When A Volunteer Doesn’t Work Out June 3, 2012 By Ewlacasse

Some matches are not made in heaven.  How do you handle a situation where, six months in, you or a new volunteer recognizes that the person and the task are not suited to each other?

Joe’s daughter was born with spina bifida and he feels compelled to “give back” to your organization which has been helpful to his family.  He volunteers to drive the day camp bus for the summer.  Everybody has looked at the job as “transportation,” but when Joe does it, he gets emotionally involved with his passengers—and he doesn’t handle that well.

Sally has volunteered to man the box office from 1-3 pm on Mondays.  But she’s often late because she isn’t able to break away from her morning job in time to arrive by 1pm.  The disruption in box office coverage is taking a toll on other volunteers and on staff members who have to fill in.

Charlie’s a retired Personnel executive who’s come to your office through a Senior Volunteer placement program to cover the phone and reception desk one day a week.  But Charlie is too much of a manager and can’t resist meddling in employee issues—taking up a lot of your time and upsetting your otherwise well-oiled office wheel.

Three rule for supervising volunteers:

            Make a new match carefully.  Consider a “trial” period, or ask the volunteer to cover the job for a day or two while someone is on vacation—to give you and the volunteer to test the waters.

            Check in with volunteers regularly so you’ll see for yourself what’s working and what’s not.  You need to be the one to start the conversation:  “is there anything about this work that you don’t like?”

            When there is a parting of the ways, no matter who initiates it, be sure it is handled with respect and consideration.  That same volunteer may cross your path again, or might be in a position to “recommend” you to a future volunteer or donor.

            Once again, fundraising is friendraising.

Get To Know GiftWorks - Operations Manager, Sue Wallace June 1, 2012 By D Murphy

Each month we'll be highlighting a GiftWorks team member and getting to know them just a little bit more! GiftWorks is nonexistent without you and the wonderful team at GiftWorks. We asked each member to answer some questions. This month, we talked to Sue Wallace!

Your name: Sue Wallace
Title at GiftWorks: Operations Manager
A little info about Sue: I grew up in Pittsburgh and met my husband Brian in Pittsburgh.  We have been married for 29 years and have 5 children.  We have lived in Lancaster Pa for the past 23 years and now consider it home, although we still love the "burgh."  Both my husband and I like a good beer, good food and live music.  We have been fortunate enough to make our way to San Francisco and truly found it beautiful.  Would love to be able to live in that area for any amount of time someday! I also love a good book, a good movie and sitting in my backyard talking with my friends and family. 

1.     How long have you been with GiftWorks?  5 years.

2.     What attracted you to working at GiftWorks? I came to GiftWorks via a friend who told me about the job and have been here ever since. It's a great place to work.  Caring people and meaningful work.

3.     What’s your favorite Candy, and why? I'm not a big candy person, but I can get into a good piece of dark chocolate.

4.     Favorite sport, and favorite team? To play, tennis; to watch, hocke; team, Pittsburgh Stillers (that's "pittsburghese" for Steelers).

5.     If you could be an animal, what would it be? Bird.

6.     If you could only watch one movie for the rest of your life, what movie would that be? That is a hard one, one movie that has stuck with me is "A Very Long Engagement" about a woman trying to find out what happened to her fiance, who allegedly died during wold war I.

7.     Who is your favorite Beatle? John.

8.     Favorite board game? Backgammon.

9.     When cheese gets its picture taken, what does it say? Cheese does not believe in graven images.

10.  If you could possess one supernatural ability, what would it be? To understand everything!

11.  If you won the lottery, what is the first thing you would do? SMILE!

12.  If you could be instantly fluent in one other language that you currently do not read or speak, which would it be? French.

13.  If you had to be trapped in a TV show for a month, which show would you choose? Battlestar Galactica.

14.  If you could take credit for any invention, what invention would you select? A cure for a disease---does that count?---any disease, that must feel really good to have done that.

15.  Would you rather be a boomerang or a Frisbee? And why? Frisbee. To sail like that is a nice thought for me.

Thank you Sue!

NEXT MONTH: Customer Care Rep. Sheldon Kepiro

What Would You Do? May 24, 2012 By Ewlacasse

Consider this scenario:

You are a new hire in the Development Office and pretty new to fundraising.  You’ve studied up on best practices and attended a few seminars/webinars to foster your skills.

In orienting you to the Board, the Executive Director tells you that Mr. X, who heads a local foundation related to your area of mission, can be “touchy.”  “Handle with kid gloves.”

You are the staff person on a VIP bus trip to a regional arts center.  Each attendee pays a minimum charge to cover the cost of the renting the bus ($37.50).  As you are tallying the checks for deposit, you discover that Mr. X has written a check in the amount of $35.00.

You make a decision that the best action is to ignore the discrepancy—and not bother the Board member over such a small amount of money.  However, your ED instructs you to make the call and rectify the matter.

What would you do?

GiftWorks Pulls Data into One Database May 23, 2012 By Ewlacasse

A rich history is a wonderful thing, but it can also present some hurdles in moving into the realities of today’s world.

The Oblate Sisters of Providence (OSP) is the first successful Roman Catholic sisterhood in the world established by women of African descent.  The order was founded by a French-born Sulpician priest and four women, who were part of the Caribbean refugee colony which began arriving in Baltimore, Maryland in the late eighteenth century. At the same time they started the order in 1828, they began a Catholic school for African American girls.  The school, St. Frances Academy, is the oldest continuously operating school for black Catholic children in the United States. Under the directorship of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and later the Josephite Fathers and Brothers, the order began missions in Philadelphia and New Orleans, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Costa Rica (where they remain today). Eventually, the OSP founded missions, orphanages, and schools in eighteen states.

Today the Sisters operate St. Frances Academy, the Mount Providence Child Development Center, and the Reading and Math Center, while holding leadership roles at the Cardinal Shehan School in Baltimore.  They also have pastoral and education ministries, as well as providing religious education in Baltimore, Miami Beach, Buffalo, and in Costa Rica.  

In 2009 a search was started to find software that would help organize and streamline the records of these diverse entities to use for advancement.  After careful examination of several possibilities, Sister Helene Therese OSP recommended the community purchase GiftWorks for their budding advancement efforts. The next year efforts began to combine and centralize benefactor lists from various divisions in one place to improve record keeping, to make communication easier, and to help the sisters begin to strengthen their ability to raise funds in support of their work. GiftWorks was a perfect fit for this task.

Lee Braggs, Media and Mission Advancement Specialist for the order, says:  “If you’re walking crooked, you’ll keep doing it until someone shows you how to walk straight.” It’s been her job to show the sisters the benefits of GiftWorks’ single database platform by combining and improving the depth of the information therein.

Moving from the chicken dinner, to the brick drive, to the Response to Love Campaign, the Oblate Sisters of Providence are moving forward in the contemporary world of advancement with the help of GiftWorks. It has streamlined their efforts and made their advancement endeavors much more efficient and beneficial.

GiftWorks Takes the GuessWork out of Mailings May 15, 2012 By Ewlacasse

“Before we had GiftWorks, I relied on Jerry, my compassionate postmaster, to help me sort my mailings for bulk rates,” reports Mary O’Donnell,  President (and co-founder) of the Amyloidosis Foundation, a national nonprofit which works towards raising awareness of the disease, supports research through a grant program, and helps patients and their families. ( Amyloidosis is a disease that occurs when substances called abnormal proteins build up in your organs--the heart, kidneys, liver, spleen, nervous system and gastrointestinal tract—interfering with normal function.  Amyloidosis is rare --c. 3,000 patients diagnosed annually.) There is no cure, but many patients are able to manage their symptoms with medical treatment.  O’Donnell started the foundation in 2003, after her husband died of the disease.

“Initially with a small mailing list, the complications of bulk mail were not a problem, but as our list grew (it’s now 7,000), ordering and batching pieces for mailings became a nightmare.”  About three years ago, The Amyloidosis Foundation purchased GiftWorks, and the mailing function was a Godsend.

“The more we use GiftWorks, the more functions we discover; for example, we can now use codes to generate reports on how many responses there have been to a particular mailing, how much money raised, etc.”

“And I’ve just done reports with the new mapping, so we can see how many of our donors live within a 50 mile radius of our zip code---to measure whether there is enough of an audience to sponsor a Walk event.”

The Foundation operates on a shoestring—with three part-time staffers.  A new person will soon be hired to manage the database, freeing up Mary’s time for more educational and strategic programming—and providing someone to get the answers when the Development Director “needs to know.”  O’Donnell quips, “With GiftWorks we now have a handle on our core stuff (data, reports, mailings), and we’re looking forward to exploring the higher functions GiftWorks provides, once someone has the time to devote to making the most of our database!”

O’Donnell is anticipating two improvements that will come with the release of GiftWorks 2013:

• Greater integration with Constant Contact will synchronize mailing lists, donor profiles, subscription changes, and email bounces.
• A new tool to verify and cleanup donor addresses in GiftWorks.  This will help verify information, cleanup inconsistencies, and prevent the waste of money on improperly addressed letters.

Thanks, Mary, for sharing your GiftWorks experience with us!