3 Weeks away? (OK Maybe 4)

It's coming. And it's BIG news.

Our fall release of DonorPerfect Online has passed our internal testing requirements and we're looking for a grand launch in 3 weeks. We're shooting for Monday, November 6, with a possible 'rain-out' date (so to speak) for the following Monday, November 13.

This release is considered to be a major release for all of our clients, and we're really excited!

Here's a sneak peak (along with the others I have blogged about in the past):

1. New Moves Management Module- automate your contacts/calls/visits for groups of donors.
2. More financial reports- and better organized by category and function
3. Updated look and feel. We've updated the dashboard to include your own favorite links and custom web information.
4. Custom export options. Any drillable section can be exported in one click to Excel.
5. Canadian support! New receipting satisfies Canadian receipting requirements.
6. New DPO Support message board to share you ideas, problems, and comments with other DonorPerfect Online users!

We're so excited about this upgrade that we will be offering webinars to all of our FULL support clients that explains all the new features.

Our clients can expect a newsletter the week before we release the update with all the details- look for it in your inbox soon!

Shooting under par...

I had the good fortune of participating at a recent golf outing for Woody's Circle of Care, a non-profit organization that gives grants to at-risk families in our local community. It was a perfect day in the Northeast, so getting away from work for the day (after so much traveling) was relaxing.

They used WebLink to capture all of their golf registrations and raffle ticket purchases, and offered credit cards as a payment option. It was quite interesting to see the staff at the golf course, connected to a wireless internet connection, using the software to register everyone- and it was very successful.

If your organization hosts a fundraising event, you should definitely consider WebLink as it saved this organization dozens and dozens of hours in administration time. In addition, they realized that just being able to accept a credit card had distinct advantages. I witnessed one exchange at the registration table where one golfer said:

"Oh you take credit cards? Here, run $1000 through this [card] and keep the remainder as a donation."

Before this extra donation he was contributing ~$450, so offering credit cards netted an additional $550!

Finally, since this was their first event using WebLink, they did learn a few things. For example, though they were able to accomplish the registration process with one laptop computer, it really required two (and in fact, based on this experience, we at DonorPerfect believe you should have 1 laptop for every 50-60 guests.) Additionally, it does make sense to make sure you have a backup system (paper notebook) in place in case an internet connection goes down (which happened for 3-4 minutes and ended up being an issue with the laptop's wireless card).

Regardless of the small hiccups, everyone agreed the outing was a huge success and they look forward to using WebLink for their future on-line registration needs. Contact Julie Blum at jblum@donorperfect.com to see how WebLink can solve your on-line form and payment processing needs.

Oh, and the scores that day??? Well, I'm not the best golfer in the world, but our team did manage to shoot under par... (as long as you include all the mulligans we took! ;) )

It's been a long road...

Ack, I think I have just committed the first sin of blogging- thou shalt post on a regular schedule.

The thing is, I've been incredibly busy traveling the last few weeks as we are in the middle of what we call 'conference season'.

The most recent conference was in Chicago, Illinois for the National Catholic Development Conference. We've been exhibiting there for years, so it was great to talk to all of our existing clients as well as meet new prospects that are looking for a better solution.

One of the features that grabbed attention is our new "Moves Management" module. Based on proven principles of cultivating your major donors, this new module will make it easy to plan, forecast, and execute your major donor gift program. Look for it in our upcoming newsletter soon!

As for the conference, I now understand some of the reasons why DonorPerfect is able to keep our costs low and our value high for our clients. At the conference, Internet hook-ups were available to vendors at $900/day. That's not a typo- the conference/hotel wanted to charge $900 each day for Internet Access (even though it was free a hundred feet away in the lobby!!!). It's simply not reasonable. As a result, we were able to load our software on our individual laptops- an Internet connection was not necessary to conduct a demonstration.

Perhaps why our competitors charge so much is that one of them had no problem paying for the connection, even though they don't even offer a web-based version. I don't know about you, but I'd rather save $2700 and walk 100 feet to get my email and surf the web. I guess we have a different way of doing business here at DonorPerfect, one that keeps our costs low and enables me to sleep easy at night.