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Moves Management in PatronManager: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1692410
Moves Management is a system of policies and procedures, or "moves," with the goal of increasing donor gifts and engagement. In other words, it's all about being thoughtful about the steps you take to nurture your relationships with donors. A good Moves Management plan will help you increase donor engagement, retention, and gift amount.
In this article, we'll go over:
- How to establish a baseline
- Determining your Moves Management Strategy
- Tools available to you in PatronManager for Moves Management
- A general outline of Moves Management
Ready to learn more about harnessing PatronManager for your Moves Management? Let's get started!
Establish a baseline
The first step in any successful plan is establishing a baseline: it's hard to know where you're going without knowing where you are! To start, we suggest the following:
- Explore what you're currently doing (or not doing)
- Establish baseline data so you can measure your results in the future
Here are a few ideas to help you get started.
What donations have been coming in for the last five years? Take a look at your All Donations report and summarize it like so:
- Set the time-frame so you see all data from the last five years
- Summarize by year (Group the report by Close Date, then display dates by Calendar Year or Fiscal Year, whichever works better for your organization)
- Hide Details for a high-level overview
Other helpful reports to consider include:
- All Donations by Fund
- All Donations by Account
- Donation History by Campaign Source (if you use Campaigns)
For more about reporting, make sure to check out our Basic Reporting Customizations and Advanced Reporting Customizations. You can also check out our list of frequently-used fundraising reports.
If you're using Campaign Hierarchies, you'll be able to easily see everything you've done in the past and how effective each outreach campaign has been.
For more on Campaigns, check out our Campaigns article.
If you currently handle Campaigns or appeals differently, that's ok! The goal here is to look at your current process and establish a good baseline.
Look at your current touch-points with donors. Even if it’s only a single thank-you email immediately after their donation, it's important to note what your process is today, so you can make informed decisions going forward.
- Navigate to any donation record (perhaps a larger gift or a pledge), and check the Activities section to see a list of tasks directly related to this gift.
- Navigate to any Contact record for a person you communicate with regularly, and go to the Activities section to see a list of tasks directly related to the Contact (and may or may not be donation-specific).
- If you find some of your hard work was not recorded in PatronManager (e.g. lunch meetings, phone calls), that's good to know - and consider logging these activities in future!
Other things to think about which may or may not be in PatronManager:
- How do you target potential donors currently? Or do you?
- Do you currently work to increase donation amounts from donors year over year? If so, what is that process?
- Do you run special donor events, like galas or silent auctions? How do you conduct those?
- Do you have a Membership program? What are the benefits? How do you recruit members?
- Do you have an education / outreach program? Do you leverage this in your development efforts?
- Do you have a corporate donation strategy?
- Do you encourage donors to pursue matching gifts?
Determine your strategy
Once you understand your current fundraising landscape, you'll be well equipped to decide where you're going next. Consider the following recommendations, and write down your strategy.
Don't forget to write it down! It's not a real plan if it lives in your head and no one else knows about it. Plus, if this is a new process, you will need to reference your written plan often and tweak it from time to time.
What did you discover in your baseline research?
- If there are any stellar fiscal years or Campaigns, what are they and can you explain them?
- Is there any part of your current process that you know donors appreciate and you must keep?
- Does anything else stand out as particularly successful?
Now is the time to take the information you gathered and make decisions about what you want to do.
- How can you improve your acknowledgment process?
- What Funds need attention? Does that warrant a unique effort/campaign?
- Are there prospects you think you should be targeting but aren’t?
- How can you better engage your existing donors?
- How can you increase the average amount of your current donations?
Be specific about the buckets of potential donors you'd like to target for outreach. For example, do you want to target previous major donors? Or do you want to target those who haven't donated before? Or are you looking for low-level donors who purchase tickets to upgrade them to major donors?
Here are some ideas to get you thinking:
Lapsed donors
For example, consider things like this:
- Donors who gave $500+ in a specific year but haven't donated since then
- Donors with a lifetime giving total of $1,000+ who haven't contributed in the last year
Hint: you can use the CRM Snapshot called LYBUNT/SYBUNT to get this kind of information!
High-wealth constituents
For example, you can use a tool like WealthEngine and look for potential donors with a wealth score of X or higher. You can also use prospecting tools or reports that look at data such as zip code to identify potential donors in affluent areas.
Hint: you can filter an All Accounts report by zip code.
- Use the "starts with" operator on your zip code filter
- Use commas to separate the first three numbers of each zip code area you want to include in your report
Subscribers and repeat ticket buyers
Patrons who regularly visit your venue but aren't yet donors can be great prospects - they already like the programming you offer and may be excited to support your organization. Look for things like:
- Subscribers for 3+ years who have never donated
- Ticket buyers of 3+ events per year for at least two years
Hint: you can use CRM Snapshots and reports to find this kind of information!
Hand-picked prospects
Your board members and executive team are great resources to find high-value prospects.
Hint: you can use custom fields or Campaigns to keep track of hand-picked prospects, since they might not meet other standard reporting criteria.
How you'll engage with your prospects is the key to Moves Management. Here are some ideas to get you thinking about possibilities. You may have some Moves not listed here as well!
- Email - personalized and unique
- Email - personalized, but automated template
- Direct mail - personalized letter
- Direct mail - general appeal letter
- Direct mail - general brochure/postcard
- Phone call
- Personal meeting
- Birthday card
- Gala invitations
- Committee participation invitations
- Social events
- Facility tours
- Ticket offers
- Surveys
Now that you've chosen your goal, decided what buckets of prospects to solicit for gifts, and thought about the different Moves you can make, it's time to put it all together.
You could create a flow chart like the example below, sketch something on paper, or write it out in a document.
Whatever tool you use, you'll want to specify what you want to happen, to whom, and when:
Implement your plan
In the next several articles, we'll go through the different steps of Moves Management and give some examples of different ways that you can use PatronManager tools to implement each step in the process. We'll focus on these main areas:
- Identifying prospects
- Cultivating relationships
- Tracking major gifts (after you've done some quick preliminary configuration)
- Ongoing stewardship