Kelley Rating (one asterisk = lowest, five asterisks = highest):
- Ease of navigation, design of interface and learning curve *****
- Instructional documentation and help system ****
- Carries out the goal of the product as advertised *****
- Overall usefulness *****
DonorPerfect is designed to assist charitable organizations in accumulating, entering and managing donor data and creating useful reports for targeted fund raising and volunteer efforts. It assists in tracking donor patterns and preparing donor solicitations tailored to the needs and targets of the organization. It provides online donation forms and other facilities for input of complex donor information. It also offers contact management, tracks donors and volunteers, maintains membership records, facilitates online donations and manages gifts and pledges.
It supports fundraising activities, processing of donations, preparation of reports and analysis of organizational activities; tracks all donors, members, volunteers, board members, prospects, organizations and special event participants in a single database; includes social networking tools and tracks donation and registration transactions, recurring gifts, credit/debit card activities and e-check processing.
The DonorPerfect constituent database provides a centralized location to collect, analyze and prepare communications from all contact data.
DonorPerfect tracks gifts, pledges, soft credits, matching gifts, in-kind donations, grants, corporate sponsorships, membership payments and more. The optional accounting interface allows transfer of transactions recorded in DonorPerfect directly to your accounting system.
It includes training options, advisory services, classes/webinars, a knowledge base with online tutorials and newsletters, a user forum for users and staff to exchange questions and comments and a nonprofit news room.
DonorPerfect is available as a web-based solution or as locally installed software. The DonorPerfect app may be downloaded from iTunes for the iPad or your smart phone.
What’s It All About?
Its functionality includes:
- Sending mass mailings;
- generating e-newsletters and email marketing;
- creating automatic gift acknowledgments;
- gift and pledge processing;
- organizing and tracking special events;
- grant tracking;
- recording membership and volunteer information and activity management;
- managing receipts and acknowledgements of donations;
- comprehensive reporting and analysis;
- acting as a facility for online donations on the organization’s website;
- EFT and credit card processing for pledge collection and individual and recurring gifts; and
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maintaining constituent web pages for special events, social marketing and more.
How it Works
The opening screen allows for easy navigation. It displays a row of buttons at the top of the screen offering access to Home, Search, Receipts, Mailings, Reports, Tasks, Utilities, Settings, App links and Help.
The Home screen offers access to Reports, including User-Defined Reports and Donor/Gift listings; Open Contacts, listing up to 100 open contacts that are scheduled for action; and Information and Learning access, including Knowledgebase, training options, User Forum and Suggestions.
The Search screen allows you to search your database for any individual or organization by name, physical address, location or email address and allows you to set the search options. You may locate donors by a given zip code and even by miles from a given zip code.
The Constituent Contact Information screen opens with a Main screen listing all the donor contact information and allows you to proceed to Gifts, Pledges, Tributes, Contacts, Bio and other info. From the Main screen, you may attach a file, send an email, view other information, add a new gift and perform other tasks. You may proceed to a screen for tracking individual donor skills, particularly those related to your organization’s fund raising activities. You may open a screen that lists all Constituent contacts, on which you may track all kinds of Constituent information and set up filters for individuals with various communication criteria.
You may create blast emails targeted to specific persons and check on email reactions. DonorPerfect includes templates for mail merge and you may merge contact and gift info with pre-prepared letters for donor mailings.
The Reports screen allows you to first select a category of reports (such as General, Pledge, Direct Mail, Tribute, Legacy, etc.) and, within a category, select a detailed report, including an annual statement, comprehensive donor revenue analysis, frequency analysis and various gift listings. As you move your cursor over the name of a report, a description of that report appears. You may select various donor report options and select output options (print, Excel, Word and screen). The Comprehensive Donor Revenue Analysis reflects all donor activity for recent years, with the percentage and amount change year by year, including active donors, retained donors (with donor retention rate), new donors and reactivated donors. A wide selection of reports are available, including a report of individual amounts given over a given time span and an analysis of solicitations and responses over a given time frame, including the type of solicitation, response rate, amounts received and associated costs.
You can filter reports of aggregate gifts as you choose. For example, those who didn’t give in the course of a designated gift campaign. Outputs, including charts and graphics, may be generated for export to Excel or Word.
A donor personal entry form is available online for donors to enter individual and contact information. You can add online forms tailored to your organization’s needs with dropdowns, dates, etc. Out of the box templates are available, and, for a monthly charge, additional fields may be added.
Under Settings, other files may be imported to add to your database, including CSV and TXT files. Import criteria may also be set.
What About Help and Support?
DonorPerfect includes context sensitive help. Quick Start videos are available for various components of the program. A variety of support plans are offered by the publisher for electronic user information interchange and telephone support.
Where Do You Get This Facility?
DonorPerfect is available from SofterWare, Inc. at
132 Welsh Road, Suite 140
Horsham, PA 19044-2217
Contact at http://www.donorperfect.com/asp/requestinfo.asp
Phone: 800-220-8111
Fax: 215-542-4370
Pricing is monthly and based on the features furnished as shown on at Pricing Information on the publisher’s website.
Bottom Line
DonorPerfect is an efficient and adaptable tool for charitable organizations to collect and manage donor information and allows for well-arranged management of calendars, content, events, mailing lists, solicitations and payments.
Trusts & Estates magazine is pleased to present the monthly Technology Review by Donald H. Kelley—a respected connoisseur of the software and Internet resources wealth management advisors use to further their practices.
Kelley is a lawyer living in Highlands Ranch, Colo., and is of counsel to the law firm of Kelley, Scritsmier & Byrne, P.C. of North Platte, Neb. He is the co-author of the Intuitive Estate Planner Software, (Thomson – West 2004). He has served on the governing boards of the American Bar Association Real Property Probate and Trust Section and the American College of Tax Counsel. He is a past regent and past chair of the Committee on Technology in the Practice of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel.
Trusts & Estates has asked Kelley to provide his unvarnished opinions on the tech resources available in the practice today. His columns are edited for readability only. Send feedback and suggestions for articles directly to him at [email protected].
