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IMPACT Features Detail
Application Management
Patron Management
Membership Management
Gift Management
Event Management
Financial Management
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Features: Patron Management
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In IMPACT, a patron is an individual or an organization and is one of the two fundamental entities within IMPACT (the other is an activity).
Recall that IMPACT views the world as:
People do things.
You deal with people (or organizations) and they do things!
To be more specific, here are some examples of people doing things:
1. A "speaker" is a patron that is speaking at an event
2. A "teenager" is a patron that is between 13 and 19 years of age
3. A "member" is a patron that has a membership, etc.
And it follows that one patron may do many different things: a teenager that is a member of your organization, that is speaking at one of your events is STILL only ONE patron.
Patron management consists of several modules. The IMPACT base module allows you to store demographic and biographical information, including two names, multiple addresses, multiple phone numbers (including e-mail addresses, and website addresses), as well as several user-defined fields. The base module also provides an easy method of combining information for duplicate patrons into one patron.
Optionally, there are seven additional patron management modules:- Extended Biographical
- Explicit Benefits
- Patron Extended Notes
- Patron Relationship
- Patron Action
- Patron Attributes
- Householding
THE EXTENDED BIOGRAPHICAL MODULEThis module provides additional biographic and demographic information including contact solicitation information, political information, and an extensive searchable biography.
THE EXPLICIT BENEFITS MODULEMost organizations establish their benefits as a byproduct of their data. For example: You could send a newsletter to all patrons with an active membership. Or, you could send an annual report to all members AND all patrons that have donated money to your organization during the last year. In some cases, however, benefit needs are much more complicated. The explicit benefit module allows you to take manual control of your benefits; i.e. you define and control them explicitly.
THE PATRON EXTENDED NOTES MODULEThis module provides unlimited notes, based on a date, for any patron. IMPACT already makes liberal use of notes. In fact, most entities such as patrons, activities, registrations, donations, etc., have a note associated with them. So why have an extended note? It allows you to record note information over a period of time. Let's take a couple of examples. If you want to record some information specifically about Bob's registration for an event, record it in the registration notes area. That way, anyone who looks at Bob's registration will see the note. If you want to record the fact that Bob is a great speaker, put a comment in the patron notes area. Bob is probably always a great speaker, so every time someone looks at Bob's patron record, they would see the note. In both of these cases, a date doesn't make much sense. However, if Bob called and inquired about speaking at the next fund raising dinner, a date does make sense. It is nice to know when he called. You could also set up a note as a "tickler" item. If someone requested you to call them after the first of the year, you could enter a note to that effect. And of course, you will always have a history of these notes.
So fundamentally, if you want to track information over time and have a history of this information, use an extended note. If you simply want to record a comment, use the OTHER note areas within IMPACT.
THE PATRON RELATIONSHIP MODULEThis module provides the ability to establish unlimited relationships between patrons. A relationship is a connection, association, or interaction between any two patrons. A common example is the relationship between your organization's board members and your organization. As an example, let's assume that Bob is a board member of SDS. In IMPACT, relationships are always viewed form the point-of-view of the patron that you are looking at. So, if you are looking at Bob's patron information, you would see that "Bob is a board member of SDS". If you are looking at SDS's patron information, you would see that "SDS has the board member Bob". Since board members serve for a period of time, the relationship is based on a begin and end date. This is also true of all relationships. Other commonly used examples are "employer:employee", "parent:child", etc. Although IMPACT comes with a fairly complete set of relationships, you can define your own. A relationship can be set up at either patron, and can be viewed from either patron. And of course, the reporting system and inquiry system support all of this information. For example, you can send a mailing to all the current board members, or all patrons that have ever been board members, or all past board members.
THE PATRON ACTIONS MODULEThis module allows you to track actions such as correspondence, mailings, phone calls, e-mails, etc., that you have with your patrons. These actions can be entered manually, or as a byproduct of the inquiry/mail system of IMPACT. For example, if you selected all current board members to receive an announcement of the annual fund raising dinner, you simply "post" this "action" or announcement, to each board member. This information becomes a permanent part of each patrons record. As with other patron information, you can use this action information within the inquiry/mail system. For example, you could send the annual fund raising dinner announcement to all members that have not already received it (i.e. the announcement that was sent to the current board members).
THE PATRON ATTRIBUTTES MODULEThe patron attributes module allows you to record a lot of patron information in a well organized way. An attribute is a user-defined category along with a description and a comment. A simple example: You could set up an attribute of language, and record the fact that Bob speaks Spanish. Or, that Mary speaks both French and German. You could set up other attributes to record other pertinent information such as health restrictions or concerns, hobbies, volunteer interests, allergies, specific knowledge areas, etc. And, of course, the patron attribute information is supported by the Inquiry/Mail subsystem. For example, you could select all patrons that speak Spanish, or all patrons that want to volunteer to assist with nature walks, or patrons that like to help with art shows.
THE HOUSEHOLDING MODULEThis module provides the ability to define a household and control mailing so that if more than one patron is part of a household, only one piece of correspondence is sent. A common example of a household would be a family associated with your organization who all live at the same address, where the father is a member, the mother is a fund-raiser, the daughter is a volunteer, and the son attended an event. In this case, you could set up the mother or father as the head of household, and the other spouse, daughter, and son as members of the household. Let's assume that you want to send a letter to all of your patrons that are members or volunteers. In the above example, without householding you would be sending two letters, one to the father who is a member, and one to the daughter who is a volunteer. Householding will recognize this relationship and allow you to send only one letter to the head of the household. Of course, you can still mail to members of the household as well.
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A Testimonial from Tom Olbrich
"We have found IMPACT easy to use. Upon installation, we immediately began entering and tracking many different components of our business. It provides a great history of all activities, makes reporting easy, and allows for several different approaches to organizing and reporting. All in all, it is a great tool for inputting, tracking, and maintaining all of our patron’s information and gave us an inexpensive boost to taking our small nonprofit to the next level organization."
-Tom Olbrich
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