Fundraising and advancement leaders are increasingly turning to a strategy of securing multi-year commitments from donors as retention and overall charitable giving drop. How leaders choose to document multi-year commitments is a critical component for this strategy to work.
Until recently, leaders only had e-Signature technologies like DocuSign, Adobe Acrobat, PandaDocs, or even automated PDFs to work with. Digital Gift Agreements provide key differences and advantages over these other technologies, namely that Digital Gift Agreements empower frontline fundraisers to secure more multi-year pledges at every level of giving.
Digital Gift Agreements go beyond the narrow focus of a typical gift agreement, which is to secure a complex major gift. Rather than replace the meticulous major gift agreement, the most common way to use Digital Gift Agreements is to bring the benefits of documented multi-year donor commitments to the entire giving pyramid, not just the top 1%.
Digital Gift Agreements and e-Signature technologies are different solutions to different problems. Let's look into why.
Scale The Pledge Process
Digital Gift Agreements are created for a single reason: so fundraising leaders can scale their pledge process. The very best e-Signature software, on the other hand, was created to organize, automate, manage, prepare, and secure final approvals on documents. The technologies were simply created for different purposes. Here's why that matters:
Digital Gift Agreements can be created, sent, and tracked in just seconds, even as fundraisers meet with their donors.
Digital Gift Agreements are personalized for donors because that's who they are designed to reach.
Digital Gift Agreements include automated donor reminders about upcoming pledges, payments, and commitments.
With Digital Gift Agreements, all automated donor reminders are editable, even after they are sent.
Improve the Donor Experience
Donors know 'check-the-box' paperwork when they see it. In the age of donor-centric fundraising, boilerplate forms and notices are as impersonal as it gets. Digital Gift Agreements reward donors for their generosity with documentation that's unique to them and their gift.
Improve the Fundraiser Experience
Although we love pledges, they typically make the process of giving more complicated. Fundraisers can't spend two or three rounds of review and edits on each pledge and have time to focus on their many competing priorities. Givzey empowers fundraisers to collaborate, review, and secure a donor's commitment in one click.
Additionally, Digital Gift Agreements empower fundraisers to fast. Pledges get delayed because they require paperwork and processing. Even the most efficient fundraiser has a 24-48 hour lag between securing a verbal commitment and generating a pledge form to place back in front of a donor for signatures. This is typically where friction, errors, and frustrations build up. Givzey is specifically designed so a fundraiser can complete this process in real-time as they meet with their donors.
Givzey invented Digital Gift Agreements because, as fundraising professionals ourselves, we understand the value of scaling pledges to gifts of all sizes. We also know that continuously improving the donor experience is a premium asset in today's fundraising landscape.