Information is important in fundraising: Where else do our donors give? What is the real capacity of our major donors? What part of our work might they respond to? What is the latest information about online fundraising? What would encourage a local business to sponsor a virtual event? How important is a good logo?

Internet searches on any of these topics can result in hundreds and sometimes thousands of opinions, studies, and advice. We have to decide which information we trust, which applies to us, which is the most recent, and so on. Filtering information, finding what we need, and not spending a lot of time with ideas and information we don't need are challenges we have discussed in earlier sections.

Successful fundraising means putting together what you know so you can figure out what you need to know and not spend a lot of time sorting through data that is not going to help you. Specifically, you need to know how to ask the right person at the right time for the right amount; how to choose the right event that will bring together the people most useful to your organization; what mass strategies you should use to invite people to give to your organization and then what engagement works best for keeping up with those donors; and finally, how to mobilize volunteers so that your fundraising is highly distributed and plays to the strengths of all the people in the organization.

You need to be able to access the following information:

• Up‐to‐date data in your CRM database about donors and prospects
• The organization's current budget and current profit and loss statements
• Work plans for the executive director and anyone else who is going to help with fundraising
• Evaluations of past fundraising activities
• Fundraising goals, benchmarks, and tasks for the current time period
• Useful how‐to information (such as this book)

Every computer file, paper, or app should be held up to this test: Will this item help us mobilize resources from someone or some place? If yes, who and how? If the answer is no, delete it, throw it out, or forward it to another staff person whose work it will help.

A GOOD DONOR MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

The most important tool for entering, managing, and retrieving what you need to know about your donors is a donor management system (database) of some kind. There are hundreds in use, with new ones appearing frequently. Choosing one is a serious task that can take time, but don't take too much time or a lot of data will have been accumulated or lost while you search for just the right one. Of course, these systems are only as useful as the data entered and the uses you make of them.

When you are first starting out, you can keep track of donors on a spreadsheet, but you are going to want to move to a CRM database pretty quickly for a few reasons. First, it is easy to create reports with databases. Reports based on queries are easier and faster to run in a database than on a spreadsheet, and is it much easier to mix, match, and re‐sort data in a relational environment as opposed to a static spreadsheet. Second, good donor management systems make forecasting future results a lot easier than does a spreadsheet, particularly if there are a lot of variables. And finally, databases are more accurate and don't depend quite as much on the skill of the user. A wrong number inserted into a spreadsheet can change everything—this is less likely to happen in a database. You can augment your database with paper files on donors; however, this soon becomes problematic, as you have to look in two places for information. In general, record all that you can, and is appropriate, in your database.

Your database needs to be able to do at least the following 10 functions:

• Hold a lot of names, with their addresses, phone numbers, email, giving histories, etc.
• As is true of all information stored electronically, make sure you use and regularly check your cloud‐based backup system in the event of a computer or software crash.
• Sort fields quickly and easily.
• Produce reports with simple queries (total number of gifts from the summer appeal, amount pledged versus amount received, donor renewal and retention rates, difference in specific fundraising costs, and income between this year and last year).
• Be able to let coworkers see this information as needed.
• Interface with your e‐mail system for sending e‐newsletters, action alerts, and e‐appeals.
• Interface with (or include as a built‐in feature) your online giving platform.
• Interface with your financial reporting software.
• Allow you to individualize letters and thank‐you notes for different donor segments.
• Respond to special donor requests, such as opting out of having their names traded with other organizations, not wanting to be called, or wanting to be asked only once a year. (For example, Khadijah Vesey notes on her reply device that she only gives in the fall and does not want to be asked more frequently. When sorting for the spring appeal, her name will not show up on that list.)

When choosing a database, be prepared to spend money learning the system and make sure the tech support is good. (Call the toll‐free number with questions and see how long you are on hold, and how clear and how polite the tech support person is.)

These are the best sources for information about databases:

• Colleagues in similar‐sized nonprofits whose opinions you trust
• Idealware (www.idealware.org/reports/consumers-guide-donor-management-systems), a useful website with frequent reports that help you decide what donor management system is best for your organization. They make recommendations that work for small organizations as well as giant ones.
• TechSoup (www.techsoup.org), another website with a lot of useful information that can help your nonprofit obtain different kinds of software at low cost or free.

Donor and prospect information, data used in creating reports, and much of the correspondence you have with donors will be stored, managed, sorted, and retrieved from your database. A good donor management system with good data entered and sophisticated knowledge of how to use it will save you massive amounts of time. However, this does not happen by magic. It takes learning and relearning the software and the discipline to take full advantage of the technology.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DONOR RECORDS

Systematically gathering information about donors and keeping thorough donor records is an important aspect of donor management. In doing so, keep the following three facts in mind.

KEEPING YOUR LIST IN SHAPE

Update your donor records on a regular basis. Don't let more than 10 names go unrecorded, or you will get careless with numbers and spelling. Watch for duplicate entries, particularly when you are going to use the list for a mailing. Donors dislike receiving more than one copy—whether by snail mail or email—of your newsletter or mail appeal. A database program will not know that J. P. Miller and John Miller are the same person, or that Mary Monson no longer lives at 22 South Street and is now Magdalene Moondaughter on 44 North Street. Every so often, print out your mailing list (name, address, email, phone numbers) and go through it looking for duplicates, spelling errors, incomplete addresses, and so on. (If it is very large, print it out in sections by alphabet or by number of records. Going through this is something that a detail‐oriented volunteer can do but even then there will be inaccurate entries that the volunteer cannot be expected to catch.

Think twice before keeping people on your snail mail list who have never made a donation and whom no one knows. When possible, move them to your e‐list. Some organizations will have snail mail lists of thousands of names but only 500 actual donors. They keep the other people on their list for what they call “outreach,” but they have no evidence that they gain donors from this outreach, or even that all of these people are still alive. Considering that it costs from $3 to $10 per donor name every year to send someone at least two paper newsletters and one paper appeal, organizations with extensive lists of nondonors are spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars keeping people about whom they know nothing on a mailing list. That same money could be invested in exploring other fundraising strategies or spent on programs that will attract more donors.

Because as many as one‐third of the people on a list move in a year, and another third change their email address every year, it's important to know when the address you have is no longer accurate. For snail mail, you can get address corrections from the post office by printing “Address Correction Requested” on the outside envelope of all your bulk mail. You pay a certain amount for each piece returned to you, but the returns will have a forwarding address, if known, which helps keep your list clean. Request address corrections at least once a year. For email, someone needs to update or delete any that bounce after each communication. Finally, make it easy for people to get off your e‐list. The “unsubscribe” button doesn't have to be prominent, but it should not be obscure.

YOUR FILING SYSTEM

Take time to organize your electronic and physical filing systems. To test your filing system, ask a friend or another staff person to start naming things for you to find. It should not take you more than five minutes to find any piece of information—physical or virtual—that you are in charge of. If you can't do that, reassess your system. Once your system passes this test, see how well it works for someone else. Suppose you were hit by a train: How obvious is your information setup? If it takes someone else more than 10 minutes to figure out where something is, your system is too mysterious. If there are files that everyone should have access to, make sure you have a shared system and that everyone knows how to use it.

Many otherwise neat people have sloppy virtual files, so give this problem extra attention. Virtual files fool you because you don't often notice how much room these are taking up—the “clutter” is invisible, so it is easy to let the information on your hard drive get out of control.

STICKING WITH IT

Once you are organized, to help you stay on top of your files, make a note of the one, two, or three things that will most help you stay focused on what to keep, and place this note where you will see it. Here is one person's screensaver:

• Is it a donor?
• Is it a prospect?
• Could it lead to a donor or a prospect?

Another has this on a small sticky note on her screen:

• If in doubt, delete.
• After all, what is the worst thing that can happen?

In our business, information is like food: we eat it, we serve it to others, if uneaten we save it for a few days, but we don't keep it permanently. It is useful for what it does for us, but it is not really useful beyond being converted to energy, enjoyment, or, in this case, donors and donations. Seeing information in that light will let you be in control of it so that you can use it to do your work.