Summer Is for Systems: How to Use the Slow Season to Fix What’s Broken

We know this is the season of vacations, downtime, out of office messages, and long lunch meetings. And that’s okay! Summer is a great time to take a breather and slow down a little. If your office is anything like ours (and our clients!) Spring is sprint, Fall flies by, and end of year – well, let’s just say a marathon is what comes to mind. But the summer is a good time to do a mid-year review, and take stock of what’s going well and what needs to change.  

Data Systems – this is a great time to review your database. You can start with what it is doing (is it really working for you, or are you just making do? Do you have ‘too much’ database? Are there features you want to be using but you don’t know how?) and then move on to the data itself. If you’re thinking of test-driving some other databases, this would be a good time to reach out to some sales reps, or connect with colleagues and see if they like what they’re using. For a busy fundraising office, your data is too important to be on the back burner.  

Policies and Procedures – are they up to date? When’s the last time you looked at your gift acceptance policy? What about your ethical policies for your staff? Review those procedures now and a little bit of forward thinking can save you a ton of headaches in the future.  

Workflow – How is your gift processing workflow? Do you acknowledge all gifts in a 48 hour window? Do you have a system for alerting higher ups when a major gift comes in? What about your stewardship processes?  

Website infrastructure – how are is your giving page? Does it have all of the options that you’d like? Check out some of your peers’ sites. How does yours stack up? Go through the online giving experience and see how it works from a donor’s perspective. If it’s clunky, unintuitive, or just plain difficult, this is a time to change it. And while you’re at it, look at your “ways to give” pages to make sure that it’s up to date.  

Strategy and content – review your performance to annual goals. How are you doing? Take a good look at your strategy, mid-year, and rate yourself. Now would be a good time to course-correct if you need it. Also look at your content, both in terms of social media assets and stewardship stories. Make sure you have a good system in place for capturing those mission-based stories that donors love.  

Outreach – take a look at your communications systems. How is your email client working? Are you getting the open rates and responses you’d like? How is your direct mail performing? Are your vendors hitting their target dates? The systems we use to get our messages out are critical to fundraising success. If some of them haven’t been working for you, now is the time to face those facts and do something about it.  

Compliance and security– This is a good time to review your compliance with your organization’s policies when it comes to data privacy regulations, need-to-know, the right access for the employees who need it, and the external security of your website and your donor gift processing. Talk with your finance office or your I.T. team to get their perspective. In a world full of data breaches, collecting and storing donor information comes with risk and responsibilities. Make sure your office is up to date.