Back to UpdatesHow Our Clients Shape the Roadmap
Each spring we ask our clients what’s going well and what isn’t, what they’re dreaming of or wanting. Then, in the spirit of Kaizen (good, incremental change), we apply what we’ve heard to our work. This year, we noticed some clear trends in the responses we received. We want to share how these trends will shape our plans for the coming year at Ovrture.
We appreciate the 72% of our client organizations that responded. Their feedback helps us improve our prospect and stewardship communications platform. We know a few important things are true.
Increasing interest in API connections exists. People want a way to request, track, and prepare impact stories within the platform.
Next, we know that we are delivering valuable improvements faster than ever! Our support team is doing great work. However, the print outputs from some systems are not meeting our high standards. They are, frankly, lacking.
We hear you! Read on to learn what we intend to do about it.
Interest in Database APIs
Getting data into and out of systems can be cumbersome, and we can work to make this easier. Last year, we announced our partnership with Blackbaud. We also launched an API in their marketplace for our clients.
We are now building APIs for other leading CRMs in our industry, like Salesforce. We believe these APIs will save our clients hours of time for each batch of communications. Each time we build a new API, we get better, learn more, and even begin to dream of new capabilities.
Desire for Story Collection Workflow
Do you have a minute for a quick story? When I handled stewardship reporting at a private college, I recall the months of gathering stories of impact.
First I asked all the prizewinners to reflect on their success. Then I asked the summer study students what they learned. Next, professorships were awarded and announced, and then in the early spring, scholarships were matched with endowed funds. And with each batch came a round of follow-ups and then shaping those responses into the donor-facing copy.
This is a lot of work, and we want to make it easier for you. We know that about 90% of our clients share impact stories through Ovrture.
Also, over 60% support a tool like this. This shows that creating this feature will be a smart investment. It will also improve our stewardship reporting platform. Let us know if you’re interested in testing this later in 2024.
Print Outputs Need an Overhaul
Ovrture is a digital platform meant for digital-first donor communications. However, print still has its place! You want to have glossy one-pager leave-behinds that don’t need to be individually designed. You want multi-page reports to look as fantastic as shorter ones.
We hear our clients on this front and have decided to dedicate more time in the coming months to reimagining, refactoring, and rebuilding our print outputs. If you are a current client and want to help or advise in these efforts, please let us know.
Appreciations of Team and Enhancements
We also heard time and again that our support team and latest enhancements have been exceeding expectations! With strong confirmation of our efforts in these areas, we will continue to invest time, thought, and resources into them. Our client calls and written messages are full of expertise and insight from fundraisers across higher education, healthcare, environmental concerns, and single-cause missions. We will continue to listen, to ask good questions, and to try to anticipate your needs.
Without overpromising, I do want to foreshadow an enhancement coming next month that we’ve been wanting to do for years! Stay tuned (or ask us) to learn what it is.
To close for now, I’m so proud of the work we do at Ovrture because working with these people, these ambitions, and these missions is so inspiring. Thank you to those partners who offered some critiques that were hard to hear, some wishlist items, and some gratitude.
Our ongoing collaboration enriches everything we do. Now we had better get cracking on these initiatives to make our major donor communications software even better! I expect I’ll be hearing from some of you after you see how powerful your voice is here at Ovrture.
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