A Fundraiser's View of Caging and List Maintenance

by Deborah Agre

Many nonprofit organizations and political campaigns make the same big mistake when it comes to caging and list maintenance: they set up their own in-house systems.

I'll tell you right now what I think should happen instead: if your organization has an active direct mail fundraising program, and your donor or membership file contains fewer than 100,000 names, I believe you should hire a computer service bureau that specializes in meeting fundraisers' needs.

I've worked with a great many nonprofits and political committees, both as a staff or board member and as a fundraising consultant. The picture looks about the same to me from both sides of the fence.

There are three arguments often advanced against using a fundraising service bureau:

1. Cost

It's said that clerical staff or volunteers can do caging, cashiering, and list maintenance much more cheaply than a service bureau can. Sometimes that appears to be the case. But, too often, the calculations overlook overhead and computer consulting costs - not to mention the substantial lost opportunity costs of mailings postponed, data lost, and funds not raised because volunteers didn't show up or staff had higher priorities. That's why I think the perceived savings are illusory, at best.

In the few cases where savings may be significant - because high mailing volume generates consistently large numbers of gifts - the large staff required for back-end work may even change the character of an organization, overwhelming the facilities and personnel systems that were designed for program staff. In such cases, it's smart to ask, "What business am I in?" The need to hire, train, and manage an otherwise unnecessary clerical staff may mean that, willy nilly, you've gotten into the personnel management business.

2. Control

Nonprofit board members and candidates sometimes feel insecure unless their donor lists are under their direct control. In the information age, however, the true measure of control is not physical possession but the ability to store, access, and manipulate file data to maximum advantage - an ability often beyond the capability of volunteers or inexperienced staff. And a competent and reputable service bureau is likely to be able to protect a list against unauthorized access or loss of data far better than in-house staff can.

3. Integration

Many public interest organizations are attracted by the impeccable logic of integrated cashiering and accounting systems. For an organization exclusively dependent on foundation and corporate gifts and large contributions from individuals, this may make a great deal of sense. But for an organization or campaign supported by thousands of individual contributors, an integrated cashiering and accounting system may be the fundraiser's - and the accountant's - worst nightmare. The two require very different kinds of information, and their schedules are - or should be - different, too. For each, the other's needs are likely to seem trivial. Inevitably, in an integrated system, they'll go to war over limited file space, limited computer time, and clashing schedules.

10 things you need from your computer system

Here are the 10 things I believe you need from your back-end system in order to do a really effective job as a fundraiser:

1.
Fast, accurate and complete caging - five days a week. You need to track, week by week, how well every package and every list is performing in every recent fundraising project. You need to be able to distinguish between large gifts (usually $100 and up) and all the others.

2.
Prompt gift acknowledgements. All donors should be thanked within a week of sending their gifts, to build donor loyalty and increase the likelihood that response to later appeals will be strong.

3.
Numerous segmentation options. Your donor database should allow ready access to information about every gift made to you by every donor during the recent past (usually 18 to 36 months). You need to be able to segment your member or donor file - not just by recency, frequency and gift amount, but also geographically, by gender, by source and by program. And you need to be able to screen out those donors who don't want their names released to other organizations, or don't want to be solicited by telephone, or for some other reason insist on being the cantankerous individuals they really are.

4.
Frequent file analysis. You ought to take a careful look at your donor file every month: measurements of growth (or attrition), of upgrading, of geographic dispersion, of donor loyalty, and of other benchmarks that will help you evaluate your fundraising efforts.

5.
Accurate and complete data entry. You need to capture all the information that's available - and get it right the first time. Phone numbers imprinted on checks, list source codes on the response device, title and gender that are obvious in context: these and many more bits of information that may be staring you in the face when a donor's first gift arrives in the mail could help open the door to many later and larger gifts.

6.
Variable output options. To communicate with your supporters in a wide variety of styles and formats, and to meet the diverse needs of a well-run direct mail program, your file maintenance system must be capable of outputting some or all of the information on your donor file in the form of Cheshire (plain paper) mailing labels, pressure-sensitive labels, laser-printed forms (or files formatted for laser printing), hardcopy reports, magnetic tapes or floppy disks.

7.
Extra information about major gift prospects. To give you or other major gift solicitors the confidence you need to obtain significant contributions, your back-end system should allow file storage space for the extra donor information needed in personal phone calls and visits.

8.
Fast access to gift histories. To field inquiries from individual donors, to prepare staff or board members for direct solicitations, or to help organize local or regional events, you'll need to retrieve data from selected records on your donor file with minimal delay.

9.
Security. Your list must be protected against unauthorized use. Your caging and cashiering system must have internal controls and adequate records to provide a paper trail through which auditors may later retrace transactions. The people who handle money - even volunteers - need to be bonded. And all the information on your computer should be backed up at least once on weekly and duplicate files transferred to a secure off-site location.

10.
Archival record-keeping. Most donors should be transferred out of your active file if they haven't contributed during the period you define as current (typically, 18 to 36 months). In a compatible archival file containing several more years of donor history, their records will remain accessible to you for campaigns to reinstate lapsed or former members, for prospecting, or for periodic study of your program's history.


If your in-house computer system is capable of meeting all 10 of these requirements without frequent delays, exceptions or screw-ups, you're in great shape.

Otherwise, I suggest you work with a computer service bureau that provides specialized services for fundraisers. For the vast majority of nonprofit organizations and political committees in today's competitive fundraising marketplace, the extra cost (if any) of working with a competent computer service bureau is an investment that's likely to pay off very quickly in increased revenue from your fundraising program.


Deborah Agre is Director of Donor and Community Relations at The Breast Cancer Fund in San Francisco. She is a former senior consultant at Mal Warwick Associates.

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