New 1:many cadences with automated emails, reusable templates, and more in Signal

DonorSearch identifies prospects in your database with the capacity and intent to give.

Missed the live session? Watch our on-demand webinars anytime to get guidance from industry experts.

PSA: You Should Have Something To Show for Every Conference You Attend

Donor Experience Certification

So, you attended a conference. 

You made the case to your supervisor that the conference would be worth your time. You cleared your schedule, declined meetings, and (hopefully) turned off email dings and message notifications.

You zoned in on candid stories of wins and lessons learned from leaders in the industry. The keynotes asked some big questions and gave you a boost of inspiration. 

You chatted with your counterparts across the country and reconnected with former colleagues and industry friends. 

Maybe you even attended OUR conference, in particular. 

At RAISE Live, we wanted folks to walk away from the two-hour event with a new joie for their work. 

We wanted attendees to reflect on their own day-to-day and bottom lines compared to what some of the most innovative teams across the country are doing. 

We wanted to give everyone at least a handful of ideas that they could actually apply to their work this week, this month, and this year.

Now, where’s the ROI?

Some of the RAISE takeaways and ideas worth borrowing are for you to bring to your boss.

Others are for you to bring to your next team meeting

And others are just for you to bring to your own workflows so that, starting now, you can be a better fundraiser, teammate, leader, and relationship builder.

Professional development is an investment of your time and energy. In some cases, it’s an investment of your or your institution’s money. Your donors expect ongoing value from their investments in your institution – you should expect the same from an investment in your professional development.

The expertise you gain at conferences should be reflected in your list of credentials.

EverTrue Donor Experience Certification

We curated the content of RAISE so that our attendees would walk away as better advancement professionals who are ready to modernize their work and create top notch donor experiences. If you joined us for RAISE , you are eligible to receive the EverTrue Donor Experience Certification.

To receive the Certification, you’ll have to pass a quick test of your knowledge of modern fundraising techniques. Then, you’ll be prompted to log into your LinkedIn profile to add the EverTrue Donor Experience Certification to your LinkedIn profile under “Licenses and Certifications.” 

If you didn’t join us for RAISE Live, or if you did but maybe once or twice you got caught up in multi-tasking, don’t worry. It’s an open-book test and we’ve given you all the resources you’ll need to pass.

The knowledge you gain and connections you build at conferences are so valuable. But make sure you have something tangible to show for the experience to remind your network (and yourself) of how you just leveled-up in the industry.

No excuses on this one – you owe it to yourself! Document your modern-fundraiser-pro-status with the EverTrue Donor Experience Certification

Endowment Spending & Growth Calculator

Enter your fund's current value and adjust the return, spending, and inflation sliders to see how its value in today's dollars changes over time.

$
6.0%
0%12%
4.0%
2%7%
3.0%
0%8%
10
5 yrs25 yrs

Value in 10 years

$0

In today's dollars

$0

4. Continue to Steward Donors

Your relationship with the donors who give to your endowment doesn’t end when you secure their gifts. Because your endowment exists to make a difference in the long term, your supporters will want you to keep in touch about its progress. Ongoing stewardship means keeping donors updated about your endowment’s performance and impact. A report that strengthens your relationship with donors should cover:
  • The fund’s balance at the start and end of the year
  • Spending amounts and allocations
  • How the fund’s returns compare to your investment targets
  • A short narrative detailing the specific impacts the endowment achieved
Create a report for each endowment rather than sending an identical document to everyone. A donor who endowed a scholarship wants to hear about the students it supported, while a donor who endowed a building fund wants updates on construction projects.

5. Upgrade Your Endowment Management Tools

Your endowment management tools should make applying your spending policy across every fund easy. Investing in dedicated software is especially useful as your endowment grows. Handling unitization in spreadsheets might work for a few funds, but as you begin to manage dozens or hundreds of gifts, dedicated software can save your team time spent manually calculating gains and losses for each one.

Why Nonprofits Need Dedicated Endowment Management Software

Dedicated endowment software brings accuracy and consistency to every part of the management process, from tracking individual funds to improving security. See how these solutions compare to a spreadsheet-based approach: nfographic table outlining the information below.

How These Methods Compare:

In managing your endowment with traditional spreadsheets, you may see:
  • High administrative burden: Manual entry across disconnected systems
  • Limited security and audit footprints: Reduced version control and audit trail visibility
  • Difficulty with donor transparency: Spreadsheets provide only static data that is difficult to turn into custom results.
By using dedicated software, you are likely to find the following improvements:
  • Lower administrative burden: Automated fund tracking and calculated allocations
  • Enhanced security and audit footprint: Audit-ready reconciliation with clear tracking
  • Greater donor transparency: Connects with reporting platforms
Dedicated endowment management software keeps your organization compliant while freeing up the time your team once spent manually managing spreadsheets.

Secure Your Endowment with Balance by EverTrue

Effective endowment management begins with excellent accounting. Balance by EverTrue handles unitization, applies spending rules, and produces audit-ready reports, so your team can spend more time on the donor relationships that built the fund in the first place.
  • Turn your data into a clear picture of long-term impact. Combine accurate fund accounting with donor reporting that showcases impact.
  • Connect with the tools you already use. Pair Balance with Impact by EverTrue and ODDER by EverTrue to create and deliver compelling digital endowment reports that you can send to donors with ease.
  • Know where every fund stands in real time. Check market values, gift history, and available spending for any fund. Then, share view-only versions with your team, so everyone stays informed.
With Balance, your team can stop spending all your time on manual management and instead add balance to your endowment workflow.

Additional Resources

To learn more about managing your endowment and other ways that technology can help your organization, check out these additional resources: Less stress, higher endowment funds. Discover how Balance provides the organization, security, and accuracy your endowment needs. Request a demo.
0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x