These days most organisations realise that when they put a new fundraising or CRM system in-house that they need to allocate budget to train their staff. But what happens after that? What happens when your staff members leave or new staff members are brought in? What happens when your organisation moves forward from where you first made your software purchase?

Recently we have had a number of our customers struggle with these questions. I can not tell you what a difference some additional training has done to those organisations that have gone ahead with it. Meanwhile, others who still have not made up their minds have continued to struggle and turnover staff.

Let’s look at a couple of scenarios;

Each of these organisations are real organisations that are suffering going through very real everyday issues. We have suppressed their names for privacy sake.

Organisation A is a small not-for-profit with approximately a dozen staff in their fund-raising team. Over the last three years, they have turned over a number of staff and now there is nobody currently on staff who originally underwent software training. Their management is hoping to stabilise their staff situation and then put everybody through the training simultaneously in order to keep their costs down. The problem with this is that it has taken many months so far and there is still no end in sight. Staff members are telling us directly that if they do not get training, they also will leave. Meanwhile, serious mistakes are being made in their database because staff aren’t sure how to handle various situations. Even when staff are properly trained, it is going to take them months to go back and try to address the errors that have been introduced into their database in the meantime.

Now compare that to Organisation B. Once again, this organisation has lost several staff over the last couple of years. Staff members were feeling dissatisfied with their jobs and the organisation were certainly dissatisfied with their computer system. After I spoke directly with their Managing Director, the decision was made immediately to bring a DMS trainer on-site to both train staff and to review the state of their database to address any issues. Within a week the training had been completed and the total cost to the organisation was under $4,000. The staff members now feel confident with their fundraising system and as a result are far happier with their jobs. The whole demeanour of the organisation has changed from one of reluctance to touch the database to one where they are actively formulating new ways to raise funds and run events.

Organisation C is a large charity close to DMS that has made a significant investment in DMS software applications. They have an active policy to invest in their staff on an on-going basis. Even existing staff that have been using the software for a while and are well versed in its operations are given the opportunity to speak directly to DMS consultants from time to time. These sorts of engagements are half training and half consultative and they allow the organisation to fully explore and utilise the software to its full potential. For the price of as couple days consulting every six months, the organisation stays right up to date with the latest in DMS technology and best practices. They have been able to find out new ways to use our software eliminating the need for other separate systems. Most importantly though, they have been able to leverage upon the softwares capabilities and even have input into new features and developments to ensure that their overall fundraising practices are state of the art.

As I said, these are all very real situations with very real customers. We are hoping that Customer A will come round soon and make the investments in their staff that they really need to. Software alone cannot run an organisation.

I want to leave you with a quote from Tom O’Toole of Beachworth Bakery fame. Tom is famous for not only turning a small, rundown bakery into a major tourist destination but in turning the economy of the whole surrounding community around as a result as well. Tom is respected as a fairly simple kind of bloke who gets his business acumen from common sense rather than an MBA. On the subject of training, his accountant once asked him “Tom what happens if you train them and they leave?” Tom considered this for a moment and said “What happens if I don’t train them and they stay?”

Your people are your most valuable asset. Give them the support that they deserve. You and your organisation will be rewarded many times over.

Despite the huge success many organisations are having with on-line marketing, the fact remains that for many organisations (particularly charities), direct mail, telemarketing and other traditional forms of marketing still play a crucial role in generating income.

Many consumers are not yet comfortable with on-line commerce and others simply place very low value on internet based marketing or are not even connected to the internet. Often organisations also find that using one media or another is not as effective as combining media. For example, an e-mail broadcast just before or after a direct mail shot to the same clients will almost always out-perform an e-mail broadcast or direct mail shot alone.

So let’s face it, orders and donations will continue to come in via direct mail, fax and telephone for many years to come. So how do we process these transactions in the most cost effective and efficient way?

At DMS we have for many years worked with our clients on this very problem. This week I would like to demonstrate a couple of ways in which MAILman makes this process as efficient as can be.

In the videos below, you will see how MAILman integrates with a number of devices and techniques such as barcode scanning, cheque reading and intelligent data entry forms to dramatically reduce the time it takes for an operator to key a transaction. In fact in a test we ran some years ago with The Salvation Army, we were able to reduce the average transaction from approximately 50 keystrokes and 72 seconds down to an average of 14 key strokes and 35 seconds. That's over a 50% productivity improvement!

Check out the videos below to learn more:

Donation Entry

Returned Mail Processing