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Moves Management on the Salesforce Platform

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Published August 26, 2016 Reading Time: 5 minutes

Put the focus on the donor, not the donation amount. That’s the idea behind moves management, a method coined and conceptualized by David Dunlop, a senior development officer at Cornell University. In practice, this process is used within organizations to coordinate relationship-building efforts that lead to more funds being raised by an organization. Dunlap describes the idea as “changing the person’s attitude so they want to give.”

So, what exactly are moves? Moves are the actions that an organization takes to bring in donors, build relationships, and raise funds.

The idea of moves management has gained traction across the nonprofit sector and while it can be implemented by educational institutions and both large and small nonprofits, you must have a system in place to plan, track, and report on your moves. Without a plan, your attempts at moves management will fall flat, creating more work for your staff members without additional donations to support their efforts.

That’s where Salesforce can help.

How to Manage Moves With Salesforce

To begin the planning phase of your moves management process, you must first know what to track. Tracking different types of information gives you a comprehensive view of your donor. The purpose of moves management is to build the relationship with your donor, while providing information about your organization that will inspire the donor to give. You can get an adequate baseline for reporting purposes when you track the donor’s:

  • Biographical information (email address, phone number, physical address)
  • Actions (Do they subscribe to a newsletter or volunteer at your events?)
  • Interests
  • Relationships (Who are their family members? Where do they work?)
  • Giving history

All of this information should be readily available to you within your constituent relationship management (CRM) system. Where a donor physically resides, along with their interests and actions, are all insights that help inform the actions your organization takes to build relationships.

If you are hosting a fundraising event in Chicago, you wouldn’t necessarily send an invitation to someone in California. When information about your donors is readily available, it will help you plan your moves. You’re likely already tracking what you need, so now you can outline your process on the Salesforce platform.

Automation Options

With Salesforce, you can plan all of your phone calls, emails, meetings, events, and follow ups as tasks with reminders. An automated process will reduce the risk that you will overlook a donor or forget an important date. It also provides your team members with transparency and lets them see who has been contacted and when. Reaching out to the same person repeatedly in a short time period could do harm to your relationship, especially if that person feels relentlessly pursued.

You can also take advantage of time-based workflow rules, which can be set up within your Salesforce instance to trigger an action based upon an Object that has a date or time associated with it. If you have an Opportunity in Salesforce for a major gift to come into your organization, you could set up a time-based workflow rule to notify you 14 days prior to the anticipated date of receipt, allowing your development team to follow up if needed.

You can also check out apps like Action Plans to help you automate your moves management process. Action Plans allows you to create reusable task templates that can be used to plan all of your moves for each prospect.

If you plan to send an email the day after a meeting with a prospect and then follow up one week later with a phone call, you can create this task template and continue to use it with each new prospect in your pipeline. You can also set reminders for these tasks. Here are a few tricks to help ensure you never miss an opportunity to connect with a prospect.

Calendar Integration

Consider syncing your Outlook or Google calendars with Salesforce so you can plan your moves in Salesforce and have them appear on your calendar. There are numerous apps on the AppExchange that allow you to connect Salesforce and Google. You can also use the free add-in, Salesforce for Outlook. If you plan or update meetings within your Outlook or Google calendars, apps can sync those calendars with Salesforce. This way, within Salesforce, you’ll always have a clear picture of all the moves you are making with each prospect.

While you or your development staff meet prospects and make moves, the Salesforce1 mobile app can help you update records or take notes during your meetings. Since Salesforce is cloud based, all of your data can be accessed from any mobile device with Salesforce1. You can enter data directly into Salesforce while out on the road to save time and create new tasks or meetings without forgetting what needs to happen next.

Marketing Automation

Take your communications a step further and integrate your Salesforce platform with a marketing automation application or platform, like Pardot. Marketing automation allows you to deliver the right message at the right time and see how your prospects interact with the materials and what pages they view on your website.

Not to mention, you also have the ability to set up automated emails and drip campaigns. All of these are crucial steps to build and maintain donor relationships. Your emails can include a call to action to donate to a campaign once you have moved your prospect along a nurture track. The right messaging will build your relationship and change donors’ attitudes so that they feel compelled to give to your organization.

If your organization has a strong online presence, integrating your Salesforce instance with Marketing Cloud, a more comprehensive marketing automation solution with multiple tools, may be the right strategy for you.

One tool offered on the Marketing Cloud platform is Journey Builder. This tool gives you the ability to create a customized, cross-channel journey to reach your prospects via email, on Facebook (or other social channels), or even through text message. All of these touch points will further build your relationships and collecting this information in your reporting will help you to inform your next move.

 

Calendar integration with salesforce

 

Track Your Progress

Lastly, you’ll want to report on the progress of your overall moves management program and makes changes when necessary. Standard Salesforce reporting can work in many cases, but if your reporting needs are more complex, consider apps such as Apsona Multi-Step Reporting or Wave Analytics for your organization.

 

Screenshot of Wave Analytics app

Maintaining strong relationships with your donors is beneficial to your organization. Larger donation volume means that you can have a greater impact within the community you serve.

To this end, you can provide donors with information that builds and nurtures their relationship with your organization and results in increased giving. Moves management will help you accomplish this goal. And the entire process can be managed on the Salesforce platform.

Janna Rawls is the Marketing Manager atCloud for Good, a Salesforce.Org Preferred Partner that works with nonprofit organizations to implement strategic Salesforce solutions. She has been using Salesforce for over nine years and loves sharing information about this platform. Janna is passionate about improving internal processes and working with the nonprofit community.

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