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Is it appropriate for a nonprofit to invest in their own growth? What percentage of an organization’s funding should be reserved for investment in building and managing the organization? There are several high-profile examples of organizations that are clearly doing it wrong, causing many to question which organizations are worth supporting. As a result, several charity benchmark websites have appeared, providing a seemingly precise evaluation of any charity’s efficiency in just a few clicks, but is this an accurate assessment of a nonprofit? Many nonprofit leaders say no.

Casey Ernstes of the Plenty team talks in depth about this issue on the Plenty site this month, asking readers to compare nonprofit organizations to any other business they would choose to invest in. Are nonprofit organizations held to an unfair standard, one that for-profit organizations are immune to? Is there a better way to assess how well an organization is serving its mission?

Read in-depth on this issue here to find out more about the challenges nonprofits are facing, and how they can guide the conversation toward a more effective and accurate evaluation of their efforts.

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Email Marketing Automation can have a huge impact on your organization. It allows you to better target your audiences to get the best possible engagement. You probably already know that you could use it, but making a decision on which option is best for you can be challenging. In a webinar with Predictive Response and Idealist Consulting, they discuss how to make email marketing automation work for your organization and go into detail on three types of automation campaigns.

Drip Campaigns

By definition, a drip campaign sends prewritten messages to a selected group over a specific amount of time. Your organization can set the tone of the emails and choose how frequently they will be sent out to your subscribers.

Adaptive emails

These adjust to a subscriber’s behavior so you can optimize emails for the individual experience. You will know who is opening which emails and what actions they take afterward. This provides great data for you to use when responding to subscribers based on their individual behavior and actions.

Scheduled News and Announcements

Have important news or announcements coming up? Save time by scheduling emails to coordinate with your specific release date and time.

Check out the full webinar from Predictive Response and Idealist Consulting here. To learn more about Marketing Automation, download a new white paper from Heller Consulting, Marketing Automation for Nonprofits: Starting Off Right.

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The 2015 AHP Annual International Conference is taking place in Orlando, Florida from September 29th – October 3rd. Join healthcare professionals from across the country to share ideas, resources, best practices and benchmarks with colleagues. Heller Consulting’s CEO, Keith Heller, will join Sid Mallory from Henderson Mallory Partners to present a session on October 2nd.

Accelerated Results for Multi-Foundation Health Care Systems: A Coordinated Approach to Fundraising Operations and Databases

In just 2 years, Allina Health System increased their annual fundraising from $13 million to more than $38 million. A key component to their success was coordinating fundraising operations and donor databases, which improved efficiency, enabled system-level reporting and supported adopting proven fundraising strategies. Interested? In this session, review your options, from adopting similar code structures, learning gift entry practices and reporting, to moving to a single system-wide database and shared “back office.” Link

If you’re attending the AHP conference this year, we would love to see you there! Fill out our contact form to the right and let us know you’ll be there, and we’ll be sure to save some time to talk to you about your organization.

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Heller Consulting’s Vice President of Digital Agency, Jenn Smith, had two sessions this year. In the first, she spoke with client Doris Day Animal League on building a strong digital fundraising program starting with only a handful of prospects. For the next, Heller invited the Canadian Cancer Society of Saskatchewan to discuss going beyond conversion to create a better experience for donors.

Didn’t make it to the Bridge Conference this year? No problem! Both of the presentations from Jenn’s sessions are available for download along with a social media snap shot with the highlights from the conference. Head over to Heller Consulting’s website to download the social snap shot.

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In just two weeks, over 130,000 people will be heading to San Francisco to attend the biggest nonprofit tech conference of the year – Dreamforce! We can’t wait to see what Salesforce has in store for us at this year’s conference. Heller Consulting will be in the Foundation Zone and has four different sessions this year. Read more about them below.

Where we’ll be:

Dreamforce Foundation Zone for Nonprofits
San Francisco Marriott Marquis – map
Foundation Zone Booth #10 in the center of the room

Sessions by Team Heller

Taking Flow to the Next Level with Just Enough Code

Wednesday, September 16, 10:00 – 10:30
Moscone West, Inspiration Theater

Join us as we cover some of the roadblocks that many admins face when implementing a Flow, and how to overcome them using a bit of code. We will cover passing data to the Flow, modifying styling of the Flow interface using Visualforce, changing the finish location using Apex, and discuss adding attachments within a Flow using Apex and Javascript. We’ll provide admins and beginning developers with “just enough” code to get them past these common roadblocks to make their Flows stellar. No programming experience necessary, but participants should be familiar with building a Flow as that will not be covered in this session. LINK

Non-Tech Skills Every Admin Hero Needs

Thursday, September 17, 1:30 – 1:50
Moscone West, Admin Theater Zone

Often, the difference between feeling like an #AdminHero instead of an Admin Zero, is the ability to navigate the interpersonal and business challenges that live beyond the Setup menu. Join us to hear from a seasoned Salesforce Admin on the ‘softer side’ of being a Salesforce Admin. You’ll learn strategies for overcoming common pain points, such as gaining consensus among difficult stakeholders, translating high-tech concepts for low-tech users, and turning your opponents into allies (because we all have that one user!). You’ll walk away with new concepts, ideas, and hands-on resources to catapult you to #AwesomeAdmin greatness! LINK

Designing Constituent Engagement Journeys to Boost Conversion

Thursday, September 17, 4:30 – 4:50pm
San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel, Yerba Buena Salon 13-15

After all that work you put into your peer-to-peer or friend-raising event, it’s easy to let your engagement with top donors fizzle after the big event is over, despite your best efforts. In this session, you’ll see how a leading nonprofit organization uses a robust multi-channel communications strategy to keep donor relationships meaningful, online and off. Hear best practices for designing engagement plans that keep donors connected and engaged well after the event, so that they’re ready to leap into action when the next big fundraising opportunity rolls around. LINK

Hands-on Training by MVPs: Building Advanced Reports for Nonprofit Admins

Friday, September 18, 12:00 – 12:30
Hilton San Francisco Union Square Hotel, Imperial Ballroom A

Reports in Salesforce allow Admins to bucket data as well as make sophisticated reports to display data across objects. Join us to discuss the most common reporting scenarios that nonprofits face, and how to solve them using custom report types, bucket fields, custom summary fields, and advanced report filters. We will include a tour of some complex reports included with the NPSP and how to extend the functionality of these reports. You should have a basic understanding of report functionality as well as understand object relationships to fully participate in this session. LINK

Dreamforce Survival Guide

Need help navigating Dreamforce? Heller Consulting has gathered everything you need into the Dreamforce Survival post, including local coffee shops, transportation wifi, places to grab happy hour, and much more.

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Nonprofits are continuously presented with opportunities to engage with constituents – partners, volunteers, advocates, donors, the beneficiaries of the mission and more. While some organizations rise to the challenge and provide a rich engagement experience to those seeking to connect, other times organizations miss an opportunity to meet constituents with the right type of engagement at the right time. Those missed opportunities can translate to loss of connection, loss of dollars, loss of goodwill and loss of motivation to do more with the organization. To help nonprofits understand the impact this can have, Heller has created the paper Taking Engagement Seriously to explain how to develop an Engagement Strategy, and clarify how it can influence how your organization approaches all of your constituent engagement efforts. We covered the first step in planning an engagement strategy in our blog post on the CRM System. Step two focuses on developing an engagement strategy.

An engagement strategy is an outline or “journey map” that guides your organization to truly serving your constituents’ needs while you strive to meet your organizational goals. This can be challenging for organizations at any stage in their development. Organizations in a growth phase struggle to make the increased investments in sophisticated technology, while established organizations can struggle with creating a personal and relevant experience.

While we know we need to treat and engage with our supporters better – never before has that need become such an urgent mandate. The commercial sector is investing in technologies and strategies that have heightened consumers’ expectations for relevant, personal and important information whenever they want it. Taking Engagement Seriously goes into detail on the following topics to help you create an effective engagement strategy.

• Obtaining the “360-degree-view” of the constituent
• Strategy and content before technology
• Choosing which channels work best for your constituents
• And more!

For more information on developing an engagement strategy to align your organization and advance your nonprofit’s mission, head to the Heller Consulting website to download the free paper, Taking Engagement Seriously.

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The 21st century consumer is accustomed to a personalized, seamless experience in everything they do. It’s simple to find old friends and stay in touch through Facebook, watch all of their favorite shows on Netflix, or order necessities off Amazon and have them delivered to their door the next day. The commercial sector strives to get to know their customers and understand their needs so they can quickly and easily fulfill their requests.

Nonprofits often have more limited time and resources and struggle to create that personal connection tailored to what their constituents desire, but their constituents expects the same high bar that the commercial sector has set. In order to become a “connected” nonprofit, they need a CRM solution to track the interactions between their organization and all of their members, volunteers, and donors. An effective system paired with a strong engagement strategy allows nonprofits to truly understand their constituents, leading to a personalized experience and long-lasting relationship.

Heller Consulting has 18 years experience working with CRM strategy and systems and a resume that includes over 1,000 nonprofit clients. Below is a selection of posts, papers, and resources that they have shared to help nonprofit organizations understand CRM and how it can benefit their staff, constituents, and organization.

Understanding CRM for nonprofits:

Taking Engagement Seriously
Components of CRM
What is CRM and what does it mean to nonprofits?
Developing skills in your CRM implementation
Transforming CRM vision into a reality
What to do with CRM data
Building a CRM roadmap
How to articulate a CRM strategy
Making your CRM aspiration a reality

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NGO Connect (formerly known as roundCause) was developed as an application that specializes in addressing sophisticated, multi-channel fundraising management needs for larger organizations without compromising the native strengths and innovations of Salesforce. In general, NGO Connect offers more complex functionality than the Nonprofit Starter Pack, and also offers additional features in areas such as events and grants management that the NPSP does not include. Also unlike NPSP, there is a per-license annual cost associated with NGO Connect. Already unmistakably powerful, the NGO Connect roadmap features many updates that will continue to improve usability for fundraising staff. Heller Consulting released a white paper describing the basic features of NGO Connect. Today we will be reviewing Ease of Basic Processes in NGO Connect.

Because so much of NGO Connect’s application is customized to meet the client’s individual needs, the ease of basic processes, such as constituent entry, gift entry and duplicate checking, is dependent on the resulting product. As a result, nonprofits will need to adapt the user guide that is provided, or create much of their own system documentation and training.

NGO Connect is designed to manage large-scale direct marketing initiatives with complex segmentations. The Campaign setup feature has been customized to allow easy generation of segments and source codes. If using the optional roundScope suite to generate complex direct mail segmentation, Campaign Memberships will automatically populate in NGO Connect.

For nonprofits without advanced system administrators, NGO Connect is developing a less complex query tool on the Campaign record for creating simpler mailing lists. This update is currently on the roadmap for future release.

Find out more about the features and benefits of NGO Connect’s newest capabilities by downloading this free resource now.

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