1. Roger Ellison, CFP
Vice President for Planned Giving
West Texas Rehabilitation Center Foundation
3001 South Jackson
San Angelo, TX 76904-5197

[Paul, as you are aware from your Reporter-News days, the Rehab is headquartered in Abilene. I work out of the San Angelo center.)

2. Our mission is to improve the quality of life of those we serve regardless of financial circumstances through a comprehensive array of outpatient rehabilitative services. In 51 years, no one has ever been denied services due to an inability to pay. [The latter hints at the purpose of my job – to grow an endowment so that the same can always be said.]

3. We use Raiser’s Edge by Blackbaud as our fund raising software, but the Foundation staff uses ACT! as our contact manager. We have highly customized ACT! for planned giving purposes, we query Raiser’s Edge to select and export required information into ACT!, and we cut and paste information regarding certain donor contacts back into Raiser’s Edge. ACT! gives us the ability to much more actively manage and track our relationships with contacts, integrate our relationships and activities outside planned giving into one planning vehicle, and to keep that information close at hand. A notebook computer provides mobility and on-site or on-the-road capabilities, and synchronization with a PDA through ACT! for Palm OS allows much of that information to be carried in a shirt pocket. That’s pretty slick. Imperfect, of course, but really effective.

What we’ve done is ACT! is add a Planned Gifts tap and fields to track planned gifts (so that we can see everything at a click). We’ve created a Giving History tab and fields with extensive summary information about first gift, last gift, largest gift, # of gifts, average gift, total giving for current year and the previous five years, all giving prior to the previous five years, and an historical total giving, plus other user created summary information.

We’ve also created a Plan of Action tab with extensive information that helps to analyze the potential or existing relationship with a donor and to plan future actions in the relationship. Included at that tab is downloaded information such as planned giving propensity scores from Blackbaud Analytics, DOB, DOD, age, as well as five fields the PGO can use to describe the potentially multiple planned giving relationships of the contact (Planned Giver, Prospect, Suspect, Inactive, etc.). Additionally there are fields to estimate interest in our organization, financial ratings and giving capacity.

At the same tab, one can also see in numerical code the areas discussed of the last contact with the donor, a field which indicates the type of contact which began the planned giving relationship, fields to indicate the PGO’s assessment as to the type of gifts, if any, in which the donor might have an interest and fields to show who natural and primary partners might be for the gift planning process. Additionally, the assigned solicitor’s name shows, and six additional fields are provided to plan the relationship from a cultivation, visitation, or marketing perspective.

While this might seem overwhelming, the trained eye can quickly refresh their mind as they prepare for a visit with a donor and can thoughtfully adjust the information after each visit. From a system perspective, however, queries can be quickly prepared and run to create certain groups on which to focus, market, plan, act or even send birthday cards.

Obviously the software capabilities in the ACT! for Palm OS are not as flexible as that of ACT!, but even there a considerable amount of data can be to the PDA.

Now, to take this one step further, in ACT! groups can be created based on selections or queries of one or more fields. Those groups can be quickly exported from ACT! into DeLorme’s Street Atlas USA Plus so that one can actually geoplace those contacts on which work will focus in a particular time period. For example, the PGO is on a trip to a particular city, and has 23 potential donors to contact. She can place them on this interactive map residing on the notebook computer, plan the route of travel (hook it up to a GPS and actually stay on track!) and clear the contacts as they are made.

Raiser’s Edge is a wonderful fundraising software program, but it was never designed to be a contact manager, much less portable. ACT! was designed as a contact relationship manager, but never as fundraising software. Adapted, however, they offer innovative options not originally considered; coupled with the PDA, mapping software and even a GPS, the possibilities for increasing the effectiveness of the PGO are limitless.

4. Is the something amusing about all this? Absolutely. Some of my donors think I’m really smart! “How do you remember all that stuff?” as we discuss a previous conversation. “Oh, it’s not me that’s so smart. I very systematically keep good notes, and most of them are on my Palm. See what I wrote about that visit two years ago…”