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#1 Monitor Multiple Things at Once
The first and most obvious benefit of using a dashboard is that you are able to monitor multiple things at once. You can access valuable data from a single dashboard and view it all from one place instead of having to check different metrics in different places. In other words, a dashboard gathers everything important and presents it to you in a comprehensive and accessible way.
Every fundraiser has specific elements that make up the project. Obviously, the most foundational ones are the name of the fundraiser, its description, supporting materials (e.g. videos and images), information about key actors, and contact information. Besides those, there's also the goal that the fundraiser is meant to achieve (i.e. a specific amount of money that needs to be raised).
All of this information is public and appears on the page of the fundraiser, but you can also view it all in your dashboard because you created the fundraiser. Moreover, your dashboard also allows you to monitor different metrics such as how many people have donated money to your fundraiser, how big the donated amounts are, how fast you are approaching your fundraising goal, and so on.
In addition to that, you will likely have different interaction options enabled on your fundraiser that will let users leave comments under your fundraiser or even contact you through direct messages on the same platform. If that is the case, your dashboard will also be valuable for monitoring these engagement and interaction metrics as well. It is ideal for keeping and accessing all of this information in a single place.
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“Flexible product with great training and support. The product has been very useful for quickly creating dashboards and data views. Support and training has always been available to us and quick to respond.
- George R, Information Technology Specialist at Sonepar USA
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#2 Simplify Organization and Coordination
Thanks to the fact that you can access all of this important information in a single place, you can streamline all your work related to the fundraiser. This also means that using a dashboard can help you simplify the organization and coordination of your fundraising efforts. Your dashboard makes it easier for you to manage your activities and can even guide your further actions related to the fundraiser.
In most cases, dashboards won't simply present data to you and expect you to figure out what all the numbers mean. On the contrary, dashboards are meant to simplify these processes for you. That's why most dashboards present valuable data in a visualized format (e.g. a chart, table, graph, or infographic). Some of the most advanced dashboards even have features that make these visualizations animated which shows you your progress in motion.
Running a fundraiser is not easy which is why using a dashboard is essential to do it smoothly and successfully. Essentially, the dashboard helps you simplify the complexity of the processes related to the fundraiser. This is why the most advanced dashboards usually allow the creators of the fundraisers to use additional features such as the ability to set up a social media ad campaign to promote the fundraiser.
The best thing about a fundraiser in this sense of simplifying everything is that it makes it easy to monitor a fundraising campaign for a person who doesn't have much knowledge about the topic. You don't need to be an expert in statistics to understand whether the fundraising project is running successfully or not. The dashboard presents all the critical data in one place – the manager just needs to check it and make conclusions about the fundraiser.
#3 Work Together with Your Team
Fundraisers are mostly organized by non-profit organizations that want to collect money for a specific cause. Some of these organizations don't have big teams behind them which often means that almost everyone in the company is involved in the fundraising campaign. Logically, giving access to the management of the project to all the members of the team will allow the organization to succeed. And that's exactly why using a dashboard is crucial.
Using a dashboard means that you can access important information about your fundraiser anywhere anytime as long as you have an Internet connection. Likewise, you can give access to every member of your team and work together on the fundraiser even if you are all located in different places. Similarly, if everyone is in the same office, accessing the dashboard from different devices individually will allow your team members to work on the same thing together without preventing each other from doing your jobs well.
Another benefit of this ability of dashboards to be accessed anywhere anytime is that they are mostly cloud-based and have the option to create data backups. Some dashboards let you save the information about your fundraiser in a different place to access it offline or through a different program. Moreover, if you accidentally delete your campaign or get hacked or something else happens, you can always consult your last version of the fundraiser and have all the important data about it still available to you.
#4 Increase Efficiency and Productivity
With the help of all the information about your fundraiser available to you at your fingertips, the simplified management and coordination of the project, and improved cooperation between the members of your team, you can also expect an increase in efficiency and productivity of your fundraising efforts. Using a dashboard can help you become more efficient in everything you do and encourage your team members to become more productive.
For example, you will be getting feedback from commenters under your fundraiser. Some of these people may have donated to your project while others are simply giving their opinion about what can be improved on the fundraiser's page. By using this feedback, you can further improve your fundraising campaign and see better results. For instance, changing your fundraiser description, adding critical details, correcting grammar or spelling mistakes, and adding a call to action at the end could already make a huge difference.
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#5 Collect Information in One Place
As mentioned earlier, one of the greatest benefits of using a dashboard is that you can view all important information in one place. However, you don't necessarily have to be a passive user of a dashboard. Some advanced dashboards let you collect additional information on your own and add it to your dashboard. This way, you will have even more useful data accessible in a single place that can be managed, edited, viewed, analyzed, and so on.
For example, let's say that you are running your fundraising campaign on a specific platform where you are able to use a dashboard to view all the important information about your project on this specific platform. However, you are also promoting your fundraising campaign elsewhere (e.g. on social media platforms, through email marketing, and so on). The data you get from those additional efforts could be added to your dashboard for you to have an even better idea of the way your fundraising campaign is running.
Of course, not every dashboard allows you to add such information. That being said, if you take the time to find a dashboard that will serve your specific needs and have such features for adding information, you will greatly benefit from this. It will be much easier to manage everything from a single place and organize your further activities according to the progress you are seeing at the moment across multiple channels that you use for your campaign.
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Read what InetSoft customers and partners have said about their selection of Style Scope for their solution for dashboard reporting. |
#6 Manage and Follow Up on Meetings
Meetings play a critical role in the day-to-day life of any organization. Naturally, they are incredibly important for non-profit organizations running fundraising campaigns that need to coordinate their actions correctly. In many cases, meetings use information about the fundraising project to decide what to do next, who should do these tasks, and how they should be done. It goes without saying then that a dashboard is essential for meetings.
By using a dashboard, you can manage and follow up on meetings with more efficiency. For instance, one member of your team might be responsible for organizing the meeting and presenting key data from the past week of running the fundraiser. However, because everyone can access the dashboard and see the data for themselves, everyone can be more prepared for the meeting beforehand. Likewise, the one organizing the meeting will have easier access to all the data that needs to be used in the meeting.
At the same time, following up on meetings becomes easier. For example, during the meeting, your team can decide to set a new engagement goal. This means that your social media marketer will have to double down on their efforts and come up with new tactics to increase engagement both on your social media profiles and on the fundraiser page (depending on the goal you set). These marketers will have to use the dashboard to access data related to the fundraiser and accurately plan and execute social media activities.
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#7 Celebrate Important Milestones
Speaking of goals, once your team achieves a specific goal related to your fundraising campaign, you can notice this achievement thanks to your dashboard. That's how using one will help you find the moments to celebrate important milestones that you achieve while pursuing your fundraising goal. It could be a new amount of collected money that you reach, a new number of people who donated to your fundraising project, a new number of social media followers, and so on.
At the same time, this is not just a reason to celebrate for your own team but also for those people who helped you achieve this goal. You can send out congratulatory emails to your fundraising supporters, make social media posts about achieving a new milestone, and add an update to your fundraiser page to show potential supporters that you are one step closer to achieving your goal.
In many cases, fundraising platforms will show new achieved goals or milestones automatically. You might even get notified about the achievement as the creator of the fundraiser. It's a way to encourage both your team and your supporters. After all, your efforts are finally paying off and you are getting closer to achieving the goal you have set for your fundraising project.
#8 Set New and More Ambitious Goals
When you achieve another milestone, it doesn't mean that you should suddenly become less active with your campaigning efforts. On the contrary, this is the time when you need to start setting new and more ambitious goals for your fundraiser, especially if you had initially set a less ambitious and more modest goal. Of course, this depends entirely on your situation (i.e. what type of organization you have, what kind of fundraising project this is, what your current and potential expenses are, and so on).
Keep in mind that setting new goals should be treated as a serious matter. You don't want to look like you are just hungry for money and think that you can ask for more and more with your fundraiser. You need to clearly explain why you are setting a higher goal, how you are planning to achieve it, and what you will do with the money you collect. Maybe you want to fund another adjacent project or you simply want to improve the project you were collecting the money for in the first place.
To help you improve your project description and all your related fundraising materials, you can use the help of a professional writer from the writing services reviews site Top Writing Reviews. By getting assistance from an experienced writer, you will definitely be able to clearly explain your new goals and persuade new supporters to donate to your fundraising project to achieve these goals.
#9 Accelerate Fundraising Growth
It goes without saying that every fundraiser creator wants to achieve their goals as soon as possible. However, this is often a very difficult task that requires a dedicated team and a lot of effort. Luckily, using a dashboard might just be the missing ingredient in your strategy that will help you accelerate your fundraising growth. All of the knowledge and features you get from the dashboard are more than enough to maximize the results of your efforts.
It's hard to explain how this works in a single way because it is rather the result of a collection of various benefits that using a dashboard gives you. Everything mentioned above will eventually help you achieve your fundraising goals much faster than you may have initially expected to:
- Get accurate data about your fundraiser and activities related to it. View and manage that data in a single place.
- Simplify all your fundraising efforts, organize your strategy in a more efficient way, and coordinate everyone's activities.
- Work together with your teammates to achieve the best results from what you do. Increase your efficiency and productivity while managing your meetings in a more effective way.
- Celebrate important milestones and then set even more ambitious goals.
#10 Have an Accurate Idea of Your Success
Last but not least, using a dashboard is essential for you to be able to have an accurate idea of your own success. Without a dashboard, you can't possibly understand how well your fundraiser is going, whether you will be able to achieve your goals by the deadlines you have, and what else you can do to get closer to your aims. All of the benefits listed above also contribute to your understanding of your fundraiser's success.
For instance, one of the most important aspects of a dashboard is the accurate and valuable reporting that you get. Engagement, donation, and other metrics play a critical role in helping you determine what your further actions should be and whether your past efforts were worth it. You can have a much better understanding of what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong so that you can improve in the future.
When running a fundraiser, you need to be realistic about what you are doing. People don't like to give away money to strangers, even if it's for a good cause. That's why you need to set realistic goals and expect that you will encounter numerous challenges on your way before you finally achieve your fundraising goals. It's not an easy task, but it is a necessary one if you want to succeed in the long run.
Final Thoughts
To summarize, creating, running, and managing a fundraiser can be a very difficult task. However, it is still possible to organize and coordinate a successful fundraiser. Use the knowledge from this article to help you use a fundraising dashboard to its fullest and achieve your goals.
About the Author
Wanda Lafond is a professional content writer, copywriter, content strategist, and communications consultant. She started young with her writing career from being a high school writer to a university editor, and now she is a writer in professional writing platforms— her years of expertise have honed her skills to create compelling and results-driven content every single time.