Using the Contact Manager DonorPerfect
SofterWare, Inc. DonorPerfect Version 10.05 August 2009
DonorPerfect
Introduction
Using the Contact Manager Introduction Properly documenting contacts can help you and your organization to develop productive, long term relationships with your donors. Furthermore, good contact documentation facilitates good communications among the various staff members in your organization and, thereby, supports the continuity that is essential in the interface with the donors. The contact manager enables you to maintain a history of past contacts and, more importantly, to schedule and follow-up on future contacts with your donors. The contacts that can be tracked include all of the traditional activities for interacting with donors – face to face meetings, events, mailings, emails, and telephone conversations. Plus, you can easily add other methods, such as teleconferencing, “tweeting?,” etc., as necessary. Future contacts can be scheduled and assigned to the appropriate contact person in your organization and, most significantly, monitored for timely completion. Finally, reports are available to list open and completed contact activities and to easily identify overdue contacts. There is even an option that will cause the system to alert the appropriate user, if there are contacts that have been scheduled for him that are due or past due, every time he opens DonorPerfect. The remainder of this document includes sections that address the following: •
Managing contact information manually – pg. 1
•
Automatic entry of contact information – pg. 4
•
Contact management reports – pg. 7
•
Managing contact activity codes – pg. 13
Managing Contact Information Contact information can be entered into donor records manually or automatically, depending on the type of contact. Meetings, telephone conversations and individual letters and emails can be easily entered and updated manually in the donor’s contact history. Mailings generated by mail merge and file exports, group emails and event invitations can all be set up to cause the contact records of the relevant donors to be automatically updated.
Manually Adding, Editing or Deleting Contact Information The Contacts tab in each donor record, as shown below in Figure 1, is the focal point for the management of contacts with the donor. Here you find a list of all of the existing contacts for the donor. You can edit or delete existing contact records or add new records.
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Managing Contact Information
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► To add or edit a contact record 1. Use the Search Records function as usual to access the record of the donor
whose contacts you want to manage. 2. Click the Contacts tab to open the list of existing contacts as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Contact Tab
3. Click Add or Edit to open the Contact Management Info screen for adding or
editing contacts as shown below in Figure 2. 4.
Complete the Contact Management Info fields as appropriate:
Activity – Use the pull-down menu to select the activity that describes the type of contact being recorded. Right click or press F2 to edit or add Activity codes.
Contact Person – Enter or use the pull-down menu to select the person in your organization to whom this contact activity is assigned. Right click or press F2 to edit or add Contact Person names and codes.
Note: To use the option to automatically alert the assigned contact person that there are contact activities that are due or past due (see below), you must enter his User ID in exactly the same manner as he does to log in to DonorPerfect.
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Figure 2. Contact Management Info Screen
5.
Date Due – Enter the date by which you expect the contact activity to be completed. The Contact Listing report and the Contact Calendar, discussed below, will use the Due Date and the Date Completed to determine which of the scheduled activities are due or past due on a given date.
Date Completed – Enter the date on which the contact activity was completed.
Contact/Grant Notes – Describe the nature of the contact accurately and completely. Remember, this contact information may be used by other members of your organization, so be as clear as possible.
Contact Doc – If desired, enter the name and full path to a document that is related to the contact activity being entered. Once you have properly entered this information, you can access the document by clicking on the binoculars icon .
Click Done when you have finished entering all of the needed information. The system will return you to the Enter Name to Look Up screen.
To delete an existing contact, highlight the contact on the contact list (Fig. 1) and click Delete.
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Viewing the Donor’s Event History You can quickly access a list of the managed events in which the donor has participated or will participate. Click on the View Event History button on the Contacts tab (Fig. 1) to display the Event Attendance screen. By clicking on a listed event, you can view the guest list and information on the donor and his guests at the selected event.
Enabling the Automatic Entry of Contact Information Mailings generated by mail merge or via file exports, group emails and event invitations can all be set up to cause the contact records of the relevant donors to be automatically updated. Automatic Contact Entry via Mailings and Group Emails Mailings, group emails and file exports that are invoked from the Listings and Mailings screen (at Mailings + Mailmerge), as shown below in Figure 3, can be set to automatically enter a contact record.
Figure 3. Listings and Mailings Screen
Select Update Last Contact to cause the system to open the Update Selected Records window shown below in Figure 4.
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Figure 4. Update Selected Records Window
Select Update Last Mail Code and enter or select a mail code to cause the system to insert that code in the Recent Mail field in the Main tab of each of the affected donor records. Select Update Last Mailing Date and enter a date to cause the system to insert that date in the Last Mail Date field in the Main tab of each of the affected donor records. Select Update Contact Manager and enter or select a mail code to cause the system to create an entry in the Contact tab in each of the affected donor records. That contact record will include the code you entered as the Mailing Code, the current date as the Completion Date, and “Mailing” as the Activity. In addition, if you click Show More Fields, the system will open a blank Contact Management Info screen (Fig. 2). There you can enter defaults for all of the fields needed in a complete contact record. Refer to the “Mailing Options” section of the DonorPerfect User Guide for more information on using the Update Last Contact function on the Listings and Mailings screen. Automatic Contact Entry via Event Invitations Contact records can also be automatically generated while creating invitations on the Invitations tab of the Edit Event screen within the Event Management Module as shown below in Figure 5. After you have selected the constituents to whom you want to send the event invitation, click the Create Contact Records button to open the Optional Contact Information window shown below in Figure 6. Complete the contact information fields as necessary. If you select Show More Fields, the system will open a blank Contact Management Info screen (Fig. 2). There you can enter defaults for all of the fields needed in a complete contact record. When finished filling in the desired fields, click Create Contacts. The system will cause a contact record containing the specified information to be created in the Contact tab of each of the selected donor records.
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Figure 5. Invitations Tab of Edit Event Screen
Figure 6. Event Management Contact Information Screen
Contact Management Reports Reports are available that display open and completed contacts in both list and calendar formats. In addition, there is a report that lists all of the mailings sent to each donor.
Contact Listing The Contact Listing Report, as shown below in Figure 7, shows all contacts that are due or past due and that have not yet been completed as of a specified date. Optionally, you can display contact activities that have already been completed and/or items for which no date has been scheduled.
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Figure 7. Contact Listing Report The contact activities are displayed in ascending order and include the due date, the activity, the name of donor being contacted, the donor’s phone number, the initials of the person to whom the contact activity was assigned and the contents of the notes field from the contact record. Note that the date in the top left corner is the date that the report is run, not the specified ending date. ► To create the Contact List Report 1. Click Reports
+ Contact Manager to open the Contact Management Reports screen.
2. Select “Contact Listing” in the Report Category area
Options area
to enable the Set Report
as shown below in Figure 8.
3. Complete the report options as necessary:
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Select Include Unscheduled Items if you want the report to show contact activities for which no due date has been entered. These items will be listed at the end of the Contact Listing Report.
Select Include Completed Items if you want the report to show activities for which a completed date has already been entered. The completed date will be displayed just below the due date for each activity and past due items will be shown in red. Note also that the completed date for an activity may be later than the date specified for the report.
Enter the latest due date for the activities you to want to include in the Run for items due on or before field. The default is the current date.
The default sort order is according to due date. However, you can use the Sort Order settings to modify the sort order. For example, if you want to group the contacts according to the person to whom they were assigned, Page 7
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select Other and then the BYWHOM field in the Field to sort by window.
Complete the other report options as required.
Figure 8. Contact Listing Report Setup 4. Click Preview or Print to view or print the report, respectively.
Setting the System to Automatically Open the Contact Management Reports Screen at DP Startup The system can be set up to automatically open the Contact Management Reports screen (Fig. 8) at start up if the user has contacts that are due or past due. Then the user can select any of the available reports. Open the General Parameters screen, as shown below in Figure 9, at Utilities + Change Parameters + General Parameters and select Contact Manager Shows At Start-up. The Contact Management Reports screen will appear only if there are any activities that are due or past due, which have been assigned to the user who has logged in. An activity is considered due if the due date is less than or equal to the current date and the completed date is empty.
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Contact Management Reports
Figure 9. General Parameters Screen
Contact Calendar The Contact Calendar, as shown below in Figure 10, displays in a calendar format all open and closed contacts assigned to a selected user during a specified range of dates. Completed activities are displayed in black, outstanding activities in red and pending activities in green. All contact activities are displayed as hyperlinks, which link to a summary sheet that includes the contact and donor details as shown below in Figure 11. In addition, if you click on the month (July 2007 in the Figure 10 below), the system will display a detailed listing of all of the contacts for that month. Similarly, clicking on the date opens a detailed listing for that day in the month.
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Figure 10. Contact Calendar
Figure 11. Contact Activity Summary Sheet
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► To create the Contact Calendar Report 1. Click Reports
+ Contact Manager to open the Contact Management Reports screen (Fig. 8).
2. Select “Contact Calendar” in the Report Category area
Report Options area
to enable the Set
as shown below in Figure 12.
3. Complete the report options as necessary:
Select the Starting Month and Year and Ending Month and Year. The report will display each of the months in the specified range with one page per month.
Select the contact person whose contacts you wish to view from the list in the View information for area.
Select Set Selection Filter to use a filter if required.
4. Click Preview or Print to view or print the report, respectively.
Figure 12. Contact Calendar Report Setup
Mailings Received Report The Mailings Received Report, as shown below in Figure 13, lists all of the mailings that were sent to each donor. The report is in alphabetical order by donor name and includes the activity, the date sent, the related mailing code and description and the initials of the person in your organization who initiated the mailing. Version 10.05 August 2009
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Contact Management Reports
Figure 13. Mailings Received Report The report is based on the records from the Contact tab that have a value entered in the Mailing Code field. Therefore, it only displays names that have been updated through the Update Last Contact feature on the Listings and Mailings screen, as discussed above in the “Automatic Contact Entry via Mailings and Group Emails” section.
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Managing Activity Codes
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Managing Activity Codes The Activity field on the Contact Management Info screen (Fig. 2) is a coded field used to identify the type of contact – mailing, telephone, meeting, etc. You can edit or delete existing activity codes or add new codes on the Change Code screen in Code Maintenance at Utilities + Code Maintenance. Enter “ACTIVITY” in the Show Only field to display only codes for the Activity field as shown below in Figure 14.
Figure 14. Activity Codes
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