The Million Dollar List

Thanks to hot tipper Chris M. in Vancouver for passing along this great tidbit from the Meyer Memorial Trust fall newsletter:

Ready to think big? The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University has published The Million Dollar List, described as "the nation's most complete data on million dollar gifts" and "the only public and free record of publicly reported gifts of $1 million or more since 2000." The site includes a list of top donors and recipients in each state, including Oregon's list.

Getting Socialized

Though I keep claiming I'm tired of talking about social media, the two keynotes at this year's Association of Advancement Services Professionals conference got me pretty excited about the topic. As well, I got a chance to hang out with Josh Birkholz, and he told me how he uses robots to do his tweeting for him. I started to realize that there is hope for the lazy and the busy.

So I'm going to plunge back into social media. I've just used Twitter Feed HootSuite to link this blog to @amandajarman. I'm working on some other tricks to make myself more ubiquitous on the internets. Suggestions? Tweet at me, or comment below.

Positioning Advancement Services for a Campaign

It's the last day of the conference. Tom Chaves from Lehigh University is presenting on "Positioning Advancement Services for and in the Next Campaign." Using the opportunity for investment in advancement presented by a campaign, Tom's team was able to increase current staff salaries by 13.11% and grew the team by 33%. They project growing the entire advancement team by 40%.

Advancement Services must position ourselves relative to the overall mission of advancement -- state things in terms that resonate with non-operations staff. Tom'a team did internal and external surveys. If your leadership mentions other organizations as comparisons, use those a your benchmarks when you do your external surveys. Consider external validation -- bring in a consultant.

To drive investment in Advancement Services, start small and market your success. Tom started by changing job titles. For example, gift processors were called accounting coordinators, and were renamed advancement services coordinators. He also used all-staff meetings to explain Advancement Services and what they did. Rather than a stale PowerPoint, they created a fun YouTube video based on the office.

In 2008, Tom brought in an external consultant to evaluate perceptions of Advancement Services within the institution. This is also when they changed titles. Besides gift processors, they also changed "report writer" to "information analysts." In 2009, they became more proactive in how advancement services interacted with technology. The advancement staff overall was fairly siloed in their use of technology. Advancement Services started to insert themselves in conversations about technology use and acquisition, positioning themselves as the first point of contact for technology needs.

In 2010, they worked on reporting. All reports had been ad hoc, and could take up to 2 weeks. "Hopefully it was right, because who knows if they would remember why they requested it," Tom said. They were able to shift to a self-service reporting model. Eighty percent of their ad hoc reports are now self-service, so their analysts can focus on more interesting projects, not just list production.

Also in 2010, research moved into Advancement Services, and they did a wealth screening. They also started doing an analysis of their last campaign, which wrapped up in 2009.

This year, they began planning for how they would use technology in the next campaign. They did a lot of research and created a plan, a key component of campaign planning. A campaign plan was to presented to their board in June, and included the tech plan. They also used the AASP salary survey to show that staff were not compensated adequately. And they were approved to hire new staff.

In 2012 they are focusing on new technology -- mobile access to data, analytics, proactive training. Tom also wants to create an Advancement Services "job family." Some of their jobs are in finance, some in development, and some in I.T. This change will allow for more of a career path for operations staff.

Lehigh's management team felt that technology should be s key part of their campaign, so he started with that buy-in. To create the plan, they formed a team including representatives from all aspects of advancement. They did a survey of internal staff to understand more about the advancement team's needs from operations. They also surveyed peer institutions. They identified 12, and received results from 8.

They defined the role of technology in a campaign as supporting the campaign to scale significantly by increasing efficiency without significantly increasing the size of the staff. They also did some visioning -- to be the internal organization that advancement staff seek out experts in technology. (Their vision statement is much longer; I'm definitely paraphrasing.) Tom positioned Advancement Services as the foundation of advancement, shifting the perception that operations are something off to the side.

(Side note: Tom recommends -- if you are presenting to a group, talk to each person individually ahead of time to get both buy-in and feedback.)

The key recommendations they formulated: replace reactive with proactive; employ a consultative model; and utilize project management discipline. They decided to accomplish this through adjusting their current staff alignment; hiring new staff; and creating a technology budget that would support key initiatives across advancement, by centralizing current technology spending.

He made a really nice matrix demonstrating reactive vs. proactive on a ten-point scale (1 - 5 being reactive and 6 - 10 being proactive). For each initiative (e.g. training and support), they defined what reactive looked like (training only when a need is clearly demonstrated) and proactive (full training schedule published in advance, monitoring), and rated themselves on the scale.

They also looked at how to employ a more consultative model. They key attributes their team needed: customer focus, proactive, analytical, providing training and support. They also realized that they can't do everything in-house, that they needed to be able to utilize external resources like consultants to accomplish some projects.

Tom made a Cartesian diagram, with budget and staff as the axes. In each coordinate, he put a car, e.g. High budget and high staff = Ferrari, low budget + low staff = Buick. This is a nice way to use a metaphor for senior staff to envision where they want the organization to be.

It's lovely to hear someone talk about marketing Advancement Services, a topic near and dear to my heart. This is one of my favorite parts of my job, and is so crucial. I think Advancement Services may be the only team in my workplace that's ever been accused of "over-communicating." It's so important -- what we do is complex and hard to understand. If we don't advocate for ourselves, few others will!

Stop irritating your donors

Next up: John Taylor on "Reengaging the Disenchanted Donor, or, How to avoid ticking them off to begin with!" Since stewardship has just become part of my shop, I am very eager to hear this best practices session. AASP has been developing best practices for a variety of Advancement Services disciplines.

At John's shop, North Carolina State, stewardship reports to him, and is being expanded to include donor communication.

John is starting out with what disenchants donors. First, not following a donor's intentions tends to make them angry. This might be because the intentions were not clearly documented at the beginning. Not using the gift is another issue. It's amazing that folks donate to our organizations, and then we fail to spend the money! Or, they give us a gift, and then never hear from us again.

John points out that disenchantment is not confined to major donors. Institutions can make big decisions that upset broad swathes of donors. As an example, one university gave its president a second house! This angered many alumni. Another example: an all-women college made a "surprise" announcement that it was going co-ed.

If you ask donors how they want to be communicated with, make sure you honor that. For example, John got a call from his alma mater. He was on the do not call list, and got called by their phone fundraisers three nights in a row! Each night he told them that he was on their do not call list..but they kept calling.

One of the biggest reason we lose donors is that we fail to adhere to the donor bill of rights. John says that nonprofits outside of higher education do a better job of adhering to this than higher education institutions do. He suggest posting the bill of rights on your organization's website. One of the most challenging aspects of this is donor intent -- honoring the donor's desires for how the funds will be spent. The best way to accomplish this is through a gift agreement. Make sure it is clear; irrevocable; will stand the test of time; and is clear regarding recognition, in particular whether a building or fund can be "un-named."

John recommends not including endowment terms. Reference your policy, as it may change. Don't go into great detail regarding scholarship and fellowship terms, or reporting requirements.

On your pledge agreement, ask donors how they would like their name to be written in recognition of their gift. If they are going to be paying part from a donor-advised fund or a matching gift, include a sentence that says if the above-named entities do not pay, the donor will pay. Then when the payment is received from the fund or company, write down the original pledge and book the payment as a separate gift, with a soft credit to the donor.

Donors also become disenchanted because (in descending order) they no longer feel connected to the institution, feel compelled to give to other causes, were being solicited too often, felt their donation was mismanaged, assets were mismanaged, or did not keep accurate records of their donations. This is per the 2008 Bank of America Study of High Net-Worth Philanthropy.

Communications is key -- gift agreements, donor intent, regular & consistent reporting. Reporting is not only for endowment donors. Send a report of how money was used to your annual fund donors too. How many donors contributed, how much was given, and what was done with the money? Consider doing a "thank-a-thon" using your phone fundraising callers. Segment your calls so that students are calling donors to their programs.

For endowment reporting, include the frequency (but not the specific date) in your gift agreement. Provide them within 90 days of the close of the fiscal year. Err on the side of providing too much information. Include the book value, the market value and clearly define them both.

To steward scholarship donors, send a thank you from their recipient. Make writing the letter a condition of receiving the scholarship, but don't let the student send out the letter without vetting it first. There's nothing worse than a poorly-written letter from a scholarship recipient.

Invite donors to special events for free -- art openings, lectures, etc.

There are some ways to figure out which donors are disenchanted. Look at alumni participation rates by class year, sudden drops in revenue, and analytics. Conduct an attitudinal survey which looks at demographics, loyalty, overall experience, student experience, and alumni experience. Pay attention to the open-ended questions.

Consider doing a donor relations survey. In John's experience, donors remember when they get a thank you from a student or former professor, and don't care so much about a letter from the president or a development officer. Birthday and holiday cards are worthless. Higher ed is terrible at providing specific information about the impact of the gift itself.

Don't be afraid to apologize. If you've upset a donor, communicate and don't try to find someone to blame. Don't blame a staff member. Self-deprecation is also not the answer. Do provide reassurance that you have addressed the issue.

Understand and meet the donor's expectations. Thank them in a timely and appropriate way -- issue a receipt within 48 hours. Don't treat everyone the same -- thank them in a way that is appropriate to them.

Negativity does not mean you should leave them alone. But don't wait -- the longer you wait to re-engage, the less effective it will be. Donors that are more than six years lapsed in their giving probably will not give again.

Venture philanthropists are interesting birds. Don't come back to them for a new gift until you have an interesting project. Do make sure to ask for their input and to communicate the impact of their gift.

Tips for Social Media from Jay Frost and Occupy Wall Street

I just stuffed myself full of food, and now will be listening to Jay Frost from FundraisingInfo.com. He'll be talking about social media in a keynote titled "Popping the Question: Moving from Engagement to Action With Social Media."

Jay is talking about how to move constituents from "liking" us to loving us. If we focus only on engagement, we may train our constituents to interact with us in a limited way.

The Red Cross raised $37 million for Haiti relief efforts with text giving. Jay says the real story here is peer to peer fundraising. How do we maintain relationships with these donors, whose names we do not have, because they gave via text?

The audience is diverse. Latino/as are the fastest growing market in the U.S.   Use of social media by this group is higher than average. Being in social media gives us the opportunity to reach this demographic, which is also a fast-growing segment of college students.

The audience is global. Most people on social media are outside the U.S. Social media is the easiest way to get in touch with non-U.S. residents.

A report by SEI shows that 70% of pentamillionaires (assets of $5M or more) use social media. Other studies bear this out -- the affluent are on Facebook. And, they are influenced by social media. The more someone earns, the more likely they are to be influenced.

College graduates are 1.5 times more likely to blog than high school graduates. They are twice as likely to post photos and videos and three times more likely to post an online rating or comment.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is making huge use of social media. One key organizer is Priscilla Grim in New York City. Jay did an interview with Priscilla, and we all get to see it first!

From a march on September 17 of a few hundred people in New York, the movement has grown to thousands of protesters around the country. They are making savvy use of social media. Jay asked what lessons we can learn from the OWS?

"I worked at one place that wanted to Twitter by committee... You can't do that," Priscilla said. You have to trust the people you hire, she says. The Occupy movement are united by a broad framework and mission statement. Each blogger or tweeter then provides their own spin within that framework.

"They not only pulled it off, but they served Fox News their ass," said Priscilla.

OWS put out a call to raise $12,000 to out out a paper publication: The Occupy Wall Street Journal. In a few short weeks, they raised $75,000.

Movember, which raises money for prostate cancer using a walk or run model, but instead, men grow mustaches for pledges. They raised $16 million this way.

Jay's suggestions:

Twitter. Find people to follow. You'll find fresh content 3 to 5 days ahead of listservs.

Engage in conversation. Some development officers are actually engaging in conversations with major gift donors via Twitter. Young people don't like to talk on the phone. Text them instead.

Manage your social life. Use tools like Hoot Suite to make this easier.

Get mobile. You must embrace smart phones.

Fill the room at a special event. Use Facebook to advertise your event.

Advertise campaigns on your background.

Leverage your content. Repurpose information from tweets to make a newsletter.

Launch a ribbon campaign.

Create a "social ad."

Download your followers/connections.

Learn from your competition.

See your donors' networks.


Social media can be done. It can't be left to marketing alone, but must be owned by fundraising. Invest in social media. Put your money where your mouth is.

Clean Up That Database

Vered Siegel from After School Matters is presenting "Easy Wins: High Impact, Low-Effort Ways to Improve Your Database." When we inherit a new database, we think, "Why on earth did someone do things this way?" Someone put things in your database for a reason: they had good intentions, they understood a part but not the whole, they thought "it might be useful some day," or "someone told me to."

Start by shutting down all permissions. Then make a plan. Figure out who controls the delete function. Your database might be like Wikipedia -- anything written there becomes "true." Vered says that when you shut down permissions, "being an a--hole is inevitable." Examine everyone's job roles and set permissions accordingly. Control access to deleting very carefully. Change the theory of power and permissions. Just because you are the VP doesn't mean that you should have access to all database functions. Fewer permissions = better.

Vered likes to run what she calls a "query for null." Look for any records missing mandatory pieces of information: address, city, state, zip, gender, marital status, etc. Once you identify the missing spots, set some metrics for improvement, like targets for address completion or phone number completion. Do some data appends to fill your gaps. She also does a "query for discord," e.g. Marital status is blank, but there is a spouse listed; a record has a male title and gender is equal to "female."

Align your fund tracking with your general ledger. Make it a goal to reconcile fundraising and accounting to the penny.

If possible, lock fields so that selections are limited. For example, make it impossible to choose a code that is tied to a prior fiscal year.

Figure out who your allies are. Create "power users" and encourage them to talk amongst themselves. Empower your data entry staff -- it's the most important investment you can make. They know your database from the ground up, and will be future managers. Encourage questions.

Modernizing gift processing with automation

Mary  Ehart of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia is talking about "Moving Your Gift Processing Operations into the 21st Century." Moving into the 21st century is not just about technology, but also training and capabilities. Often it's chief development officers who are dragging their operations shops into the 21st century.

Five years ago, CHOP did 45,000 gift processing transactions per year, all fully manual. Now, they handle 108,000 transactions per year, and 75% are automated. This change was driven by an internal audit, an increased volume of gifts due to a campaign and big event gift processing being pulled in-house. At the same time, finance was doing a project to clean up their funds. 

The game changers they faced were a focus on online giving and a focus on new donor acquisition. They decided to outsource their web hosting and their direct mail processing.

When they began their project, their staff was focused on accurate keystrokes. They were distanced from the technology in place and were apprehensive about new technology and processes. It's important to assess whether your staff will be able to come up to speed with training, or whether they are "just not that into it." Gift processors want to know what to expect -- now, and in the future.  At the same time, CHOP's training program was focused on hind-sight problem-solving and corrections.

CHOP also assessed the physical size of the office, and equipment needs and capacity.
 
They prepared for the change by being transparent with staff, so that they wouldn't hear things like "automation"and "high volume" in the hallway. They communicated early, even when they didn't have full information about what was going to happen.

They held team meetings to discuss lockboxes, scanning gifts for an audit trail, and more imports and less hands-on data entry (this was a source of nervousness). They also made it clear that roles and job descriptions would change.

They chose their technology by going through an RFP process. Document why you chose the vendor that you chose. When looking at online providers, they looked at two primary factors: the user interface and how the back-end integration would work.

They also chose a scanning system, so that checks and other documentation are attached directly to the gift. They do not retain paper copies, unless it's for a major donor or board member.

The chose to outsource their direct mail gift processing. They made the business case for this by looking at metrics for their shop. They tracked batch entry over six months and extrapolated how many additional staff they would need based on their projected increases in giving. CHOP worked with their outsourced vendor to devise work flows and exception processes. CHOP reviews the exceptions and does some spot-checking, but they do not review every gift. This outsourcing reduced their turnaround time from 2 weeks to 1 - 2 days.

When implementing this kind of change, go for some easy wins. They created a temporary fund to deposit checks while waiting for a fund to be created. They prioritized entering and receipting large gifts. They also started opening all mail at the front desk -- sometimes checks would sit for weeks because the mail had been addressed to someone who was on vacation.

Another tip is to work with your vendors. CHOP's IT was very busy, and they were able to have vendors program solutions for them instead, while meeting the standards of in-house IT.

CHOP was able to move from five temps and five full-time processors, and all staff (including the Executive Director) had to pitch in and enter gifts to keep up with the volume. Due to automation, they've been able to eliminate the temps. They did hire an import processing coordinator.

They also created a new quality assurance position. They revised all job descriptions and actually bumped everyone up a level, so raises helped ease the stress of change.  As well, they reassessed one job description to create a director of gift administration, who works with finance on fund issues.

CHOP implemented an incentive program for their staff based on quantity, accuracy and difficulty. Staff can earn up to $500, and earn points on a weekly basis. This proved to be motivational.

To sustain a change like this, establish policies and procedures; ensure staff are aware of the big picture; and work closely with finance. Use incremental improvement to continually refine your processes. Consider doing an external audit to ensure you are meeting best practices, staffing is adequate, staff deployment is correct, and you are ready for your next campaign.

Final lessons:
It's not only about gift processing -- you need to work with many different staff at your institution.
Always look ahead -- know the plans and think ahead to meet new needs. Get buy in along the way.
Provide continuity -- show the roadmap and continually improve.
Automation will provide consistency to narrow the margin of error.
Analyze -- make a good business case for automation. Know your numbers.
Automation does not necessarily mean fewer staff, if your processing volume is increasing at the same time.
Figure out the competencies that you need.

Living in the future right now

David Lawson from TrueGivers is presenting "The Realities of Real Time Data." David says "the future really is here," but your institution may have put up roadblocks to "hide from the future." One of my favorite expressions is "I love living in the future."

Smart phones and tablets are the driving force behind 24-hour data. We have to figure out how to deliver the right data to the right people at the right time. 

In the past, we only allowed certain people in our systems. Now we are looking at a 360 degree view -- but not just 360 degrees in our silo, but 360 degrees in our organization. We want to know everything about our constituents.

The first issue with real-time data is accuracy. Real time means we can't vet everything. 

The next issue is completeness.  This brings up issues with consistency. David is displaying a Cartesian coordinate of accuracy and consistency.

The next issue is relevance. The data must be meaningful to the data consumers. What's relevant for one person is not relevant for the next. Most shops start with meeting the president's needs, and then work their way down from there.

Finally, there is timeliness. We want data that is both accurate and on time. U.S. intelligence agencies knew that 9/11 was going to happen, but they simply could not put the pieces together in time. We don't deal with life of death issues in our shops, but our ability to be timely could mean the life or death of our campaign.

Balancing all of the above.

Security is another factor. The biggest threat to security is the device, not the hacker. Specifically, the loss of the device is the threat.  We must be able to encrypt down to the weakest link, including thumb drives.  

In terms of cloud computing, universities and other non-profits will never spend as much on security as the companies who are hosting your data.

Hosting data onsite at a university is like "having a 7-11 in the middle of a prison. It's going to get knocked over."

Data cleansing is key. We must figure out how do do this in an automated fashion, e.g. real-time address verification. But we can't refuse to put things in our system until they are perfect.

David's real time checklist:
Source location
Source quality
Source security
Source update frequency
Source connection -- how are you accessing it?
Internal locations -- where is the data going?
Internal quality checks
Internal security
Internal update frequency -- if the end user has another way to the source, and it's updated more frequently than your system, they will know.
End user access points -- can your users access your data via mobile device?
End user permission levels -- what data can people view?

David was just asked what to do when a development officer finds the one mistake out of thousands. David says, "Whoever complains the most about the data raises the least amount of money."

The report queue must end. We must focus on self-service. This is not a job security issue -- there is still plenty to do!

Dashboards should be interactive -- you should be able to click on the data to drill down. Lead with pictures. Sixty percent of people are visual learners, so use data visualization.

Use constituent opt-ins -- survey results, submitting address updates, advocating for the institution -- as a piece of your affinity scoring.

Social networking users has surpassed email users. Executives who resist this trend and 24-hour data "hope the future doesn't happen until they retire." Twenty-two percent of Internet time is spent socially.

Fundraising is getting back to where it started -- it was all based on socializing. Then along came direct mail: we "threw it over the wall" and hoped our donors would throw money back.

In 2010, thirty percent of devices used to access business data were personal devices. In 2011, this number rose to forty percent.

More than 80 percent of IT organizations agree that tablets and other consumer devices will be an integral part of how we do our work. They also agree that this will increase the workload of IT staff, that senior executives will expect these devices to be supported, and that this trend will increase morale and productivity.

This behavior will be driven by our donors -- they expect this kind of connectivity in their office, and they will expect it from us. They've been cutting us some slack because we're nonprofits, but this slack is ending.

Look at yammer -- the corporate Facebook. Jive is a similar workspace application. People are starting to "follow" data, and are accessing data in a feed format. Just because social networking has been used for inane purposes doesn't mean we should overlook the utility. When everyone started illegally downloading music, it should have been a major clue that there was a market for accessing music online. David says: "Legalize social networking."

Analytics -- own your scores and rankings. It can't be a mystery any more. We have to understand how it works so we can explain it to our end users.

Web analytics are crucial. Being able to track activity on your website is increasingly important and possible. Facebook now has analytics available.

We have to stop thinking our users are dumb. Talk with them about the process and the problems. They might have great ideas. We have a new generation of development officers who are technology natives.

Who do you want to be? A traffic cop, or Steve Jobs? You can be innovative and a control freak at the same time. Let the data be free, and be a control freak behind the scenes by using your business rules.

Blowing up your records and gift processing operation

Caroline Chang from Stanford is doing a follow-up to her presentation with Debbie Anglin from GG&A from two years ago. GG&A did a business process review, including benchmarking, to look at gift and record processing. The focus was on efficiency, accuracy, timeliness and customer service. This presentation was actually tremendously helpful for me as I considered how to appropriately staff my Advancement Services team.

The study benchmarked staff needed, cost per transaction, adjustments to entries, and degree of automation. Most organizations process gift within three to five business days. It also benchmarked records entry, but sadly, I was unable to type fast enough to get that information down. The percentage of automation ranged from less than ten percent to more than eighty percent, and adjustments ranged from one percent to twelve percent. The main difference between shops was the degree of integration between gift processing and records management. As well, shops varied in the extent to which data entry was distributed beyond the operations shop. The ratio of records processors to database size ranged between 1:44k and 1:200.

Today, Caroline is going to focus on how she acted on the recommendations that resulted from the business process analysis. Senior management committed to implementing the recommendations received. They broke down the report into 35 recommendations, assessed which needed I.T. solutions, and prioritized by cost savings, importance, quick wins, and do-ability.

One of the first steps was to reorganize the staff. The records manager retired, creating an opportunity for freedom of design. At the same time, Stanford needed to reduce staffing. They committed to cutting staff once they had achieved a greater degree of automation. It was also clear that they need to deliver better customer service, both internally and externally.

To begin, they mapped every workflow in their shop, including their front desk. They did this internally, but Caroline would recommend hiring this out. They looked for duplication of efforts and multiple handoffs, then brainstormed what they would like the workflow to look like. Then they thought about what the organization had to look like to make this happen. From there, they rewrote all job descriptions.

When they began, there were three distinct organizations: records, gift processing, and central files. These teams were reorganized under one manager, divided into four units: customer services (formerly front desk), automated services, general services, and specialized services.

Customer services takes all phone calls from donors, and sends all correspondence (e.g. matching gift forms). Automated services deals with anything that is received electronically. Specialized services deals with all high-value gifts, $10k+, ACH, wire transfers, securities, pledges and pledge payments. General services deals with everything else -- uploading new documents to imaging, annual fund gifts, white mail. This is the biggest group with the highest volume.

They implemented this change with an all-staff meeting to give the background, distributed the new job descriptions, and interviewed each staff to determine where each staff thought their skills would fit. Almost all staff placed themselves where Caroline thought they would be. For the two that didn't, they had conversations about why the person was not a fit for the position they desired.

They also developed success factors for the staff -- what staff need to do to be successful, what management could provide to increase the success of the team. They developed training for each of the areas, and trained all of the staff, so that everyone would be cross-trained.

They determined this was working because the lag time for end of year annual gift processing was only three days' behind, rather than several weeks. They also saw improved collaboration between the four teams. Ultimately, they had the quietest fiscal year end they'd ever had.

They are also working on a lockbox. They plan to double-check all gifts by receiving images of all of the remits and cross-checking this with the data file, to make sure that hand-written notes are captured. They anticipate saving more time at the front desk than in processing, since mail doesn't need to be opened, and checks do not need to be deposited.

They are also working on online gift transmittal using workflow software to reduce delays in gift processing due to delays in receiving documentation and setting up new funds.

Next year, they'll be working on improving their next of kin acknowledgments; uploading securities transfer data automatically; and proactively doing NCOA updates.

Stanford is also working on a pledge statement system, rather than a pledge reminder system. Schools have been responsible for doing their own pledge reminders. The rate of actual reminding has varied greatly across units. The statement will be like a bank statement, showing all pledges by household, and what's been paid on each pledge. These will be sent out three times a year, but donors can choose to receive them less regularly. Donors can also choose to receive them by email, by mail, or both. The email reminders will link to a site where donors can view their giving history, and can also look at past statements. Stanford is also using workflow to have development officers review and approve pledge statements, with the hope that ultimately development officers will feel comfortable enough with the system to not need to review.

Case studies in cross-silo teamwork

Monica Keith from Washington & Lee Univerity is presenting on collaboration across ogranzaional lines. The synopsis promises to cover several topics of great relevance to my work this year: online communities, scholarship tracking, prospect management systems and developing training systems. These are all on my plate for this year, so I am eager to hear what she has to say.

Monica finds herself more and more "coming out from behind the computer" to build relationships with colleagues. The keys to this are management, leadership and collaboration. She recommends that Advancement Services serve as the navigator. People don't know what we do, so we are the ones who have to build bridges, since nobody is going to come to us if they don't understand what we can provide. She will walk us through some case studies, and the opportunities for collaboration that each presented.

Monica is beginning with database conversion, the classic giant project for Advancement Services. Post-conversion, we have an opportunity to identify new possibilities. Are there things we can do now that we could not do before? In Monica's case, this was prospect management and soft crediting. Post-conversion training sessions provide an opportunity for Advancement Services to market ourselves by showing off what we are already doing. Regular trainings also provide the opportunity to build a core base of users who can give feedback. Focus on your users' immediate needs, anticipate needs, provide additional software training beyond your database, and provide handouts which will become your procedures manual.

Defining report requirements for prospect management provided a huge opportunity for Monica's team to build trust and collaboration with development staff, provide partnership that produced useful information, and to elevate the reputation of her team.

Now Monica is talking about scholarship stewardship. This is often messy, as it involves various departments across campus. Providing annual reports to scholarship donors required multiple spreadsheets and was very time-consuming. Monica's shop was able to pull together the data into their constituent database, and to provide a report on which scholarships had been awarded, to whom, and then to generate scholarship reports to donors. A key step in this process was communicating the value of the providing the required information to financial aid and the business office. The scholarship stewardship process was reduced by 4 weeks, the number of students writing thank you letters went up dramatically, and the director of stewardship was able to spend more time on stewardship and less time on tracking.

Now, social media -- lots of folks are coming to Monica with many ideas about social media, begging the question of to what extent this falls into the fundraising operations shop. She's been a part of a few web redesigns, where nobody raised their hand to generate the content. Advancement Services can provide the backend, but who manages the messaging?

Email is Monica's next case study. A lot of people are sending emails, often to the same people. They have a traffic control issue. And some staff are sending directly from Outlook, providing no opt-out option. Monica figured out their alumni could get over 200 emails per year from them.

They are addressing this via a communications audit, a survey of alumni and will be developing a plan. Monica hopes to see a planning calendar that coordinates appeals, emails and events. She also hopes to see more strategic use of email by analyzing open rates and response rates.

This is a hot topic for this crowd. Apparently this is a common problem. It's certainly a problem in my shop.

Social Media Strikes Again

AASP's opening keynote is The Convergence of Social Media, Social Networks and Nonprofit Organizations by Allison Fine. She is beginning with the recent uprising in Egypt, where social media played a huge role. Now individuals have the organizing power that used to be possessed only by institutions like unions and political parties. Allison calls these individuals "free agents," who are now crashing up against the walls of institutions, including nonprofit institutions. Institutions have spent a huge amount of time fortifying themselves with bureaucracy to control, including messages. Then we hire young people who share their lives online without a second thought.

Allison encourages us to stop thinking of social network relationships to be less real than in-person relationships.

The tools of social media has a common set of characteristics -- they are ubiquitous, inexpensive and easy to use. And they are relationship-based, rather than based on broadcasting from one to many. Our constituents expect to have a conversation with us -- this is a difficult cultural shift for century-old institutions to make.

Allison thinks that social networkings are "re-humanizing" our organizations by reminding us of how to talk with others, rather than at others. This requires that we be transparent, remember we are part of a network, give more credit than we claim, and listen more than speaking. What stops us from realizing these possibilities is fear: of loss of control of the message, and harm to our reputations. Both of those things have already happened online. We already can't control the message online; what we can do is participate in the conversation.

To start using social networks, begin with social media policies (what can and can't employees say). Then go online and listen to what people are saying about you. If you are hearing criticism, use the opportunity to engage and hear feedback.

Allison gives the example of the Humane Society. They spent 18 months friending people on Facebook, without asking for any money. After building those relationships, they raised $650,000 for Spay Day.

Now she's talking about Peggy Patton (spelling?) from Portland, OR, who has been raising money for a kind of anemia. She read about a challenge to raise money on Facebook, and decided to learn how to make a Facebook page to attempt to win the challenge. Her fundraising went viral, and she raised over $100,000 and 3,000 friends for the cause, and won the challenge.

Now for a few do's and don'ts/ odds and ends:

Dealing with wing nuts or criticism -- listen and respond. Lack of agility will worsen the situation.

Allison also mentioned that bloggers must post at least 3 times a week to maintain traction. (Sigh... That hit me where it hurts.) She suggests that having multiple voices can help to make sure your blog is frequently updated.

Don't use social media to broadcast your press releases -- it's a misuse of the tool by attempting to use it for broadcasting rather than conversation.

Don't use social media channels only for fundraising. There's nothing wrong with making an ask, but that shouldn't be the only content.

Don't go live with a fully-formed plan. Harness the "spirit of co-creation" to use the channel to ask for advice, including on how to raise money.

Allison is a big fan of Hoot Suite to manage Twitter feeds.

Allison just predicted Facebook may become the AOL of social networking due to their privacy policies.

Live Blogging from Chicago

I'm at the Association of Advancement Services Professionals Summit in Chicago. I'll be live-blogging from the sessions as best I can on not enough sleep. Staying out late and jet lag have got my circadian rhythms all kinds of confused, so here's hoping it's coherent.