built into version 8.0 can help Sage Fundraising 50 users strengthen their audit trail. Changes to reports can be saved, and reports can be stamped with identifying information, such as date, time, and page number. Validation messages can help users ensure accountability, while “last saved by” information can help them keep track of changes made to reports.

New user defaults for five functional areas Data Entry and User Interface, Quick Gift, Import Wizard, Donate Now and Online Gift Processing – will enable Sage Fundraising 50 users to continue to use settings that work best for them. New global security privileges in version 8.0 will allows administrators to grant permission to only those users needing to globally edit or add cards.

“I especially like the version 8.0 enhancement that allows me to assign global security privileges to a user without having to give administrative rights,” said David Hall, major gift manager and information systems manager at Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a national, nonprofit legal services, watchdog, and policy organization dedicated to ending discrimination against and harassment of military personnel. “In addition, the new user defaults will help our data entry staff stay organized and save time on common tasks.”

Don’t you just hate it when you spend hours preparing, stuffing, sealing, and delivering a mailing to the post office and then never knowing whether your mail ever reached its destination because you didn’t pay the higher rate that would ensure the mailing would come back with its new address?
One solution, obviously, is to do a first class mailing every year to ensure that your addresses are up to date.
Another solution, which may end up being easier and less expensive in the long run is to use a National Change of Address mailing service. Sage Software actually offers one. You can run a utility from within your Fundraising 50 software and then send the file off to the vendor and they’ll update the addresses for you. Then, you can load the info back into your system. Simple! Call Sage Software 1-800-574-5772 to find out more about this service.
Happy mailing.
Susan