OVERVIEW

Managing relationships with donors and other important contacts is vital not only for successful fundraising, but also for tracking interactions with individuals related to your organization.  

In the case of a high-level donor, it is very useful to keep track of all interactions: phone calls, meetings, lunch dates, invitations to events (noting if they attended), etc. Because developing a positive, consistent relationship is necessary before asking for a big check, keeping track of who talked to the donor, when, and what was said can be a critical part of fundraising success

In another example, an organization that manages continuing education trainings for instructors can do their jobs easily and effectively using List Master relationship management. The system enables the creation of entries about webinars and co-trainings, making it easy to track which instructors are keeping up with certification requirements.

List Master offers highly versatile and powerful relationship management features. Define what you want to keep notes about -- from generic categories like phone calls to very specific things like agency training sessions.

Examples of useful queries based on Relationship Management notes:

• Find out how many fundraising phone calls have been made by a staffperson or board member in the past year to donors of more than $1000.
• Search for the number of opens on a particular email blast, and all donations made in the past six months, for a snapshot of current donor engagement.
• Track the number of people who attend an event compared to the total number invited. You can do this for a particular event or for all events in a given date range. Add a donation element to your search to see which donors are attending.

RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT SET-UP 

With List Master, you define four aspects of the notes you keep. You do this by setting up codes on the Codes Maintenance screen, in the section labeled "Note items are used in Relationship Management entries." We help you with this during set-up of your List Master database, then train you to add or modify categories as needed. 

TYPE: Can be phone call, meeting, email, letter, event, webinar, eblast, etc.

RESULT: Attended, opened, sent, left message, completed, conversation, etc.

ACTIVITY: Canned subjects like Information Request, Meeting Request, Volunteer Sign-up, etc. Most of the time when composing a note, you will write a subject unique to that note; but in cases like receiving email or phone requests, it can be helpful to to choose a standard subject from a drop-down list.

NOTE TEXT: Used to auto-populate the text of a note. In the case of an Information request, it can be helpful to choose from a menu of commonly requested items, so you don’t have to type them each time.

To create codes for each of these four aspects, choose and enter a code (usually a three- to five-letter or number combination), a description, and a code type (formatted "RESULT" or "ACTIVITY").

Examples

code: EMAIL 
description: Email
type: TYPE

code: REG
description: Registered for event
type: RESULT

code: VOLO
description: Volunteer outreach
type: ACTIVITY

code: VINFO
description: Requested info about volunteering
type: NOTE TEXT

For more assistance and ideas, see the Relationship Management Screen help page.