Relationships: the goal and the forte of new PBS fundraising software
After four years of R&D, the new fundraising software developed by PBS and WNET is being used by four stations and installed at six others. By year's end, a fifth of public TV's donors will be addressed through the PBS Team Approach database, predicts Jonathan Abbott, PBS senior v.p.
The software — which has cost $2 million to complete — will be a prime topic for raves, harrumphs, speculation, dishing and talk of all kinds at the PBS Development Conference starting next week in New Orleans. PBS plans briefings about Team Approach software during the conference and, afterwards, will hold its first users' conference.
The database software will not only let fundraisers reach out more efficiently with messages tailored for narrow segments of their prospect base, but will also take in information from them about their desires, says Maura Harway, director of membership at WNET, New York.
When viewers write in and call, the station can now "take the information we get from those contacts and use it," says Harway. "We can really have an understanding of what people want out of the relationship [with the station]."
Harway, who has been moving her operations to the new software since April, says Team Approach amounts to a big leap in capabilities for WNET, whose old system dated back to 1984, but makes clear she's not claiming that Team Approach is the only new software with advanced capabilities.
The software enters a small market served by a handful of software companies, including Scout Information Services (successor to Memtrac), Access International, Allegiance and Memsys.
Some offer simpler systems suited to smaller stations, and won't be competing directly with Team Approach. Allegiance, for example, has about 40 users with an average database of 20,000-25,000 members, according to Mark Jensen, marketing director and co-founder of the software company, a now-unrelated spinoff of Prairie Public Broadcasting in Fargo, N.D.
For Team Approach, in comparison, "you pretty much need 20,000 to 25,000 members to bring it aboard," says Abbott. A station needs a large enough staff to learn the complex software and spend time using its advanced features, and a large enough database to make fine analysis possible.
Knowing more and using it
The database—which runs on several brands of file-servers and can be tapped by networks of PCs or Macintoshes—can collect more kinds of information and deal with more relationships among them than older software.
Pubcasters in particular need to collect and crunch a wider variety of data than most nonprofit fundraisers, tracking and evaluating an array of offers and premiums from on-air pledging, direct mail and telemarketing, plus information tying the individuals to business underwriting, capital drives, wills and bequests and other revenue efforts, according to Abbott.
Colleges and hospitals may be farther ahead in courting major donors, but he says pubcasters "work the entire pyramid" of givers, including members paying small annual dues, he says. Some of the latter who begin by giving $75 may become major donors and later leave a substantial bequest.
Modern database software lets stations mail to people on their lists who have said that they like particular kinds of programs, or whose demographics indicate they probably do.
Team Approach is "going to have greatly expanded ability to treat people as individuals," says Jim Lewis, a development consultant who formerly managed fundraising for Oregon Public Broadcasting. "It can literally take a database and segment it in any way the mind can conceive. You can mail to individuals who don't want to receive renewal notices, but do want program guides and do want the annual survey."
Members and donors will be able to virtually design their own relationship with the station, says Lewis. They can seek benefits they want and eliminate the aspects they find annoying.
Systems like Team Approach can also collect information on relationships among prospects that paint "a pretty fascinating portrait of connectedness in the community," says Abbott.
If fundraisers learned that a particular donor is the brother of an important foundation board member, for example, they could link the two accounts with that information, he says.
"You could conceivably find out if you're going to call on a corporate donor whether their neighbors are regular members, or their mother is a major donor," says Dana Shaul, director of individual giving at Georgia PTV.
This kind of detailed personal information may be useful in fundraising salesmanship, but can also be abused, as Shaul acknowledges. "There is a fine line between relationship marketing and invasion of privacy," she says. "That's why security on the system is extremely important. The system does provide for a very high level of security."
A heritage of Heritage
Development of a new generation of development software was recommended in 1991 by the Public Television Task Force on Funding. WNET, which was looking for new software for its own use, joined up with PBS in the project. A prominent fundraising firm—Craver, Mathews, Smith & Co./West—surveyed station needs and brought in Chuck Longfield, former chief operating officer of Access International, supplier of software to a number of large public TV stations. Longfield, now at the Cambridge, Mass., firm of Target Software, surveyed existing software vendors in summer 1992 and has managed the project since then.
Longfield considered building the new software on the foundation of three existing software packages, including an advanced new version of the old Memtrac system used by many pubcasters. In 1993, says Abbott, the project chose to base its work on the Heritage package developed by Master Software, which has been bought up by Epsilon Data Management, a subsidiary of American Express.
Heritage, built with Oracle Corp.'s fourth-generation relational database technology, ended up meeting about 40 percent of identified needs, says Abbott. Longfield's team at Target Software added the other capabilities, improving Heritage to such a degree that Target has taken over support of the product for Master Software.
Not for the smallest stations
Big stations are the first to install Team Approach. It's in use at WNET, Boston's WGBH and its affiliate in Springfield, WGBY, and Georgia PTV, and is being installed at Oregon Public Broadcasting, Wisconsin PTV, Maine Public Broadcasting, Cleveland's WVIZ, Milwaukee's WMVS and Pittsburgh's WQED. And after the Development Conference, Abbott expects to announce a second wave of five or six installations, including Denver's KRMA, Tucson's KUAT and Washington's WETA.
The price is somewhat scalable: it's higher for stations with a large donor base, though not proportionally higher, according to Abbott.
But the software has not turned out to be as "scalable" to small stations' needs and staff capabilities as he had hoped, Abbott says. "We moderated our goals when we learned where databases are headed." Small stations with a handful of staffers can use simpler software packages from other vendors, he suggests.
But those same development offices may also be too small to operate effectively for other reasons, in the view of Abbott and other development professionals.
"A lot of what we call 'development' in public broadcasting is in fact devoted to operations—just sending out the renewal notices, making certain the additional gift letter goes out, sending out premiums," says Jim Lewis.
"Running a backroom operation is like running a small business," says Lewis. "At some level it is not a business that a station ought to be in." Small stations, with less than 10,000 or 15,000 members can't very well justify it, he believes. "Below that, you may be very well advised to look at combining with some other stations" [to share the backroom work].
Lewis is talking with CPB about Future Fund aid to a consortium of 13 stations that want to try just that. They'll use PBS Team Approach software if the price is right, he says.
Web page posted Sept. 21, 1996, revised Jan. 6, 1997
Copyright 1996 by Current Publishing Committee