Manage Planned Giving

A lot of users are using Revolution’s Major Gifts Console, so we extended the functionality of the console to Planned Giving – right in its own tab called PG Console.

Similar to the Major Gifts Console, you can create planned giving projects, assign and manage tasks. And you can even use the Planned Giving Prospecting Tool to identify potential donors…

… and then add the results to a handy flexlist and use the Planned Giving Project Wizard to assign projects to all your planned giving candidates.

Similar to the way that Major Gifts projects work, Planned Giving projects can be assigned to solicitors and managed through the PG Console. All individual project information will also display on each prospects account.

In addition, Revolution Online’s Planned Giving Console allows you the ability to create and manage Planned Giving specific to your organization’s offerings such as your plan type and allowable asset types – giving you the complete flexibility to house your planned giving programs based upon the way you run your Planned Giving Programs. Contact your Technical Account Manager for more information or to schedule a training.

Update Major Gifts and Planned Giving Projects on the Road

You just came out of a meeting with a potential major donor, you don’t have a commitment but you have a lot of new information and some thoughts on how you might approach them in the future. You probably already know that you can email a comment directly into Revolution by sending to your mail2db address and including ID: account_number. Now in addition you can send an email that will automatically become either a planned giving research note or a major gifts research note.

Here’s how it works:

For example, to add an email as an account comment, a major gift research note and a planned giving research note:

In the above example the email will display as an account comment, a major gifts research note and a planned giving research note in account 469.

To use this feature, all you need to do is add a couple of code values in Revolution so let your technical account manager know if you are interested.

Did you know?

Your users can now select their own “start page” by going into the ADMIN TAB and selecting the “Set Personal Options” for the Preferred Start Tab. There is a drop down that allows users to select which page they want to have as their own start page. When they select the Tools Tab, that will be the first page they are brought to upon login. See below:

Emma Email Marketing

Those of you who pay attention to such things may have noticed that a few months back your ROI features update emails started to look a little different and at the bottom it now says “powered by Emma.” You may have asked yourself, who’s Emma? Does she work at the power company? Perhaps she lives in ROI’s Data Center and hand addresses the emails?

Actually ROI has partnered with Emma, an email marketing company, to allow our clients to send email to their constituents directly out of Revolution Online. We like it so much we are now using it ourselves not only for our features updates but also for our ROI University course listings. The programming types around here refer to that as “eating our own dog food.”

ROI’s connection to Emma allows you to contact any flexlist of records (well, as long as they have a valid email address). Revolution handles the data selection and Emma handles the sending of the email and the tracking of responses. The responses are automatically loaded into contact results so you can see who was contacted, whether they opened the email, and if they took any actions after opening. (Did we mention automatically? Yeah, as in “you don’t have to do an export from another system or run a separate sync process”).

And those of us in the ROI offices think Emma looks a little bit like a ROI CEO we know:

Donate Now! Enhancements

Every week it seems like a new client is using Donate Now!

We’re not sure what they like best about it. Is it the ease of setting up a donation page using the look and feel of their organization’s Web site? Is it the ability to accept one-time gifts and also allow constituents to sign up for monthly pledges? Maybe it’s the way that the gifts and pledges, not to mention new accounts, come directly into the database without having to export records from another database and then import them to Revolution Online. Regardless of why, there is no question people are using it and here is what’s new.

Horizontal Ask Strings – A client of ours came to us saying she read an article that said that horizontal ask strings in online donation pages increased giving by 10 zillion percent. First we said, “Are you sure about that 10 zillion number?” Then we went ahead and added the feature and you can now create both vertical and horizontal ask strings in Donate Now!

Custom Radio Buttons – Another asked if they could customize the ask amount radio buttons to say things like ‘$10 a month’ and ‘$20 a month’”. Did we say no? Of course not, we made it so. In fact you can create custom radio buttons for gift amounts or any other data you want to collect and we even threw in the ability to create custom checkboxes. Now how much would you pay? (You don’t have to answer that because you know Donate Now! and its usage is free.)

Automated Confirmation Emails – Then a client asked if we could send out automated confirmation emails when a user clicked the commit this donation button. Off we went and made this feature and now you can write a response email that is customized to each Donate Now! page you have.

And Donate Now! isn’t just for donations. You might have noticed we are using Donate Now! to host our online registration pages for ROI University training classes and it has really streamlined the registration process. Now when you receive your ROI University class bulletin (sent via ROI’s Emma email marketing) you can click on a link, open a registration page (which is ROI’s Donate Now! site), fill in your details and sign up for a class (for which you will receive an automated email confirmation). C’mon, we dare you.

More Tools in the Tool Shed

We’ve made some additions to the Tools tab to allow you to do even more.

New Pledge Batch Types – In the Batch Input section, you can now create an Auto Pledge batch or an Auto CC Pledge batch. Creating a pledge using the Auto Pledge batch type allows you create a new pledge as you record that donor’s first payment. Creating an Auto CC Pledge batch allows you to add and process the first payment on a pledge using the credit card merchant account you already have set up through Revolution Online. For credit card pledges, future payments will be charged automatically. If your organization has pledges, please check with your ROI client services representative to get these batch types enabled.

Attach Documents to Source Codes – Every now and then you may want to go back and see what direct mail piece or telemarketing script was used with a particular source code. You can now attach a document and store it directly in Revolution Online. Any documents you attach to a source code are available in the promotion tree. Just click on the folder icon next to the source code to display all attached documents.

Save Upload Layouts – If you frequently upload files with the same layout, you can now save a layout in the upload tool and apply the layout to new files you upload. This saves you the step of reviewing the field definitions each time you upload the file.

Upload Excel Spreadsheets – We also recently added the ability to upload Microsoft Excel files through the upload tool. Excel files will work the same way csv and fixed format files have always worked, just upload your file, review and edit the field names and data types, process the upload and then use one of the many upload procedures available to load your data into Revolution Online.

At this rate we might need to get a bigger shed.

Did you know?

You may have noticed that all primary addresses in Revolution have congressional district information listed with them. We are doing that through a company called Mobile Commons which has made that data freely available through their API. Congressional districts are retrieved based on the geocode (longitude and latitude) of the primary address.

It’s been busy @ the “ROI Labs”

You might think the summer months are quiet — vacations, sun, beaches, backyard cook-outs and all that “fun” stuff. But I’ve learned something in my many, many years of working with programmers. If I open the blinds on their windows, give ‘em a few iced lattes and a couple of tofu dogs, those guys think they’re on vacation and they don’t stop doing their development work.

As you can see from this month’s update, there’s been a LOT going on behind the scenes. I am very proud of these new features — all of which have been developed at no additional charge to our customers. In fact there’s so much to tell you — I might even re-send this update out a few times in case you are on vacation, although I would imagine these updates make great beach reading….

Enjoy!

Introducing FLEX Lists

This is gonna be big. Trust me.

Starting NOW, you will see a new little widget sprinkled throughout Revolution Online giving you the option to [SAVE AS FLEXLIST] and it looks like this:

And even inside the QueryTool, you have an option to do a query and save the output as a FLEXLIST.

When you select this option, you are prompted to name your list.

And then here’s where the magic happens. Once you’ve SAVED your FLEXLIST from anywhere in the database or via the QueryTool, you can now do some amazing things with these lists. Using the “Combine Lists” tool, we give you the ability to work with your own FLEXLISTS directly in Revolution Online. You can merge these lists together, find unique records that appear on both lists, as well as subtracting records that appear on one list from the other. You can then save the resulting records to another FLEXLIST.

But wait….there’s MORE!

We even provide you with a FLEXLIST TOOL that allows you to perform certain functions against these lists — such as: assigning flags, comments, contact history or assigning major gifts projects.

Ticklers to Outlook

In addition to setting up ticklers and getting reminders on-screen as well as via email, now you can set them up to go directly into your Outlook Calendars. Just click the Outlook Appointment button.

Now, you can get on-screen reminders, emails sent directly to the specified email address AND Outlook Calendar Appointments. (You know what that means, right? There’s no excuse for forgetting my birthday).

Job Management & Tracking – Full Transparency

The ROI world has been quite abuzz lately with our new Job Management & Tracking System. If you don’t know what this is, read on….

Because ROI Solutions operates as a full service provider in addition to application hosting, we offer our clients data extracts and programming upon request. In fact since our founding back in 1999, we’ve processed over 12,000 “job requests.” These requests have historically been sent to your technical account manager for implementation and logged into our internal Job Management & Tracking Database.

NOW the Job Management & Tracking System is ONLINE and located in the “Jobs” Tab including full history of every request every submitted:

Within this tab, you will be able to submit any requests directly through Revolution Online and track its progress to completion. There you can attach documents (such as mail plans and comments) and see Real-Time progress on your requests and as well pick up any files directly online.

In addition to being a nifty management tool, we offer full history of all request ever submitted to ROI Solutions – including your prior mail plans, counts, and extracts — all online! Full transparency and history in all of the requests submitted on behalf of your organization.

Secure Upload – PCI/DSS

You already know that you can process credit card and EFT gifts through Revolution Online. Those gifts can be keyed in or they can come in from your website using the ROI Open API. But what about those “other” places you get donations from…like from other Vendors? You know, those files they put on an FTP site and then you have to retrieve them and so something with them ???? Well, now you can use the ROI Secure Upload Feature to get them into your database — safely and securely — meeting all PCI-DSS rules and requirements.

Using the New Secure Upload Feature, we allow you the ability to upload sensitive credit card data directly into Revolution Online for immediate processing of payments.

Located in the Tools–>Commands Section of Revolution Online, select the Secure Upload option:

From there, the on-screen widgets will step you through the process of uploading your file allowing you to enter in the password protection and encryption information.

…And then depending on your organization’s business rules, once inside Revolution Online, these transactions can be handled in any way you desire — including automated processing of the donations and credit card/EFT processing.

Did You Know?

ROI has a Facebook Page and it’s a great way to keep up on the inside scoop on many development features. Click the below link to find us and become a fan.

You can also follow us on Twitter: