Gearing up for the busiest time of year...

If you are like almost all non-profit organizations, most of your donations are contributed during November and December. It's a known fact that people are more inclined to contribute during this period, so it's best to plan now for the holiday mailing in late November.

DonorPerfect provides many ways to select and target this mailing. Mailing to your entire list, while touching everyone and spreading your mission, is probably not a good return on your investment.

Typically, it's best to focus on those donors that have given recently, three years or less, for the basis of your mailing. Secondly, you should further target your mailings and ask the right amount. If you outsource your holiday mailing, most mailhouses will ask you for the average, maximum, and most recent gift amount in the mailing list you supply so that they can calculate the new 'ask' or 'upgrade' amount automatically.

If you are doing the mailing yourself, you can still use this information that is in your DonorPerfect system. For example, whenever you export donors from DonorPerfect, you can always include these calculated fields (Average amount, maximum, most recent, etc.) in your copy/mail merge to make sure you are getting the maximum value out of your mailing.

For those that are even more sophisticated, DonorPerfect can completely segment your list based on the classic Recency, Frequency, and Amount mail segment criteria (Popularly known as RFA or RFM). To access these Mail Plans, click on Mailings, Direct MailPlans.

Finally, you should make sure your mailing list is CASS certified and also checked against the National Change of Address (NCOA) list. You'll never receive donations from mail that is undelivered, and in any given year, about 1/7th of the US population changes addresses. We provide both of these services- click here to learn more about NCOA/CASS.

Our support department would be happy to walk you through the many ways of getting the most out of your holiday mailing, so don't be afraid to give us a call!

Pension Protection Act of 2006

Did you hear?

Last week President George Bush signed into law the Pension Protection Act of 2006. Generally written for pension reform, the act does include several provisions that will affect all non-profit organizations and charitable giving, allowing individuals 70 1/2 or older to take tax-free withdrawals from their IRA's as long as the donation goes straight to the charity. The provision is effective for only 2006 and 2007 (and could be renewed).

In addition, the act also includes provisions that require more record-keeping requirements, new standards for donations of used clothing and household goods, as well as one provision specifically for "Taxidermal Donations" (I am not kidding).

Here's a link to the actual law as written. I'm not sure, but I do think it makes me a little concerned how much effort goes into writing laws in our country:

Pension Protection Act of 2006

The following is an explanation of the law, and is itself 386 pages long:

Explanation of Pension Protection Act of 2006

Key provisions of the law (and their PDF page numbers in the explanation above):

• Tax-Free IRA Charitable Gifts (Page 273)
• Increased Charitable Deductions of Food Inventory (Page 279)
• Limiting Charitable Deductions of Clothing and Household items (Page 312)
• Recordkeeping Requirements for ALL Donations (Page 315)
• Reform Rules for Gifts of Taxidermy (why?) (Page 306)

The Tax-Free IRA Charitable Gifts section is significantly important because it should increase giving in that sector. In addition to not being taxable, any withdrawal used for donation purposes does NOT increase the income of the donor. This provision allows a donor age 70 1/2 or higher the ability to donate from their IRA without a) itemizing, and b) affecting their income (which could trigger unintended tax/penalty consequences).

Finally, the recordkeeping requirements will impact all non-profit organizations. If donors itemize their donations (and most donors do), they must now include documentation for ANY donation amount, and either a receipt from the charity or a bank record will be acceptable. A written log showing that a donor has made the donation (such as cash donations or weekly giving) is no longer acceptable.


In the end, I do think the act will encourage giving at a higher level, especially amongst donors that meet the criteria. A direct mailing/communication to these donors would be advised, as you can explain the benefits of giving in this fashion that benefits both you and the donor.

Finally, the new record-keeping requirements should strengthen your acknowledgment processing. If you aren't acknowledging all of your donors, now is a great reason to start.

Oh, and by the way, maybe you'll get some new taxidermy to put in your office! :)

The Network Effect

I was at a conference recently and was part of a panel that discussed how Prospect Research information was shared within the organization.

Most people responded that the information was rarely shared at all. The most common explanation was that 'researchers' knew the data inside and out, and it was too 'complicated' or 'cumbersome' for 'regular' users to comprehend.

Personally, I don't buy this argument. The value and power of any informational network system, such as the telephone, the Internet, DonorPerfect, or even your circle of friends, is increased disproportionately to the number of people that use it. That is, if you double your network size, you quadruple the value.

The same holds true for DonorPerfect- it's crystal clear that those organizations that share their data across the most users, benefit the most.

Unfortunately, some people prefer to create islands of data. I call this condition MVOT, which stands for Multiple Versions of the Truth. Not only is the information not shared, it's unlikely to be updated and may be completely inaccurate!

So in the end, it's best to share the information-as much as possible and with security controls- to achieve the true power of the network effect.

Getting the message through

I was surfing the Internet the other night and was visiting TechSoup. If you don't know, techsoup.org is a pretty good technical resource solely focused on non-profit organizations.

I cam across this article explaining how including images in blast emails and appeals can be actually hurting response rates. As identified in the article, the two likely culprits are that images are being blocked by ISP's, and that images are also triggering Spam filters.

Here's a link to the article:

Do Images Help or Hurt your Email Campaign?

Though the results are more or less anecdotal, they don't surprise me. As the war on SPAM intensifies, I personally believe it is just a matter of time before email as we know it will change to a fee based service- what better way to eliminate SPAM than for the ISP's to charge for all email?

Unfortunately, that will affect our community harder, but I don't think it's necessarily that bad of an idea. For example, organizations are already used to paying to send physical mail, why should email be any different? And secondly, charging for email will ensure that the message gets read and delivered. Right now, your fortunate to get a 40% open rate when you send an email- I think that needs to be pushed back to or near 90-100%.

Nothing will happen overnight, but as email response rates decrease, and bouncebacks increase, we'll all need to come up with a better solution to make sure the message gets through.