- United Kingdom
By Nancy Gessmann, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Solutions, CDS Global
When it comes to donations processing, it’s no longer enough to simply open the mail, deposit the checks and record basic donor information. Caging and cashiering providers must provide timely, high-quality strategic information for analysis and donor management. There is a great frustration in many nonprofit organisations about getting at donor information that is actionable. Some organisations worry that they do not know enough about their donors to facilitate their stewardship objectives.
Nonprofit organisations recognize the importance and want to improve their capabilities in this area. A few already are achieving notable results, others are turning to caging and cashiering providers that combine traditional donations processing with advanced data capture and recognition, providing vital information to boost donor management. In the fiercely competitive nonprofit arena, innovation is a key to growth. Timely information about your donors is essential both for evaluating appeals and for successful donor stewardship. Caging and cashiering should be at the core of this effort.
This newfound interest in donations processing goes well beyond check handling. Advances in technology, and an increasing emphasis on stewardship, have leadership at nonprofits rethinking their whole approach to caging and cashiering. The days of the paper-intensive, check-centric caging and cashiering service, with no automation of supplemental donation documents are fast disappearing. Also numbered are the days of caging and cashiering operations pushing the manual keying of supplemental donor information back onto their nonprofit customers. In their place: image and data capture of any document that may be sent to a caging and cashiering operation, including checks, appeals, membership forms, magazine subscriptions, and correspondence. This advanced caging and cashiering service enables nonprofits to accelerate donation posting, eliminate time-consuming manual keying of donor information, and feed their analysis and donor management systems – a revelation for nonprofits used to managing reams of paperr passed along by their caging provider.
Although it may be touted as brand-new, today’s caging and cashiering is an evolution of donation processing, with workflow management and image archive and delivery thrown in. Using sophisticated workflow techniques and business rules, next-generation caging and cashiering systems help companies capture, manage, archive and distribute valuable donor information in cost-effective, integrated ways. Their functionality automates donations processes such as change of address requests, credit card donations, matching gift processing, split designations, and group collections. And the data from supplemental donor documents, such as reply cards or appeal letters, offers nonprofit organisations the information they have long-craved for learning more their donors and gauging the success of their various appeals.
The idea behind today’s caging and cashiering services is to help nonprofits gain better visibility into their incoming mail from donors, so that departments across the organisation can use the data to achieve their outreach and stewardship goals. In contrast, most nonprofits today follow a ”steam pipe“ model, in which marketing, advertising, donor service, and so on have delayed or limited access to data that comes in through the nonprofit’s caging and cashiering operations. It’s a direct marketing manager’s nightmare and a killer when it comes to acknowledgements and premium fulfillment. Advanced caging and cashiering, on the other hand, helps nonprofit organisations feed their various analysis and donor management systems simultaneously. It can help nonprofits better steward donors, proactively respond to donor requests, ship premiums faster, and even tailor their appeals.
This allows nonprofits to serve their donors better, enabling organisations to make better use of limited resources. Many nonprofits recognize that they need to get a tighter handle on their donor data, but questions on where to start bog down such inclinations. Advanced caging and cashiering services provide a logical answer. Armed with the donor data that “trickles up” from their incoming mail, nonprofits can become much more responsive, flexible and efficient. There’s no question that this changing notion of donations processing is more inspired, and will be for the better.
Nancy Gessmann is senior vice president of Enterprise Solutions for CDS Global, a leading provider of outsourced business solutions to publishers, nonprofits, financial institutions, municipalities, utilities and direct marketers. Nancy can be reached at 515.471.5678 or via e-mail at ngessmann@cds-global.com.