News: Introducing the Major Gift Dashboard, from Capital Campaign Pro

For nonprofit organizations, the CRM is the center of their fundraising operation. It stores donor records, communication history, gifts, reports, and years of valuable relationship data. But when it comes to a capital campaign, we keep seeing something unexpected among our clients:

Organizations with full-featured CRMs creating separate spreadsheets to manage their campaigns.

Those spreadsheets track campaign goals, gift ranges, prospects, asks, pledges, solicitations, and progress toward the finish line. They are often updated by several people, shared through email, and maintained alongside the organization’s primary donor database.

The Problem: Existing Technology isn’t Designed for Day-to-Day Work

The problem isn’t that these organizations lack technology. The problem is that their existing technology isn’t designed for the day-to-day work of managing a capital campaign.

One client’s spreadsheet caught our eye. Created by Alexandra O’Connor of CLAS Consulting Partners Inc., it was thoughtfully designed around the statistics campaign professionals need to track, but — like any spreadsheet — it still required manual upkeep and careful management. We saw an opportunity to take Alexandra’s practical, real-world framework and turn it into something easier to use, share, and maintain.

That spreadsheet became the foundation for the new tool we are excited to announce today: The Major Gift Dashboard.

Spreadsheets create more problems than they solve

Spreadsheets are flexible and familiar, but they are a cumbersome place to track capital campaign progress.

As a campaign grows, so does the spreadsheet…
More tabs, more formulas, more names, and more people making all the updates. Before long, campaign leaders are spending a considerable amount of time maintaining, fixing and correcting the spreadsheet and not enough time using the information it contains.

Campaign data may be scattered across several files. Team members may be working from different versions. Sensitive information may be duplicated in email attachments or downloaded to personal devices.

A simple update to a pledge, prospect, or expected gift may require changes in multiple places. And every single formula, chart, and calculation must be maintained manually.

Campaign professionals should be spending their time moving relationships forward — not troubleshooting spreadsheets.

Introducing a Clearer Way to Manage Campaign Progress

The Major Gift Dashboard brings essential campaign information into one focused, easy-to-use workspace. It helps campaign teams track their:

• Campaign goals and progress
• Gift range chart
• Gifts secured and pledged
• Identified prospects, and their solicitation stages
• The prospects and gifts still needed to reach the goal

All the answers in one place

Instead of piecing together information from multiple tabs and files, campaign leaders can quickly see where the campaign stands and what needs attention.

• How much has been raised
• Which gift ranges are on track
• Which prospects should be prioritized
• Which solicitations need attention
• Where the strongest opportunities lie

The Major Gift Dashboard puts the answers in one place.

One shared current picture

Capital campaigns are team efforts. Staff members, organizational leaders, board members, volunteers, and campaign advisors all need to understand the campaign’s progress. That’s difficult when the campaign lives in one person’s spreadsheet—or when different people are looking at different versions.

The Major Gift Dashboard gives authorized team members a shared view of current campaign information. Rather than spending meeting time reconciling files or questioning the numbers, teams can focus on strategy, priorities, and next steps.

Built for the work of a capital campaign

The Major Gift Dashboard is not intended to replace your donor database. It is a focused tool for managing the evolving flow of campaign information that so often ends up trapped in an increasingly complicated spreadsheet.

We built it because campaign professionals deserve something better than a maze of tabs, formulas, attachments, and duplicate files.

Capital campaigns are demanding enough. Tracking campaign progress should be clear, reliable, and useful.

Now Available: The Major Gift Dashboard

The Major Gift Dashboard is now available through Capital Campaign Pro for organizations managing major gift and capital campaigns.

If your campaign workflow is currently buried in a spreadsheet, we built this tool for you!

Learn more about the Major Gift Dashboard and see how it can bring your campaign into focus.