Events

We do a lot of fundraising events. Every fall we have a big event with a silent auction. It generates a lot of revenue and is essential to our success. In my first three years with Families First before DonorPro, auction checkouts were miserable, both for our staff and for our supporters. With over 300 items to process, some donors would stand in line for hours. Then we would spend weeks afterwards trying to reconcile

 reports, send receipts, and tie up loose ends. For our 2010 fall event, we used DonorPro to plan and manage our event and auction. DonorPro handled sponsorships, seating, registration and all auction logistics – from organizing auction items to checkout and receipting. What a difference DonorPro made! Saturday night, checkout was completed for over 300 guests with 322 items in under 30 minutes. Everyone walked away with their items, thank you letters and receipts. And, on Monday AM, we printed out all financial reports for our event.     

Database

When I joined the organization, we were using an old Access database where data was entered very inconsistently by the entire staff. Constituents were categorized inaccurately, records were lost when people left our staff, and there was no uniform way to how the data was inputted. When we decided to explore other options, we focused on our need for a flexible system, strong events management capabilities, and a central hub with custom fields with all of our varied types of constituents in mind.

After exploring almost every nonprofit system, DonorPro worked into our group of finalists. We liked DonorPro because we wanted to do some customization but really wanted to use the software 'off the shelf' with not too much tweaking. My final vetting process was a request to speak with references from the vendors' current clients. DonorPro immediately stood out when they emailed me their entire client list while the others were hesitant or sent just a few. More impressive: each client within the family services industry that I reached gave a very positive review. And now I know why. DonorPro has given us stronger data. We can analyze our data with confidence and in real time so we can react quickly to trends.