Direct marketing firm Amergent has released Portfolio/OS, its Web-enabled fundraising database product.
Portfolio/OS is an outsourced product that allows nonprofit organizations to manage direct mail campaigns, keep donor information current and personalize donor communications. Portfolio/OS can be customized for each organization that uses it.
The Portfolio/OS platform is a Web-based solution that is hosted at Amergent and can be accessed via its clients' Web browsers. Clients can use Portfolio/OS to update records and provide customer service over the Web.
The original version of Portfolio debuted two years ago as a client-server model as opposed to a Web-based tool. The online component of Portfolio/OS is designed to allow more functionality for clients.
“At the base level Portfolio/OS is a fundraising database solution,” said Jim Kirschner, vice president for fundraising systems at Amergent, Peabody, MA. “It scores database donors and all of their membership transactions, provides great support for traditional fundraising direct marketing and enables one-to-one marketing functions.
“One of the really cool things that we're doing is real-time prospect rating,” Kirschner said.
Each time a donor is added to a mailer's house file, Portfolio/OS checks it against other databases for the potential to make a major gift or as a prospect for planned giving. New donors are scored immediately when they are added to the file, so the nonprofit can decide what type of relationship management it will do.
The prospect rating feature of Portfolio/OS was integrated into the product from an offline product Amergent offers called RainMaker.
RainMaker combines client donor information with publicly available information on a group's donors that will help determine wealth. Amergent then uses RainMaker's modeling capabilities to segment the list of donors by affinity to the organization. It then assigns a ranking to each donor based on capacity to give.
RainMaker is still available separately as an offline tool.
Future product releases from Amergent will include a new version of Portfolio/OS in about six months, Kirschner said.
The next release is expected to incorporate some donor self-service modules such as the ability to update personal information and to opt in or out of future solicitations.
Users pay a fee for installation, customization and training as well as a monthly fee that varies according to services required.
Amergent has provided its services to nonprofits such as the Archdiocese of Chicago, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense Fund, Greater Chicago Food Depository, Catholic Medical Mission Board and Duke Children's Hospital.
