Development Module
Overview & Features

November 21, 2018

Our Development Module is designed to manage the day-to-day tasks associated with fundraising. This robust tool allows you to:

• Manage one-time gifts, pledges, recurring gifts, and in-kind donations
• View all of your donations on one table
• Set up campaigns, funds, and appeals and update them from year to year
• Preset outbound confirmation emails and success pages for donations
• Receive online donations via the online form with authorize.net
• Send Thank Yous
• Log pledge and recurring gift payments in a snap
• Generate donor and donation reports as well as tax receipt letters

CONCEPTS

DONATION TYPES: 

BigSIS is designed to help you manage the different ways in which you can receive funds.

• One-time gift: A single donation paid in full at the time of donation
• Pledge: A donation with a promised amount (e.g. a user pledges 2000 dollars that will be paid over the course of a year)
• Recurring gifts: An indefinite subscription (e.g. payroll deductions that continue until the donor ends their subscription)
• In-kind gifts: When goods are donated (e.g. a laptop)

DONOR PROFILE:

In BigSIS, the Donor Profile represents the giving unit. A person in BigSIS can have multiple Donor Profiles which allows other donors to receive soft-credit when appropriate. For example, a person can have a donor profile with their spouse and another donor profile with their spouse and their company. Or they can have a donor profile that includes their entire family. The donor gets to choose how they want to give.

CAMPAIGNS, FUNDS, AND APPEALS: 

Each donation you receive can be attributed a Campaign, Fund, and Appeal. This allows you to track how many donations have come in for a particular campaign such as the Annual Giving campaign, which donations are earmarked for a specific purpose (i.e., fund) within a campaign (e.g., a donor may request that their Annual Giving campaign donation be used for a restricted purpose like a scholarship rather than a general unrestricted purpose at the organization's discretion), and what sources (i.e., appeals) prompted the donation (e.g., an auction, direct mailing, phone bank, etc.). Each of these ways of tracking donations is entirely optional.

DONATIONS TABLE: 

View all of your donations on one easy-to-read table. Filter by campaign, fund, appeal, paid status, donation type, and more! Can't find the filter you're looking for? Build a custom filter to find exactly what you need. You can also export your data to Excel directly from this table, send emails or print mailing labels.

DONATION FORMS:

The online Donation Form can be embedded on your website so donors can make donations at their convenience. When a donor enters a donation from the online form, that donation will automatically populate on your Donations table so you don't have to manually enter any data. You can configure these forms with your default campaigns, funds, and appeals so incoming donations are logged in the correct place. You can also have alerts sent directly to your inbox any time a donation is made via the online form so you know when a donation is made in real-time.

Other ways the Donation Form makes your life easier is with preset confirmation emails and preset success page messages. 

• Preset Confirmation Emails: The Confirmation Emails allow you to craft HTML emails that are sent to a donor's inbox immediately after they submit their donation, and it goes through successfully, and after each subsequent installment is paid on a pledge or recurring gift. You may use these fields to send different emails depending on the type of donation that was made and the type of payment that was made by the donor (e.g., one email for one-time gifts, a separate email for pledges, etc.). For pledges and recurring gifts, donors may receive one email when the donation is created and then subsequent emails whenever an installment payment is made on the pledge or recurring gift. Note: These are not the same as the more formal thank you letters you can generate with the Thank Yous tools.
• Preset Success Page Messages: The Success Page Messages allow you to craft an HTML web page that is displayed immediately after a donor submits their donation and it goes through successfully. You may use these fields to display different messages depending on the type of donation that was made by the donor (e.g., one message for one-time gifts, a separate message for pledges, etc.). You do not have to use distinct messages for these pages, though, you may elect to use the same message no matter what type of donation is made if you wish. It's up to you!

Below is an example of an online donation form. Note: Donation forms support custom fields so you can customize this form to collect data that is specific to your school

Click to enlarge

CAMPAIGN UPDATE UTILITY:

This tool allows you to:

• Roll over your donation forms from year-to-year so that your future donations are allocated to the new campaign for the fiscal year
• Update payments from Recurring Gifts to go towards the new campaign
• Change donations made under the wrong campaign to a new campaign as seen in the screenshot below

THANK YOUS: Thank yous are how your school will acknowledge donors for their donations. With three thank you options it is easy to thank each donor when and how you like. The three thank you options are: “Initial Thank You”, “Year-End Thank You”, and “Pledge Complete Thank You”. Each option has a host of ways to communicate and handle delivery of the thank you. You will have the option to generate letters, print mailing labels, send emails, or export a list of your choosing.

LOG DONATION PAYMENTS EASILY:

Online payments are a breeze but what happens when a donor wants to pay a different way (e.g. paper check)? Logging donation payments is easy with our Log Hands-On Donation tool. This logger tool displays all of your outstanding payment installments as well as those due in the near future for pledges and recurring gifts that need to be logged into BigSIS manually. With this tool,  you can view each payment that is due on one clean table and mark them as paid on one screen.

DONATION REPORTING: 

The Development Module has a robust set reporting capabilities. Choose to run them as static pdfs or manipulating your data with our "View in Grid" option that will allow you to export only the fields you need. Some of those reports include:

• LYBUNT and SYBUNT Reports: These reports stand for "Gave Last Year but Unfortunately not This Year" and "Gave Some Year but Unfortunately not This Year" and are versions of the Advanced Donor Profile Comparison Report but they look for specific criteria each time. 
  
  
• Donation Summaries by Person or Donor Profile: Run a report that shows you all of a person's giving history. By person will show you all donations, regardless of donor profile, whereas by Donor Profile will limit those donations to a specific Donor Profile. 
  
  
• Top Donors by Person or Donor Profile: Generate a report of all of your top donors either by Person (regardless of Donor Profile) or by Donor Profile. 
  
  
• Giving Summaries by Role and Subrole: View who your top donors are by role. For example, see how much teachers have given this year versus parents and know which roles to target the hardest during your annual appeals.
  
  
• Giving Summary by Program (COMING SOON): Learn how much has been given to your annual campaign per program (or grade level). Know how much the 3rd-grade class has given versus the 5th-grade class etc.
  
  
• Tax Receipt Letter by Donor Profile: BigSIS will generate your tax receipt letters at the end of the year so donors know how much they've paid throughout the year and thus have accurate numbers for IRS reporting.

How to Find Out More

For more information, contact your sales rep or email support@bigsis.com or call 844-424-4747 x12 and one of our all-star support people will answer any additional questions you may have.