Get Personal!

As the holidays approach, the bulk of your fundraising mailings fly out the door, while you hope (and pray) your expected returns remain the same from last year.

Now that you have the donations coming in, it's time to get personal!

Everyone knows that acknowledging a donor and their gift is the right thing to do- and quickly. Unfortunately, this very important activity sometimes is placed on the back burner, with donors not receiving acknowledgements for days, weeks, sometimes never!

While DonorPerfect can easily help you create and process these "Thank You" letters, it's still up to you to include a personal note on each one. This personal interaction is critical in a world where your donors are inundated with messages every day.

Even a simple note, in your own handwriting, such as "We really needed you help this year- Thanks!" can do wonders in the eyes of your donors. They FEEL more connected, which recognizes and motivates them to give again.

Try it when you process your next batch of acknowledgements. In a short time, you'll find that your donations will increase, and the return on this small investment will be very worthwhile.

Software or Service?

I was traveling back home from a business trip, and was reading one of those financial magazines I find scattered in the seat backs on airplanes. In the magazine was an article from Saturn, GM's successful division to deliver a 'different kind of car company' to customers.

In the article was a quote I remembered from one of the managers and he said, "We are not a car company; we are a service company that happens to make cars."

I thought about this for a while and realized that DonorPerfect is very much the same type of company. Sure, we have great fundraising management products, both DonorPerfect Visual Edition and DonorPerfect Online, but I think what makes us great is the SERVICE we provide to our customers in helping them make a difference by using our software.

From our trainers, to data conversion specialists, to developers, and especially to our front-line support, it's our service that helps our customers reach their goals. After all, the last time I checked, fundraising software doesn't print money. It takes teamwork, training, and knowledge to use the software as a tool to help you be successful. We look forward helping you get there!

A brief history of DonorPerfect

I get asked a lot of time, how did DonorPerfect Fundraising Software get started? Who created it? Well, here's a brief history:

DonorPerfect was originally created by a woman named Robin Stark back in 1985. Robin lived in San Diego, and worked with a number of non profits that needed to computerize their fundraising records. She quickly found that there was a huge need for this software, with many non-profits looking for ways to harness the growing popularity of PCs to go beyond keeping donor records on index cards in shoeboxes.

A few years later (1989), SofterWare (our parent company) was looking for a fundraising solution for their many nonprofit camp and child care center clients. We looked at dozens of products and determined that DonorPerfect had exactly the flexibilty and features we wanted. Since Robin's success with DonorPerfect had primarily been limited to organizations in California, SofterWare became the product's distributor in the rest of the world.

In 1994, DonorPerfect was one of the first fundraising software programs to be converted to take advantage of Microsoft's Windows operating system. Keeping up with advances in technology has been important to DonorPerfect's growth during this period to become the second most widely used fundraising product. Blackbaud is still larger, particularly in terms of revenues (since they charge so much more ;-).

We continued to keep advancing and improving DonorPerfect and its fundraising management capabilities with the release in 1998 of our 32 bit (think Windows 98) version, which is now called DonorPerfect Visual Edition. This is still our most widely used product.

We knew it was time to get busy again in 2000 with a little thing called the Internet catching on. We resisted changing our name to end with .com and instead spent our time carefully reviewing and choosing the best technology and DonorPerfect Online was born. Our first client went live in October of 2001, and have never looked back.

We're very proud of DonorPerfect Online, especially the user interface. We realized early on, that the interface had to be simple, friendly, and most importantly FAST- that's why to this day DonorPerfect Online is 5 to 6 times faster than other online applications!

And we're not stopping there.

We're actively working on our next generation of DonorPerfect, code-named DonorPerfect.NExT. It's going to be awesome and will us to provide a single product platform that can be used as a desktop of web-hosted solution. Look for more announcements throughout the year as we continue to build this exciting new product!

So I start my blogging career...

So, I've jumped on the blogging bandwagon (finally) and have succumbed to the siren's song of our marketing guys (Sam and Marc ZG) to start writing some personal insight, remarks, and comments of the non-profit community I call home.

First, some background information about me:

I've been working with non-profit organizations exclusively for over 10 years. I started with DonorPerfect back when Windows was becoming cool, and the Internet and email did not exist- at least not in any great useful way at the time.

I did not own a cell phone, a blackberry, or a PDA. I didn't even have basic cable.

Now, 10 years later, all that has changed. I'm married to a wonderful wife, Susan, and I am the proud father of four children, Annie, Michael, Brian, and Teddy. My parents were fond of saying, "there's never a good time to have children and you can never afford them- so you might as well have them now and quickly." I love sayings like that.

I've also been fortunate to be part of a team that has helped grow DonorPerfect into the leading fundraising software solution for small and mid-size organizations. Back in 1995, we had 20 employees- now we have over 150! Today, I serve as Vice President of DonorPerfect Online, our ASP (Application Service Provider) fundraising solution for organizations that want a web-based, hosted solution, or an enterprise, installed solution for larger clients.

In addition to the 'feel good things' I have, I do own a cell phone and have had cable for several years now. I still do not have a blackberry of PDA yet, but I think my phone can handle it. For a gift this year, my wife is buying us digital cable, for one TV, but I still think it's too expensive.

Over the next many months, I'll be sharing more of a perspective on DonorPerfect fundraising software, our great staff, and our exceptional clients that make us who we are today. My goal is that you'll see DonorPerfect not just as a successful, proven fundraising software company, but one that listens and can react to our client's needs proactively.

Our success is absolutely dependent on yours! So let us know and you can always reach me at jonb@donorperfect.com.