I decided to start this blog as an outlet for some of the things I’ve learned and experienced over my 20 year career which has spread across technology, non-profit databases and Advancement Services. While I hope to write about a number of different topics pertaining to fundraising, I’m hoping to focus more on the “internal workings” of a charitable giving organizations and specifically address some of the technical challenges issues that can be found in Advancement Services today. At its core this will be a fundraising blog, but it won’t be a place to chronicle the day-to-day efforts of giving officers to raise more money for their organization. I do hope to share some great fundraising tips with you, but I’m hoping to concentrate more on the back-end process of analyzing and maintaining your data in order to get better results.
I think it’s an exciting time to be working in Advancement Services because in the past few decades fundraising and technology have jumped forward in ways that were previously unimaginable. In some ways many non-profit organizations are just beginning to catch up to for profit companies when it comes to using technology to maximize their effectiveness.
There are lots of different fundraising software solutions and database systems available but when I’ll do my best to present solutions that can be implemented in different types of databases if at all possible. I’m currently a huge fan of Blackbaud’s The Raiser’s Edge and Raiser’s Edge NXT (RE NXT) and most of my “real world” examples will revolve around using one of those products. I was a certified Microsoft Office User Specialist for a number of years and worked as a freelance software trainer for a number of years. I hope to share some of the tips and tricks I use in my own Advancement Services department to save time and effort.
This wouldn’t be a very good introduction post without a call to action. Don’t worry, I won’t ask you for any donations! I would like to ask you to simply spread the word about this blog if you find it useful. Feel free to follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn where I will share information about new posts, other Advancement Services news items and anything else that might be of interest to the fundraising and Advancement Services community!’
Welcome to ModernAdvancement.com!