Year-End Fundraising Campaigns: The Missing Piece

Giving Tuesday and year-end fundraising campaigns are almost upon us – are your technology systems prepared?

Have you ever worked on a big jigsaw puzzle, and just when you’re about to complete the picture, you discover the final piece is missing? Oh, the aggravation of being left with that one little gap in the center, after all that hard work, time, and effort.

Know what’s even worse? Getting to the verge of launching a fundraising campaign and suddenly discovering a missing piece. As the Marketing Manager and/or Development Manager, you don’t want to get caught with technical gaps at the last minute! Your system administrator (operations director, database manager, website manager, email system manager, or team member who happens to manage/maintain these systems) probably has valuable information about technical requirements that are crucial for planning and executing these campaigns effectively. It’s their job to be in the system(s) regularly, make sure they are functioning properly, keep them secure, and update them to meet the evolving needs of your organization. Taking advantage of their expertise by thinking through a few things and scheduling a 15-30 minute meeting with them could save hours of aggravation when your year-end fundraising campaign starts running.

Prepare In Advance

There are certain pieces of information that will help your system administrator to think through what’s needed for a smooth and effective campaign. Aside from your overall campaign plan and timeline, you’ll want to think through the following three pieces of information before meeting with your database manager:

1. Think Through Segmentation

A campaign often is sent to specific segments of a list. Emails are drawn up and graphics are put in place ahead of time. Great! What if you have a few new segments? When do those segments / lists get created? When you put the email draft into the system? This is where that missing puzzle piece could be really aggravating if the person who administers this part of your system didn’t get a heads up. Now you have a last minute problem with the potential to change everything that’s already been created.

While we don’t see this often, it does sometimes happen where the information needed to create a segment hasn’t been collected, the system can’t do what’s expected, or (worse yet) the data isn’t reliable. You want to know that as soon as possible, right?

All of these problems are completely preventable if you think through the segments ahead of time and inform your system administrator. They can ensure the appropriate data is set up so the right people get the intended campaign communications.

2. Prepare for Reporting

Every campaign has some sort of reporting at the end to measure its success. Thinking through the metrics with your system administrator will save time and effort during and after the campaign.

Many CRM’s now have reporting dashboards to help you see metrics. System administrators can set the CRM to automate data collection processes ahead of time so the dashboard is available to assess success throughout the campaign. In some cases customized dashboards for each manager and the Executive Director can be set up to monitor success.

Automating data collection ahead of time makes it easier to gather and analyze data after the campaign as well. Reports can be easily accessible and already in a format to send out.
By planning ahead and including the system administrator in post-campaign reporting, you can ensure that the data is accurate, the analysis is timely, and the insights gained are instrumental in improving future campaigns.

3. Plan for Testing

We recommend testing a campaign before you launch. There are always back end updates happening to systems (especially if your organization keeps up with updates to prevent security risks). Something may have changed recently that will impact the campaign. Whether you are doing a new or copied campaign, this is an important step for preventing problems on launch day.

Use a test group and do a smaller version of the campaign to test it and make sure everything goes as expected. Leave plenty of time for your system administrator to make changes if something goes wrong. Sometimes, they may have to do some research and additional testing to get it ready.

Keep your testing date flexible until you talk with your system administrator. You’ll want to confirm they have the capacity to help.

Meet With Your System Administrator(s)

The goal of this meeting is to get everyone on the same page with the campaign plan and establish communication. This allows the system administrator to fill in any missing pieces ahead of time. This way, if something goes wrong, they’ll be able to minimize downtime and loss of donations.

By sharing your full campaign plan, timeline, segments, reporting, and testing date, your system administrator will be able to ensure all the pieces are in place for a smooth campaign.

Get the Pieces in Place Now

Most system administrators are like us. We love it when clients let us know about their next big fundraising campaign. This allows us to understand what they are trying to accomplish and how they will be using their systems so we can work together. Early communication ensures everything runs smoothly from start to finish. We almost always find something on the back end that needs to be adjusted in order to accommodate the specific functions of the campaign.

Whether your system administrator is in house or a consultant like us, it’s imperative to include them early so they can make sure you won’t be missing any pieces. Our ongoing support team is always up for a chat about upcoming campaigns. Send an email to support to get started.