387. How to Build the Infrastructure to Succeed in Fundraising - Mary Hackett

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Overview

Meet Mary. As a frontline fundraiser, she built her own software to crunch the numbers saving herself time and energy and her fundraising results skyrocketed 🚀 Ten years ago, she founded Databasey, which has helped more than 500 organizations make sense of their data. She’s sharing her insights for making data and operations more streamlined and user-friendly. Tune in to get excited about using your database and achieving your fundraising goals this year🎉

💡 Learn

The importance of operations in fundraising
How to collaborate across operations and development teams
How to work smarter, not harder through automation

Today’s Guest

Mary Hackett, Founder, Databasey

“You should know your philanthropic landscape and how it changes. You can then proactively course correct before you need to at the end of the year.”

— Mary Hackett, Founder, Databasey

Episode Highlights

Mary’s story and journey to where she is today (3:15)
Secrets behind fundraising operations (7:40)

Make sure you are in the right database
Become friends with your finance department
Have good reports

Optimizing operations to increase revenue (10:00)
Dynamic partnerships between the development and operations teams (13:00)
How you make data driven fundraising decisions (17:00)
Biggest mistakes nonprofits are making in their databases (20:00)
Automations and how nonprofits can work smarter not harder (23:00)
Tech tools that help nonprofits out (26:00)
A powerful moment of philanthropy in Mary’s life (32:00)
Mary’s One Good Thing: Create standards for data collection. (35:00)

Episode Transcript

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POWERFUL QUOTES

“You have to be an expert in everything as fundraisers. My advice is to stop trying to do all of the things.” -Mary

“There’s a difference between counting gifts and the accounting of gifts.” -Mary

“If you’re doing anything that is repetitive, see if you can automate it.” -Mary

“A lot of operations folks think of their database as their real estate. If you have locked your database down so much that nobody can use it, that is hindering revenue.” -Mary

“These are realities at most every shop. The database is so central to our work, and it is often neglected.” -Jon

“Here’s the truth. If you don’t see your role first and foremost as helping fundraisers generate revenue, you probably aren’t in the right job.” -Mary

“There has to be this great partnership, and if that partnership is causing fundraisers to not raise a lot of money, or they are spending time on things they shouldn’t be, and you don’t see yourself as part of that fundraising group, there is a problem.” -Mary

“If you’re putting good data in, you should completely understand your philanthropic landscape.” -Mary

“Social media has changed how people view their lives. Nonprofits do the opposite, they just blast out messages and don’t create a really curated experience.” -Mary

“At the donor level, curate everything.” -Mary

“Don’t be okay with things being a mess.” -Mary

“I had not realized that dirty databases were such a systemic issue.” -Mary

“Our databases are prohibiting us from raising money and serving clients as well as they should be.” -Mary

“Every field and module of your database, you have to put a stake in the ground of how you are going to use your database. How do you want to use your database? Create standards, share them, and live by them.” -Mary