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| Author: |
admin |
Created: |
7/23/2007 |
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| What's New, and News from SupportingAdvancement.com |
By admin on
12/1/2008
Dear FundSvcs & Advance-L colleagues,
The following e-mail message, sent this time every year, has been verified and validated by attorneys and IRS representatives. A Canadian colleague has repeatedly confirmed the Canadian references.
As a reminder, the IRS released the 2009 allowable benefit levels, below which no receipt disclaimer is required, several months ago. You will find that information both in the FundSvcs & Advance-L archives as well as at the download site at www.FundSvcs.org. In fact you will find copies of what I consider all the relevant IRS forms and publications (some mentioned below) at the same site.
With that, here's the "traditional" Annual Date of Gift message, with a f ...
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By admin on
11/21/2008
AASP Keynote Session
The first Association of Advancement Services Professionals conference kicked off in Chicago with the opening keynote session. This session was certainly indicative of the exciting and in-depth sessions that followed throughout of the conference.
Sharon Burns, CIO for the MacArthur Foundation was responsible for delivering the keynote, to help us all think about the future, and what we need to do within our profession to both address the present and prepare for the future. A future that is rapidly changing and which we need to adapt to and understand quickly.
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By admin on
11/4/2008
Reflections on Customer Service
What are some of the reasons providing customer service is challenging in Advancement Services and Development Services organizations?
- We work in and provide support for a very complex technical and organizational environment.
- We continually deal with the end results of complex organizational policies and procedures. One example is what can be receipted as a gift? These types of decisions have elements of ethics, organizational policies and procedures and information technology and systems implementations.
...
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By admin on
11/4/2008
c
Customer service has a foundation that needs to be built on strong partnerships.
Motivation for success can/is/should be a key driver for customer service. Success on a personal level is important, but the more important component of success is to transmit the motivation to achieve it to the whole organization so everyone on the team can also be successful in providing customer service.
The environment we’re in is intensely competitive. We are selling ideas and issues which are practically intrinsic compared to organizations that are selling physical goods. If we don’t ge ...
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By admin on
11/2/2008
A partnership approach is good, and if the Services staff provide comprehensive compelling services to help with email management, it helps garner resources, etc:
Some examples of value added services:
1. If possible, have your technical staff manage the software that is used for the mass emailing. This allows you to participate both in quality control (HTML verification) and in discussions around
managing touch points.
2. Provide comprehensive reporting back to users that integrate elements of click-through, bounce backs, demographics etc. This can be a strong incentive for users to work with you whenever they need to do emailing.
3. Be the most knowledgeable in your organization on understanding which services are the most effective for emai ...
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By admin on
10/30/2008
If an organization has a reasonable endowment spending policy it should protect against shorter and mid-term market fluctuations.
As you can see below, the policy at the University of Michigan was adjusted to protect against these fluctuations. One might argue that this could be too conservative, but money typically "doubles" over a 10 year time horizon, so the policy is less conservative than it might appear to be.
"Distributions from Endowments occur quarterly based on the distribution percent set by the Regents. In June 2006, the Board of Regents approved a change to the University’s endowment spending rate policy and extended the moving average period from
12 quarters to 28 quarters, with implementation to be phased in over the next three years. Effective July 1, 2006, the spending rate moving average period w ...
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By admin on
10/23/2008
Data Management Strategy
An encompassing approach to data management is critical to an organization especially when this needs to cross organizational boundaries. Data is what gives us our strategic advantage and if we don’t have our “ducks in order” we will lose our competitive edge.
Data management that crosses organizational boundaries is particularly difficult in larger decentralized organizations where decision making, clear lines of accountability, budget distribution and other structural considerations make breaking down these barriers more difficult.
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By admin on
9/26/2008
Ever travel, get to your hotel ready to do some work and spend the next 15 minutes trying to find a plug to charge up and work with all of your electronic devices?
In some cases, every available plug is taken up, and is located behind the bed, television, or some other immovable object that you can barely reach behind. Maybe these organizations are trying to save money on power consumption and making it up by charging for Internet access.
So here's a solutution in one hotel that seemed a bit novel. This is the power bar that rises out of the desk to form the power column that is convenient and is still able to prevent the theft of it from the hotel. What a great idea!
Now, this was a little more of an "upscale" property, a little newer than most, but was still a bargain through one of the online hotel booking web sites. The guest ha ...
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By admin on
9/23/2008
Turn, turn, turn
 The world is in a constant state of change. The ocean never looks the same as it rises and falls, and as waves are churned by the currents that run beneath the surface. We are always changing and we know that the person we were yesterday is slightly different from the person we are today. The shy girl I was in eighth grade has been gone for quite awhile. Some of us face that year, that day, that moment when we are forced to step up in our canoe and send the rest of the people around us lurching for the sides to steady themselves. But we no longer have to grip the sides. No, we’ve changed.
The thought of it is exciting and also, sad. There is no other way to say it. The old is replace ...
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By admin on
9/18/2008
One of the tenets of great programs is that we measure everything we do and use these analytics and related tools to make improvements.
We all have campaign to date totals, year to date, this year vs. last year, fundraising by donor interest and designation and more.
Activity based metrics such as how many records have we updates, what is our average receipting times and similar are less common. It’s ironic that activity leads to investment, but we don’t have nearly the same amounts of focus that we do on bottom line numbers even though activity based metrics are just as important to “sell” our ideas. For example, a slipping addressable rate may be used to sell a board or governance body on the idea of using data tracing servi ...
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