We've been working on this update for a little while now, but it's finally launched - donation pledging, weekly email reports, and a few additional items. I'm proud of the work our team has done to create and refine these features, so let's jump right in!
Donation Pledges
Starting today, organizations can enable donors to make giving pledges for the year. Once enabled, donors will able to enter in pledges, which GivingFire will automatically track and report on for both offline and online donations. Both donors and administrators will be able to track yearly progress through graphs and updates - it's a simple way to reduce the overhead involved year-to-year. Administrators in particular will be able to track global organization progress as well as on an individual-by-individual basis, and all pledge activity shows up on the Donor Activity screen.
If you have an active or demo GivingFire account, this update is now live on your account. To learn more check out our HelpDesk articles Pledging Overview and Setting Up Pledges for your Organization.
Weekly Email Reports
We get it - you're busy. It's hard enough just maintaining a non-profit, much less advancing your mission. We get that a lot of you don't have time to routinely check GivingFire to monitor progress - so we're introducing weekly email reports. Weekly email reports are an easy way for you and your organization's staff to receive automatic, regular updates on your non-profit's donations without having to log into GivingFire. We'll send you a ledger of the week's donations, along with activity you need to be aware of with your recurring donations (i.e., new, failed, stopped, and so on.) You can create reports for individual funds (especially useful for campaigns and missionaries raising support) and you can even include weekly bank reconciliation CSVs for your accountants.
Check out our new Helpdesk articles for more information - Email Report Overview and Setting up Email Reports.
& More
You might have noticed this, but we're testing out some navigation changes to the GivingFire backend, in anticipation of some additional reports for the backend. Recurring and Annual Statements have moved from the Donation tab and join the Pledge and Email Report in the new "Reports" tab. You'll also notice we added Donor-specific Activity alongside pledge data in the donor detail page. Finally, we've added a section for you to enter in third-party donor IDs if you use third-party systems like Quickbooks or PowerChurch - that can be found in Donor Edit. We've been making other small refinements to the system over the past few months - and I'll talk more about that in an upcoming blog post.
I think that's it. If you've been using GivingFire, thanks for allowing us to serve you and your organization, and let us know how you like the new updates. If you're new to GivingFire and like what you see, we're committed to making donation tools like this to help make donations "just work" without overhead or headache. We've helped hundreds of churches and non-profits take charge of their donations and grow their organization - and we'd love to help you too. Contact us today - we'd love to talk!
New to GivingFire?
We're passionate about solid donation management for churches and non-profits, and we're trying to bring honesty and transparency to a murky industry. If you need help figuring out donations, we'd love to talk.
Contact us HERE or take a look at our main site at givingfire.com.