on the appropriate form in the system. For example, on the Maintain>Vendors form you may want to attach an approved contract or vendor W-9 form. MIP eMagazine — January, 2005
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Headline: Charity Boom Presents Challenges for Nonprofits
According to a recent article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, there are now nearly 800,000 charities on the Internal Revenue Service’s official roster – twice as many as there were in 1990. The economic boom of the mid-1990s, changes in governmental programs and concerns about legal liability for board members of informal not-for-profit groups are all contributing factors in the charity boom. But what are the repercussions of such rapid growth – and how will it affect your organization?
The growth has met with mixed reactions from all sides. The majority of new groups are very small, with budgets under $25,000. Some advocates praise the virtues of smaller organizations, citing their more personalized, concentrated services and innovative ideas. Others, however, worry about duplication of services and inefficient management.
With increasing numbers of organizations claiming charitable status comes increased scrutiny from regulatory agencies. The US Senate, for example, is considering measures to keep closer tabs on charities, such as an increase in the number of audits they must undergo. Other policy makers believe organizations should have to periodically prove that they still qualify for their tax-exempt status.
Increased competition for funds among charities with similar goals and constituencies is also a factor of concern for many organizations. Unfortunately, the pool of donors does not necessarily increase with the number of nonprofits seeking their contributions. Many organizations will have to devote more time to fundraising, and pursue more aggressive tactics.
Donors will also demand more transparency from their charities before they decide how much and to whom to give. Already independent groups are scoring the effectiveness of charities and releasing reports naming those which they deem most effective. Angling for a good score may eventually have an affect on the way some nonprofits report on their budget.
How does this growth affect your organization?
Accurate reporting and audit-friendly accounting is more important than ever to prove the value of your organization. Grant management software and easy-to-use fundraising tools will give you an edge when it’s time to make an appeal to foundations or donors.
MIP Fund Accounting and Fundraising solutions make it easy to track and report on the costs associated with raising funds and running your nonprofit. From the smallest nonprofit to the largest foundation, MIP has simplified, streamlined reporting to make your accountability tracking more efficient.
Visit The Chronicle of Philanthropy Web site for more information on the recent growth of charitable organizations in the United States. http://philanthropy.com/
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MIP Endowment Management now offers New Grants Management System
Best Software already had the industry leading Planned Giving program management tool. Now it gets even better: the MIP Endowment Management product has now been expanded to provide nonprofit organizations with the most complete grant processing, tracking and management tool ever!
At the heart of the revolutionary change to this product is a total grants management system that will help manage complex approval and dispersement processes, even when they involve multiple fund sources and different transaction types. This new functionality provides for a full process management from proposal through funds dispersal. It lets organizations determine and schedule payment type, amount and frequency for each portion of the grant as appropriate, then helps development teams manage each part of various approval processes for each unique endowment or fund with Manager Screens and project-flow task lists for each staff member.
MIP Endowment Management highlights:
Complete Donor Information at Developments fingertips
Simplified Grant-making Processes
Learn more! Request an Online Demonstration of MIP Endowment Management
In the USA, contact Marla Caplan at marla.caplan@bestsoftware.com
In Canada, contact Michael Dailey at michael.dailey@kts.com.com
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Announcing: CorrectAddress for Paradigm and GT Pro
New service helps keep donor information up-to-date and accurate
Until this month, CorrectAddress, Best Software’s address cleansing and updating service, was only available to Millennium fundraising clients. Starting in February, this service offering will be extended to Paradigm and GT Pro customers as well. With 40 million individuals and businesses moving each year, there is great potential for Nonprofits with fundraising databases to lose contact with donors and miss opportunities for future gifts. Now this easy-to-use and cost effective subscription-based service will help all MIP Fundraising clients to retain their valuable contacts.
Do you use MIP Fundraising Paradigm or GT Pro and want to learn more? Call Al Ptasznik at (800) 574-5772, or email al.ptasznik@bestsoftware.com
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Have you checked for product updates lately?
Keep current with BOSS for new product information
Best Online Support and Services (BOSS) at http://www.mip.com/boss is the place to go when you need information! Not only can customers search and retrieve important product related articles, you can also check for any new downloadable releases or product updates.
Customers may expect an email notification when a new update is available on BOSS. If you have not received email notification of any recent year-end software updates, you may wish to review and update your contact profile on BOSS.
Updates available now:
Fund Accounting customers who own the payroll module should have downloaded and installed the most current tax updates for 2005.
Paradigm has a new update available for Events Management released in late January.
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Product Enhancement Suggestions
We want to hear from you!
Are you faced with new reporting requirements that Best Software might consider incorporating into MIP products? Do you or your staff have suggestions that can improve your business processes? For any improvements, new functions or module additions we need to hear from you. It's easy to send us your suggestion -- if you just know how.
By utilizing the Navigator interface in MIP Fund Accounting you can quickly submit your suggestion. (To enable the Navigator view select View>Navigator from the menu bar)
We value your expertise and industry knowledge. You are critical to the success of our products and your suggestions for new features or enhancements are seriously considered. Let us hear from you!
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Go paperless with 6.0!
With the new comprehensive attachments options included in the standard system configuration of MIP Fund Accounting v6.0 you can electronically store and retrieve critical financial documents in your database.
Effectively utilize the new feature by scanning source documents to attach to the coded transaction records. For example:
You can activate the Attachments feature and by accessing Administration>Organization>Attachments>Set Up Locations.
Users have the option of attaching a Linked document or an Encrypted document. Encrypted documents are scrambled by the system to prevent unauthorized access, and copied to a default or user-defined attachment location for later retrieval and viewing.
To create the initial setup:
on the appropriate form in the system. For example, on the Maintain>Vendors form you may want to attach an approved contract or vendor W-9 form. Note for System Administrators: The system uses Universal Naming Convention (UNC) to store the path to the attachments. The encrypted attachment is written to the location that is specified on this form. To ensure that the encrypted file can be written to the selected location, verify that all Fund Accounting users have proper share rights to that location.
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Paradigm
Using graphics in email
Are virus applications or firewalls blocking the delivery of your emails with attachments? You can send graphically enhanced, professional and appealing emails for fund drives, annual appeals or newsletters utilizing Paradigm's Export to Excel button. The Custom Constituent Export File report can be used to pull constituent email addresses into Excel and create contacts at the same time. With a few mouse clicks, you can copy and paste them into a new Microsoft Outlook email and then insert your formatted Word document in the body of that email. For complete instructions, visit our Knowledgebase at http://www.mip.com/boss and see our KB article # 130667.
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Millennium
Viewing constituent birthdate information
Have you recently upgraded to Millennium version 7.3 or 7.3.1 and can no longer see your constituents’ birth dates? This is due to table structure changes in versions 7.3 and higher.
In previous versions, birthday information was stored in the corebirthd field in the corebio table. In 7.3 birthday data was separated into three columns, corebirthyr, corebirthmn, and corebirthdy. The installation and conversion process for 7.3 and above does not automatically populate the new columns with the legacy birthday information.
If your Millennium display settings are set to Customizer, the default Basic Data display displays corebirthyr, corebirthmn, and corebirthdy fields, but not the corebirthd field. Therefore the birthday information will be empty for any legacy data in your system.
Article #130632 is a recent addition to the MIP Knowledgebase that elaborates on this issue. The article also contains data repair scripts for Oracle and SQL Server clients that will populate the empty birthday fields for legacy data.
For additional information, please see Article 130632 in the MIP Knowledgebase at http://www.mip.com/boss.
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GT Pro
Matching gift notes
Have you ever tried to edit a matching gift note in the Notes view? If you have, you’ll know it can’t be done. Because matching gift notes are linked to matching gift rules, they can only be edited in the Constituent view, where matching gift data is stored. To add or edit a matching gift note, open the Giving tab of the Constituent view in GT Pro (or the Prefer tab in Rainbow) and use right-click options in the Matching Gift Rules Note box.
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Rainbow
Criteria snippets
Did you know that you can create a library of frequently used criteria snippets?
From the Managers menu, click Criteria. You add these snippets as you would any criteria in a group or adhoc. Be sure the name is accurate so users can quickly determine which snippet is most applicable to their group or adhoc. The Criteria Snippet Manager also has the same transfer in and out features as groups and adhocs so you can share snippets with other Rainbow users.
When it comes time to create your group or adhoc criteria, click the Criteria Snippets button in the toolbar of the Edit Criteria window, highlight the snippet you want to use, and click Select. The entire set of criteria in the snippet is then added to your group or adhoc criteria.