Giving USA 2008 results will be presented in Cinci 6/29 by Melissa S. Brown, managing editor of Giving USA – http://www.donordrive.com/givingusa

By Dan Volkens,  Senior Interactive Designer
We just released our first DonorDrive commercial, the AFSP Case Study. Many thanks to all involved in its development!

By Dan Volkens,  Senior Interactive Designer

While our team continually challenges DonorDrive for improvement, it’s our users who provide us with real world feedback. We’re actively working on many suggestions and improvements, but I’d like to highlight a few that we’ve completed and rolled out recently:

• Ditch the Salutation Field
• Support Youtube, Flickr, and Website Links on Fundraising Pages
• Provide an Event Summary Printout

Ditch the Salutation Field

Very early in DonorDrive’s planning, we debated internally to include salutation as a required field in the registration form, both as a courtesy to registrants and as a valuable piece of demographic information to organizations. As it turns out, this field proved to be a roadblock to registration rather than to add value.

• Registrants questioned its necessity in being required, let alone asked for.
• Many users register for more than one person, I.E. a couple, a family, etc., even though the DonorDrive system supports a single user per registration. In this case, the standard salutations of Mr. Mrs. Ms. don’t apply.

Users have asked us to remove this unnecessary field. We agreed. The salutation field has been removed from the registration process on all DonorDrive websites.

Support Youtube, Flickr, and Website Links on Fundraising Pages

Initially the personal and team fundraising pages were very well received. But with the explosion of social media, request upon request was made for Youtube and Flickr support, as well as the ability to link out to a few favorite websites. We set out to integrate those capabilities as soon as possible.

Participants and teams can now add videos, photo slideshows and three website links to their fundraising pages with a simple copy and paste. Just grab the embed code from Youtube or Flickr and paste into your fundraising page edit form.

Provide an Event Summary Printout

Many Organizations require a participant to bring some sort of handout or registration/donations printout to the event, whether it be for tracking purposes, final registration, fundraising tracking, etc. So we integrated a simple Event Summary printout under the participant’s donations details in the My Account area.

Event Summary details:

• Participant’s first and last name
• Verified total funds raised
• Unverified cash & check funds raised
• Team information (if part of a team)
• Event information
• Waiver with signature line and date (if required by the organization)

That wraps it up for now. We have many more enhancements either on the table or already in development. We’ll keep you updated on our progress!

Two reasons for the lack of recent updates: we’ve been helping more and more organizations raise money for their causes, and we have been working on a lot of cool new features for DonorDrive.

I’d like to take this chance to welcome all of the following organizations to the DonorDrive family:

• Ault Park Concours d’Elegance
• The Cancer Institute of New Jersey Foundation
• Community Alliance
• Irish Pub Philadelphia Children’s Foundation
• The Jean Cadet Restavek Foundation
• Re-elect Leslie Ghiz for City Council
• Ride For A Reason
• Spina Bifida Association of Cincinnati
• Stop Child Trafficking Now
• Susan G. Komen Foundation – Knoxville, TN Chapter
• The University of Cincinnati Foundation

Whew! That’s quite a list. We’re ecstatic to have the opportunity to help each and every one of these organizations meet and exceed their fundraising goals.

Since the Winter Release, we have made a significant number of incremental releases in response to the feedback from our clients. These include things like support for personal campaigns, improved deliverability on constituent-initiated emails (donation solicitations, updates and team invitations), and adding support for more flexible content on personal fundraising pages.

In the coming days and weeks, we have a lot of awesome new features that we can’t wait to share. Among the updates we’re currently working on, the next major release entails a substantial overhaul to the existing donation/registration process in order to streamline the experience for end users. Stay tuned for more!

By Tim Mixell, Senior Developer

We are excited to announce the Winter Release for DonorDrive® and debut new features that are available.  Although some features have changed, the functionality and ease of use remain the same.

• Improved Reports
• Multilingual Capability
• Conversion Tracking
• Company Management
• Receipts

Access to New Features - Most of the features will appear in your DonorDrive® right away. Some features, such as Corporate Management and Multilingual Capabilities, can be made available at your request.

Training - View our Training Schedule with dates and times available to maximize new features.

Customer Support - As always, if you have any questions or suggestions regarding your DonorDrive® software, access our Customer Support Center.

Did you know?

• DonorDrive® has reached over 1.2 Million Users
• DonorDrive® has helped raise over $42 Million for non-profits
• You have the ability with DonorDrive® to market your cause to the 260 Million active users on Facebook and Myspace.

Our mission is to empower nonprofit organizations with web-based software and services to maximize their development capacity by fostering long-term constituent relationships, exceed financial goals and deliver on its mission.

Dance Marathon at UCLA (DM) is the largest student-organized philanthropic event on the West Coast. Initiated and run entirely by students, the 26-hour dance-a-thon unites college students, activists, and community members in the fight against pediatric AIDS.

UCLA Dance Marathon just broke $50,000 raised with DonorDrive™! Congratulations!

http://ucla.donordrive.com

By Dan Volkens, Interactive Designer

With lots of effort and hard work, we’re proud to announce the launch of our new website! http://www.donordrive.com

Check it out and let us know what you think!

By Dan Volkens, Interactive Designer