The high importance of technology to the not for profit sector,  and the desire to keep apace of the rapid changes in digital communication, were clearly reflected as nearly 200 delegates, comprising  senior managers and executives of 126 membership and charity organisations, attended the IRIS NFP Roadshow at the Royal College of Surgeons in London on Tuesday 7th February 2012.

They gathered at the event organised by IRIS NFP Solutions - suppliers of integrated software, services and infrastructure to the not-for-profit sector – where partners and consultants, including global technology players Microsoft and IBM, laid out their vision for the future of technology and what it may mean for the sector. There was also an accompanying exhibition, where delegates were able to view many new initiatives and share their challenges.

Overall feedback from delegates was extremely positive. David Combes, Director of Knowledge & Information Systems at Action for Hearing Loss, commented: “It was a very worthwhile event, and so good to see a partnership-based approach to meeting the needs of the NFP Sector.”

The day started with the views from two keynote speakers on how digital technology was impacting membership organisations and charities.

Rob Smith of Indigo Blue talked of “another revolution” to match the impact of the digital revolution.  He saw the rapid growth of “cloud” applications as a “game changer” for the way we all work and how organisations source technology. Also, he warned that the growing number of “online communities”, such as common-interest groups on sites like LinkedIn, was creating a new threat and real competition to long-established membership bodies.

Simon Morrison, Director of Marketing and Communications at the Institute of Fundraising echoed this theme, saying that digital and mobile technologies were “changing the way charities work”  by offering new and exciting opportunities to fundraisers to have more  personal, integrated, experimental and collaborative engagement with stakeholders. He cited examples of how mobile and text giving and the use of social media was enabling charities to reach and engage with new donors, particularly in the 18-24 years old demographic,  traditionally viewed by fundraisers as a difficult to reach audience. According to the IoF figures, text-giving had increased 12% in the past year, against a background of an 11% decrease in overall fundraising income since 2008. 

The day continued with presentations from other IRIS companies and key partners, such as NetXtra, QAS, Transoft, IRIS Exchequer, Orbis and Communicator, describing how their products and services were meeting the new challenges and being applied in all aspects of the sector’s activities, covering online and email communications,  automated workflow,  through to data quality and integrity.  Solutions included automated verification of emails and mobile numbers at point of entry, through to ground-breaking tablet based and web-integrated solutions to support an increasing mobile and disparate workforce.

Jim Adam of IBM explained how the vast increase in data available to organisations from the communications explosion presented a real challenge but how the use of analytics was helping top companies use this data to make more informed decisions.

Mark Bloodworth of Microsoft presented his organisation’s vision of the future, in which there will be more pervasive displays and innovative, and more natural, human – technology interfaces, facilitated by touch and motion sensors. A glimpse of this future was seen when Paul Sparkes of IRIS Exchequer talked about the pioneering work IRIS had done with Microsoft on finance applications delivered through tablet and touch technology.

 “I believe it was a high value day for all those involved, with real buzz as suppliers and consultants shared their visions and concerns.” said David Pinches, Director of Product Management & Marketing at IRIS NFP Solutions. “ We were delighted to involve so many of our key partners and I think the high level of attendance and positive feedback we received reflected not only the importance of technology, but also how IRIS and our partners, as key suppliers in this market,  are able to provide innovative solutions to meet the fast-changing needs of our customers.”

Copies of the presentations given on the day can be downloaded at http://not-for-profit.iris.co.uk/iris-nfp-roadshow-2012/agenda.aspx

It means using all the latest technology,doesn’t it? I asked myself this question at the the annual conference of the Institute of Fundraising London Group. This was weeks ago, but two ideas have been going round my head in opposite directions ever since.  I spent two days listening to a selection of the capital’s most with-it fundraisers, and although the sessions offered a wide range of topics, these two coherent and consistent themes emerged: an integrated campaign can yield great dividends, but the direct approach is still the top earner.

What do we mean by ‘integrated fundraising’? Just as there is a recognised need among database specialists to keep revisiting the definition of CRM, so it can be helpful for fundraisers to spell out what they mean by this phrase.  Speakers at IoF London made clear that it is much more than running campaigns across multiple departments and multiple channels, as modelled in the table above.  It is, (like CRM actually) a cultural paradigm requiring campaign managers to involve as many stakeholders as possible in the fundraising mix. The Battersea Dogs Home rehomer with a story to tell about dogs given new homes after months in solitary, and the visually impaired volunteer rattling tins for the GLFB were just two examples on the day of how the direct experience of the charity’s work can create an emotional connection with the donor that elicits the highest and most frequent gifts.

Of course, it’s not just about the next gift. It’s also about the range of ways that an engaged person can support the charity and ensuring that they have every opportunity to do all of them. I would say ‘cross marketing’ in old speak, but it can also be indirect, so it’s about ‘maximising touch points’ and being ‘demand led’ not ‘supply led’ encouraging and facilitating ‘pull’ not just old fashioned ‘push'. Now you should be thinking about websites with video stories, mobile apps with incentives to go viral, not just Twitter and Facebook but and Yammer and Sprout.

But here’s the thing.
Along with the widespread agreement that integration is key, there was another story – the real revenue earning activity is still derived to a very great extent from the warm list. You may say, isn’t online giving up very strongly? Well it is, but even in the US, 92% of giving is still offline, and online is still only really strong where it is supported by mass news media. For most charities, last year’s volunteers, last year’s participants, the regular donors – these are still the bread and butter.

Every cause needs new donors, and new technology is a great way to attract new segments, but the bed rock is still the direct approach to the warm supporter.  Yes, do as Guide Dogs do – get your lottery ticket purchasers thinking about legacies and your volunteers thinking about regular gifts. In other words, practise careful nurturing and growth of the contacts on the fundraising database. Key-note speaker Mark Astarita said it too in another way, when he asserted that

"UK fundraising will ride out the tough times better than most countries (especially the US where the main model is still the annual pledge!) because UK fundraisers understand regular giving".

 Well I would say that wouldn’t I, working for a database solution company as I do?

We all recognise the importance of making giving as easy as it can be, but do we put it into practice? In competing for sizable donations, are we missing a golden opportunity by not chasing loose change?

Collecting Boxes can be seen as “old school” and not innovative enough, something that large and smaller community charities used to use – but I strongly believe they have as much relevance today as they always did.

We are still some way away from a world where we only pay with pin numbers and plastic, or even just waving our cards near a sensor to pay for goods. From supermarkets to smaller and independent retailers, a collecting box can easily accumulate a reasonable income in a location with a mediocre footfall (I’ve observed averages of around £14 in a 2 month period, in a small retailer in a small town).

Collecting Boxes are more than just a vessel for collecting small change, aren’t they? They help raise awareness of your organisation, getting your name out there and you aren’t even paying an advertising fee or rental space. Are you printing certificates to show how much your holders have raised for you? If you do, and they are sized and presented correctly, these are often placed in public view or on notice boards – yet more free advertising and awareness raising. All this, and you get the contents of the box too!

Nearly half of respondents to a recent survey conducted by ICM research (on behalf of Ronald McDonald House) charities say they would donate spare cash if collecting boxes were more accessible. I’ve observed this is even more prevalent amongst the young.

But, there has to be a down-side, right? To administer and manage Collecting Boxes correctly, it takes time and effort, and if you get it wrong it can be very damaging. Using Volunteers to manage this process is ideal, but there needs to be continuity and clear guidelines/processes, as recording information in a spreadsheet may not be enough. Sending out boxes with no supporting information can lead to them being full and no-one knowing what to do or how to contact you. If you don’t check-up on boxes, they can be full and stored away, only to be lost or opened and emptied into someone else’s box. And, the ultimate error in my opinion, if a retailer can’t take your box now, but offers to take it in a month or so, don’t just ignore them. You may believe that because they can’t take the box now they don’t matter, but they do – and they can often remember. If they recall they agreed to take a box and no box arrives, it can tell them you don’t need the money and you don’t need their help. That’s a very public message that is unwise to portray.

However, don’t be disheartened. The IRIS Donor Strategy collecting box management module is designed to make that as easy as possible. Through Campaign Calls it can help you place boxes in the best locations. It reduces administration by producing the paperwork (placement letters, thank you letters and certificates automatically, but in a professional and personalised way). It can help you predict when boxes may be ready for collection, and handle requests to delay the despatch of boxes without additional administrative overhead.

This is the thought-provoking debate prompted by the latest blog by Richard Boardman who styles himself on Twitter as @crmadvisor.  As is often the case with provocative statements I found I reacted to this in a number of different and contradictory ways.

 Firstly, as a leading supplier of Enterprise Wide CRM solutions to the charity sector: “19 CRM systems! What a nightmare!” followed by, “Only 19! We come into contact with charities all the time who say they have hundreds of CRM systems”, and finally “Well 19 may be too many, but you can rarely reduce all the complex relationships in a business to one single over-arching system.” I can recall more than one instance of implementing a database alongside a team of consultants poring over many-coloured spider diagrams representing every known contact and relationship, only to learn that the [insert catchy name] single CRM project had lost out in the latest organisational re-shuffle.

Richard makes the point that many companies achieve great success with no CRM system at all, although he believes that this is because they never had a senior level business sponsor? He explains that by saying ‘..many organisations simply don’t have the right senior level staff with time on their hands’. I wonder however if the real reason is business need. There is, and should be, a Darwinian element to the rise and fall of systems. If a business, or charity, really needs a CRM it will create one. If that system costs more effort to maintain than the benefit it delivers, it will not succeed. A core CRM system is an absolute essential for non profit organisations, because commercial accounting and ERP systems are just not suited for the main fundraising or membership application, i.e. the processing of high volume cash transactions with the only deliverable being a highly tailored communication or welcome pack. Cash books and sales ledgers and sales order processing systems just won’t cut it. As an NFP, there is no doubt, you need a CRM system, but to return to the original question, do you need 19 or should you strive for just 1?

At IRIS NFP Solutions, we take a pragmatic approach. On the one hand, many systems that have grown quickly in response to an urgent need, have natural marketing cross-overs with the core system, and should be amalgamated back into a single central system. The much sought after 360 degree view can, and does, provide exponential growth in activity by facilitating carefully targeted cross marketing. However, there may be good reasons in some organisations why even the most obvious candidates (event management, web databases, legacy marketing, regions, sales order processing, etc etc) should not be merged. Our view is that we should encourage and support the move to an Enterprise-wide system that promotes the 'single supporter view', and we are uniquely placed to support this, but that we should only do this where the synergies are obvious, and the benefits outweigh the risks. Leaving aside the desktop databases, 19 is far too many CRM systems, but equally, one may prove to be an unobtainable mirage.

IRIS Donor Strategy Product Manager Tony Davey discusses the role of social media in building alumni communities. He looks at ways to make your website work harder to engage old boys and girls and considers some of the social networking tools available to complement your website.

While the article is aimed particularly at schools, there are some useful pointers that will also be relevant to the higher education sector and to other not-for-profit organisations, including charities and membership bodies.

If you're interested in knowing more about developing and maximising your online presence, please read the recently published IRIS NFP Solutions white paper. It’s written specifically for not-for-profit organisations. Simply click here to download. 

Use your website to build communities

Today’s old girls and boys expect to be able to participate in online peer-to-peer communities, networks and forums. Having a strong web presence enables you to attract a new generation and re-engage those who have lapsed.

A web portal with interesting and useful content and privileged access to an alumni-only area becomes another compelling reason for former pupils to support your work. It reinforces their connection with the school and helps you to maintain the connection with them.

Keep new leavers engaged

Schools often find that for the first few years former pupils may show little interest in maintaining contact. They feel they’ve put their school days behind them. Gradually, their interest grows and they begin to see the value of having a ready-made network. 

This is why we recommend that you sign up leavers before they go and offer them automatic membership of your alumni organisation for the first seven years. View this ‘loss leader’ as a way to maintain contact and capture any change of address.

In the meantime, it’s worth considering if you could offer unique content for recent leavers to develop their interest.

Find old boys and girls

Searching social media websites can offer a useful way to locate alumni who have disappeared off the radar. Spending just half an hour a week to track them down and drop a line to invite them to reconnect can pay dividends.

As a rule of thumb, Facebook tends to be the social networking site of choice for under-forties, with the professional sites, such as LinkedIn, gaining in appeal after the age of thirty.

Protect your online presence

Who owns your online presence?

It’s not such a silly question. You need to embrace the new media before a well-intentioned old boy or girl does it for you. Once they set up ‘your’ Facebook group, it will become difficult to establish your own official presence and drive people onto your controlled site. At best, your impact and core messages will become diluted; at worst you'll find your online presence has been hijacked. 

So, while we would always advise that you take a considered, strategic approach to developing your online presence, please don’t leave it too long.

Also on the subject of controlling content, some of our customers have asked us how to integrate Facebook fully with our Web Connect online community software. However, think of the images that could end up on your website if you were to have a direct connection with no monitoring of content...actually, it doesn’t bear thinking about!

With Web Connect for IRIS Donor Strategy, we offer the happy medium that protects your organisation from some of the worst excesses of Facebook postings. Facebook-like buttons could enable visitors to your Web Connect site to post your news and announcements on their Status. They can then spread the information ‘virally’ across their personal Facebook pages. Viral marketing or ‘word of mouse’ is a powerful tool in today’s online communities. What news or information could you offer that your alumni would pass on to others?

Some schools are also putting links to ‘micro-blogging’ services on their website. Twitter is perhaps the most popular example. Who could be your bloggers and how would you ensure they stay on message without sounding stilted?

Keep alumni coming back for more

All these social media techniques are cheap, even free, to set up and run. But you need to be prepared to spend time managing your social media profile, engaging in the debate and keeping content fresh. Whose job will it be to look after your social media and update the information regularly?

If you can start the ball rolling with just one good idea a week, you will make your website worth revisiting. Don’t forget, too, you also have the perfect ‘market research’ vehicle for sounding out interest before investing time and money in organising an event or launching a new fund-raising campaign. Running surveys and opinion polls also creates a sense of ‘dialogue’ to encourage repeat visits.

One IRIS Donor Strategy customer allocates time every Friday afternoon to the job of updating their alumni microsite. As the site has caught on, former pupils have begun sending in their queries, suggestions and photographs. They all seem delighted to have a new opportunity to re-engage with the school and their contributions are helping to keep the keep the content fresh. Additional updating has become an easy task for the school’s alumni development office.

Although it’s been out for a while, there is still time to comment on the Government Green Paper on Giving. Comments must be in by 9^th March, and as one of the big themes is Technology, we are going to have our say. The paper can be downloaded at www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ and includes details on how to respond and contribute to the debate.

However much this paper tries to claim an altruistic set of motives, at the end one is left with one abiding impression - this is all about saving money. Yes, this is the wolf of the deficit agenda in sheep’s clothing of ‘The Big Society’. You could argue the Government is doing its best to cut out the middle man, by finding ways to get the taxpayer to fund services without the cost of public administration. In fact, the Government wants us to find those ways by ourselves based on its suggestions. However, the Paper rightly asserts that technology holds at least part of the key to promoting growth in the giving of time and money, so whether it is doing it for the right reasons or not, as NFP technology specialists, we at IRIS have an opinion on its ideas.

The key technology ideas referred to in the Paper are, click-to-give sites such as EveryClick, further promotion of event based giving sites such as Justgiving and VirginMoneyGiving, ATM giving, mobile, websites like Givey that act as clearing houses for volunteer time as well as money, websites that encourage discerning gifts such as IntelligentGiving, and so on.  There is plenty of discussion of the role of Social Media, online Causes, and microfinancing.

It seems though that while the authors have trawled a lot of sites for ideas, and spoken to a lot of people, they have ever tried their own hands at raising money for charity. Fundraisers know the key to success lies in building long term relationships with donors and getting them to be involved in the cause. In contrast, many of these technology driven ideas rely on chance opportunity – at your ATM or while filing in your tax return, and the superficial relationships that arise from online encounters. Anyone with school age children will know that their Facebook communities thrive far more impressively than our adult ones because they see most of their online community every day in the corridor.

There is no doubt that mobile will play an increasingly important role, and IRIS clients are already using both SMS text donations and mobile ‘Apps’ to gather funds from donors on the move. Again, the donation gathered on the move should never be seen as an end in itself. The key here is to add that to the sum of knowledge about each donor in the core donor database, so as to optimise future donations by both mobile and offline channels. SMS campaigns have shown that as many as 20% of text donors will offer to Gift Aid their donations, which gives the charity the address of the donor and an opportunity to develop the relationship.

The paper makes much of the statistic that almost half the total donated comes from less than 10% of the population.  Increasing the number of people making small adhoc donations will do nothing to change this statistic unless they are turned from occasional to regular givers. One way to do this is to interact with donors through as many channels as possible , online and offline, locally and nationally, through events, corporate tie-ups, product sales and raffles, and the only technology that really supports this strategy is the Customer Relationship Management database.

Of course, new technologies and online participation vehicles have a huge role to play in helping to increase the overall level of giving, and maybe this Green Paper doesn’t mention CRM databases for fear that the Big Society sounds too much like Big Brother, but they must still remain at the heart of any IT driven strategy to increase giving.

Welcome to the IRIS NFP Solutions blog, our opportunity to share insight from over 30 years experience serving the sector and working knowledge of over 1,000 NFP customers.

Our expert contributors will bring you their news and views on the latest in charity software and databases, subscription & membership management software and education solutions. Read on for all things related to Not-For-Profit technology for charites, membership associations and higher education.