Increasing Donations: Donor Databases Are Your Best Investment!

By: Clay

What Is Little Green Light?

Put simply, Little Green Light (LGL) is a donor management software—or donor database—a tool specifically designed with nonprofits of all sizes in mind, to help them better organize, visualize, and interact with donors. Understanding patterns in supporters’ giving allows nonprofits to customize fundraising to donors’ interests and giving history. Efficient, insightful donor management helps an organization communicate more effectively and strategically. Donors are more likely to give when they feel their contributions and relationship to an organization are acknowledged and valued.

Advantages of a Donor Database and What LGL Can Do for You

How are you currently hosting and organizing your donor information? Many nonprofits are using spreadsheets to sort their donors, along with addresses and other contact information. That process becomes difficult to manage as the organization develops and leaves donor data vulnerable to mistakes. That’s where a donor database comes in, providing convenient organizational tools, data interaction, analysis, and automation. No more struggling to sort information or computer sluggishness from handling huge files that were not designed for the process. Donor management software is purpose- built for exactly that: managing info about donors and their giving.

There are many donor database options, each with their own strengths. LGL has the most useful features while being more beginner friendly than other donor databases. This is important when considering the valuable time of your organization’s employees and volunteers—ease of adoption plus ease of use equals a greater return on your investment. A shorter training period and implementation time leaves more time and energy for you to focus on what is important.

LGL allows for a great deal of integration, accepting online payments through PayPal and Stripe, syncing gifts to QuickBooks for easy accounting, address validation, WordPress forms, and more. All of these integrations offer a powerful, streamlined experience that lets you spend more time creating meaningful content and less time fiddling with tedious manual changes. You can integrate tools that you’re already using or explore new tools to adopt into your workflow.

Insights and customizability are an enormous benefit of a donor database. Automating numerous parts of the fundraising process may feel impersonal at first blush, but it quickly becomes apparent that coordinating and organizing information allows for more personal interaction. Rather than relying on disparate sources—paper notes, knowledge in someone’s head, records spread across various places—you’re connecting donation history and preference directly to the individual. And any member of your team can access those insights!

You can use LGL from start to finish on campaigns, from discerning who has given previously, including how much and how often, to crafting custom appeals for your audience, to easily writing donation acknowledgment letters that are detailed and personal. LGL handles web forms, meaning you can build a custom form that automatically connects to a payment processor for quick, painless contributions. The more hoops a potential donor is required to jump through in order to provide funding, the more likely they might decide it is too much effort. By making it as easy as possible for donors, you maximize the generous support they have to offer. Custom acknowledgment letters ensure accurate and personalized information, demonstrating your gratitude for the contributions.

When all your information sources are working together, your organization is able to diversify the fundraising audience and encompass different targets. Often nonprofits get into a pattern with familiar audiences, potentially missing other enthusiastic prospective givers! While it’s important to maintain connections with pre-existing donors, it is hard to overstate the value of bringing in new donors as well.

LGL offers numerous ways to group donors, create informed capital campaigns, and measure the success of mailings. These tools are crucial in forming a sense of what works and understanding your best moves for future campaigns.

Benefits of Using LGL through Ghost Writer

Ghost Writer recently became an LGL partner through their affiliate program because we believe strongly in the effectiveness and convenience of what they offer.

Our team has LGL expertise, and we are happy to help you migrate your existing data, customize your account, and set up your next fundraising effort. We have a demo account, which allows us to help visually explain features and their impact, if you’re seeking to learn more.

Ghost Writer also has experience with “moves management,” using LGL to intelligently increase your donation requests based on patterns of previous giving. If your organization has some donors giving $20 gifts and some giving $500 gifts, you want to be able to create appropriate requests and reply devices that reflect those past donations. Similarly, meticulous tracking could tell you how receptive someone may be to supporting a specific cause, so you can contact them when it counts most.

Consider chatting with one of our team members about what LGL could do for your organization today. Reach out at doingwhatmatters@ghostwriterquill.com or call 866-GHOSTIE.

As you’re thinking about donor management, remember: The more you can organize and automate, the more care you can put into what truly matters.

Incidentally, LGL just got a fresh new look!