Big River is always working to improve and refine our platform for online giving. Based on client feedback and shifting needs in the nonprofit world, new functionality and features are released on a regular basis. After a pause in updates during the peak December giving season, Big River is thrilled to ring in 2014 with an exciting new release!
There are too many improvements to list them all here, so I will focus on the 5 most prominent changes to the platform.
1. Dashboard – the client HOME page is now a dashboard that reveals fundraising performance results in clear, graphical reports, granting quick visibility of year-to-date, year over year, and total fundraising history. A table on the left-hand side has a few summary bullet points on recent performance. A link at the bottom of that table displays our version of AFP’s suggested standard effectiveness report.
2. Streamlined Forms – Big River Forms are the bread and butter of online donor engagement. They allow clients to create unified giving pages that accommodate everything from a simple donation, to recurring giving, to promo codes and ticketing. Now, building those pages is even easier!
3. Contact Groups – These are named groups of contacts which can be used for email and reporting. Create an unlimited number of groups, with any number of contacts in them. Add contact group selectors to forms, enabling constituents to join or opt out of interest groups. Even keep lists that do not appear on forms (i.e., VIPs or board members)
4. Contact Import & Reconciliation – Import lists of contacts, and automatically reconcile them – existing contact records are updated rather than new ones created.
5. Insights – Reports now have a home in the newly released “Insights”. Quickly locate all custom reports in one location. Look forward to new reporting and analysis capability to be introduced more frequently and fluidly.
Other new features include:
Automatic address population – enable this feature on forms so a visiting donor is promoted with city, state and zipcode information once she begins typing her address.
Phone number normalization – valid phone numbers are automatically corrected to “national” format – for North America [ (xxx) xxx-xxxx]
Country name normalization – Updated country tables use the ISO standards for country names for improved integration with external databases. For example, “USA” will now appear as “United States”.
Saved searches – On any list page, select the desired columns and filters and save them as a named search for later use.