Episode 6: Choosing the Right Fundraising Database with Chad Barger

For many nonprofits, some of their most important data comes from fundraising efforts and donors. Getting the right fundraising database is critical to capturing, maintaining, and using that data. So how do you know if you’re getting the “right” one?

Join Chad Barger from Productive Fundraising to learn how to start with what’s NOT working first, explore the available options without getting overwhelmed, and stay focused on what matters most. 

Make sure to download Chad’s Ultimate Guide To Fundraising that we discuss in the episode, and check out his Solicitation Performance Index spreadsheet that can track and calculate the nine components of successful fundraising.

If you didn’t quite catch the nine points of the Fundraising Index, here there are!

1. Participants
2. Income
3. Expenses
4. Percent Participation
5. Average Gift Size
6. Net Income
7. Average Cost per Gift
8. Cost of Fundraising
9. Return on Investment

Chad Barger is the chief strategist and owner of the firm Productive Fundraising. To many fundraisers he is better known as @fundraiserchad, the host of a popular free monthly webinar series. He’s also a bit of a personal productivity nerd and loves to share tips to help busy professionals work more efficiently and effectively.

An Action for You

Take a few uninterrupted minutes to think about how your current fundraising database is NOT working. If you don’t come up with much, you’re probably good where you are. If your list runs onto multiple pages, consider – no matter how scary it might feel – that you might be in need of a change. If there’s resistance to that change, try quantifying the cost of those things that aren’t working. How many extra hours do those disfunctions add? What opportunities (like grants) are you missing out on because you don’t have the right information? What outcomes could you achieve if those failures were fixed?