Sage Software today announced the general availability of Sage Fundraising 50, version 7.0, which features a new Import Wizard, integration to payment services from Verus, a Sage Software company, improved integration to the company’s Sage MIP Fund Accounting product, seamless interface with the company’s Peachtree by Sage solutions, and reporting enhancements, plus numerous ease-of-use improvements.“The new Import Wizard built into version 7.0 is valuable to us, because we are currently compiling a lot of prospects through events, lists, and other means,” said Kristin Compton, development research analyst for Boston-based Forsyth Institute, the world’s leading independent organization dedicated to scientific research and education in oral, craniofacial and related biomedical sciences. “The importance of finding private sources of funding is increasing as government funding is shrinking. Our future success depends on us expanding our database, and the Import Wizard will make that process much smoother."
Enabling customers to quickly and easily import data from third-party applications, list acquisitions, or other systems into Sage Fundraising 50, the new Import Wizard allows them to “drag-and-drop” data onto the desired card, visually verify accuracy, and validate data before importing. Templates can be saved for future quick imports of the data consistently needed in the fundraising database. New “update and replace” functionality enables a user to quickly update a constituent’s address in the system or replace items such as e-mail addresses and telephone numbers.
The new integration to the Verus payment services for nonprofits, initially announced last week, provides Sage Fundraising 50 users with a secure, complete gift and pledge processing solution. Using the payment services, Sage Fundraising 50 users can quickly and easily process credit card and ACH (automated clearinghouse) payments in real-time, or create a batch job for bank processing at a later date. This functionality will streamline customers’ donor retention efforts, such as recurring gift programs, taking much of the time and energy out of administration and back into other fundraising initiatives.
A new seamless interface with Peachtree by Sage and improved general ledger (GL) export integration with Sage MIP Fund Accounting enable Sage Fundraising 50 customers using either of these two Sage Software accounting solutions to easily view key reference information on exported gift records, so balancing between the fundraising management and accounting applications is a painless process.
The new Relationship Graph displays the relationships between constituents, making cultivating donors and planning the “ask” even easier. A new feature in the relationship table enables customers to assign a different color to each relationship type, plus they can easily move from one constituent to another to see how all of their organization’s donors are connected.
Numerous reporting enhancements have been made to version 7.0, while six new standard reports have been added. Enhanced data mining capabilities add even more flexibility to donor profiling and reporting, allowing users to easily search through data without the use of defined fields by using the new query operators. Ease-of-use enhancements made to version 7.0 help speed up data entry, improve mailing label print options, and provide quicker access to the Help functions within the software.
The Austin, Texas-based support team for Sage Fundraising 50 recently achieved certification under the prestigious Support Center Practices (SCP) Certification program after a comprehensive on-site audit confirmed that the support team meets the requirements of approximately 100 business elements defined in the SCP Program. SCP Certification quantifies the effectiveness of customer support based upon a stringent set of performance standards and represents best practices in the industry.
Sage Fundraising 50, version 7.0 is available now from Sage Software or its authorized business partners. For more information about that product or other Sage Software Nonprofit Solutions, please visit www.sagenonprofit.com or call 800–647–3863.
