Donor churn is the percentage of your donors who choose not to donate again.  Donor churn is an important nonprofit metric to measure and take steps to reduce the number of donors who will not make a donation the following year.

There are a handful of things that can be done to ensure your nonprofit Microsoft Dynamics CRM installation runs smoothly. These only apply to self-hosted installations. StratusLIVE perform these tasks for our hosted customers and they cannot be controlled in CRM Online Instances.

Large software implementations are prone to failure and for good reason. They are typically long, drawn-out processes that for many are akin to a heart transplant. Over the years as an industry we’ve learned “best-practices” that every organization should apply towards a successful implementation project. Ideas like executive buy-in, change management, RFP consultants, and team participation are all concepts that are well accepted and practiced in most projects today. With all the advances in implementation best-practices you would think software projects are having a much higher success rate. Unfortunately, the data does not support this and if anything, the failure rates are getting even worse. How can this be? After spending the last 15 years serving nonprofits and being part of many implementations, we have observed a number of things that the average nonprofit may not be aware of:

The backbone of any non-profit organization is its staff and volunteers.  Without your team working together, effectively and efficiently, everything will suffer at your organization… including programs, operations, and fundraising.

The vast majority of non-profits are struggling when it comes to fundraising. They may be raising enough money to keep their programs going, or even growing… but they’re doing it with too much stress, constant staff turnover, and constant friction in their development program.

It’s becoming increasingly popular for employees to donate unused PTO, either for fellow staff members in need or to their favorite charity through a corporate CSR program.  Like all corporate programs designed to help employees give back to their communities, employee leave sharing programs may benefit the employer by enhancing the employee morale and camaraderie.

Most companies already practice some form of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the communities they work in, either through direct donations and sponsorships or employees volunteering for local charities.  While CSR can be beneficial to your business, you shouldn’t design them as a method to increase profits.  

Top 20 Non-Profit Leadership Blogs and Podcast
Over the past 10 years, there has been an explosion of blogs, podcasts, and websites dedicated to non-profit leadership and development.  These resources offer everything from simple tips to in-depth strategy advice, best practices, data analysis and more.  It can be hard for non-profit leaders, board members, and staff to keep up with all of the information available to them.

Strong, thriving non-profits require great leaders.  This includes not only the CEO or Executive Director of the organization, but also skilled leaders in all areas, including programs, development, communications, and operations.  While leadership comes in many different forms, there are five key things that you as a non-profit leader need to do every day in order to be successful:

I was recently talking to a long-time friend who is the founder and president of a large electrical distribution company. We covered a lot of topics, and eventually wound up discussing the pros and cons of different types of software.