The effort is front-loaded. The return compounds.
The effort is twelve weeks, from contract to a live system. We build for about eight of them; the rest are yours, for reviews, approvals and one questionnaire about your data. Your team’s hours are few and named: four roles, most of them one coordinator’s. The return starts the day it goes live: designs, data and stories are built once and used again, so every proposal and every report starts from more than the one before it, and the second year asks less of your team than the first.
- 01Build process
Five stages, kickoff to go live→ - 02Launch workload
Four roles and their level of effort→ - 03Post-launch workload
Four tasks and their level of effort→ - 04What clients who thrive do
Six habits that help teams adopt change→ - 05New-client questions
What typically comes up as we get started→ - 06If your champion leaves
How we handle handoffs to new team members→
Five stages, and most of the work is ours.
Kickoff to first content in about eight weeks of building. We plan for twelve so your reviews and approvals can happen on your calendar, with room for the one questionnaire that shapes everything after it.
You show us your brand and introduce us to the people who will use the system. We set the schedule, demo the platform to your stakeholders, and walk you through the reporting questionnaire.
We design the donor website and the report in your identity. You review, your colleagues weigh in, you approve.
We build the system to the approved design and connect your data. Your administrators are in training while we do it.
Three rounds of end-to-end testing, two of them ours. Then your IT team sets the web address and the system goes live.
Your first reports and donor websites go up with us beside you. From here the weekly meeting continues for as long as you want it.
About a working week of your team’s time, spread across twelve.
Four roles, the hours each gives, and what they do with them. Most of it belongs to one person, and it fits alongside the job they already have.
The one person who is our point of contact and yours. The coordinator runs the meetings and the decisions across the twelve weeks, and is the person who knows where everything stands.
Shares your guidelines and assets, and reviews the designs before anyone else does.
Sets the web address, allows our email domain, creates an admin alias, provides a certificate and a DNS record, and turns on single sign-on if you use it. Six items, a few hours.
Tells us how your fund and donor data is organized, so reports build themselves from it. It is the reporting questionnaire from kickoff, and we walk through it with you.
Your team works in seasons. The platform works all year.
What running it asks of your team once it is live. The donor websites stay up and engagement keeps returning to the record all year; your team’s hours concentrate in the few weeks around each reporting season. These hours describe the season.
The stories, the photographs and the words that go into a proposal or a report. Communications writes in the browser, in labeled fields, with the panels your institution approved locked, and the development officer reads their own donors’ pages before anything goes out. It is work your team already does; it now lands in one place and is reused by every website that needs it.
Unlimited, and it does not stop at launch. Most teams take it in the first season and again before each new one, and whoever joins your team mid-year gets the same sessions the first group did. It runs alongside the weekly meeting, for as long as you want either.
Keeping the people current: a new prospect’s website set up, a donor’s name, addressee or funds corrected as the record changes. A connected CRM carries most of this across on its own; on a structured upload it is a short, regular task for one administrator.
Loading each round’s fund performance, awards and impact figures, then checking that every report carrying a fund picked up the change. Correct a number once and every report that carries it follows. A connected CRM sends the fund data in for you, which is where the low end of the range comes from.
The clients who thrive do six things. None of them are technical.
Our onboarding guide is the collective wisdom of every system we have launched, and it comes down to six habits anyone on your team can adopt. The hardest week is still the one about your data; the teams that do these six things get through it faster, and their second season is faster than their first.
- 01 Name one person A digitally fluent system administrator who is our point of contact and yours. No coding is required; what the role needs is an appetite for digital tools, an openness to new ideas and a commitment to precision. Around that person, a small task force from communications, donor relations, brand and the development officers, so the system is built with every perspective that will use it.
- 02 Keep the weekly meeting Regular, unscripted collaboration with our team through onboarding and for as long as you want it after. It is where your team’s understanding of the platform deepens, and where the return on the investment is decided.
- 03 Be exceptionally particular Join us in testing on the staging system, with your real data at real scale, and be hypercritical of every facet before launch. An issue found in validation is far easier to fix than one found by a donor.
- 04 Train everyone, then keep training Administrators first, users once the content is in, and every member of the first cohort, including the people who will touch the system rarely. Training is unlimited, one to one or in groups, so the question is never whether you have used up your share.
- 05 Map roles and write down how you work Decide who can build, edit, approve and read, and set the naming conventions and folder structure before the first season. Review, edit and approval now happen in near real time, which is welcome and needs a few agreed protocols. The map becomes the template for every unit you add.
- 06 Start small, and plan the first send One report type, one unit, one season, with the deadlines on the calendar at kickoff and the hours blocked beside them. Before the first send, tell donors what to expect and why you are going digital, and send from your own email tool. Then add.
What comes up in the first month.
For the team that has already signed. If your question is here, finding out does not cost you a meeting.
What is the reporting questionnaire, and what does it ask of us?
It is how you tell us how your data is organized: the funds, the units, and the fields your reports draw on. Your reporting expert spends a few hours on it across two to four weeks, with our team walking through it with you, and nothing in it is a final design decision. You will see every choice again in the designs, where it can still change.
Where do we find our sign-in page, our questionnaire and our system blueprint?
Your account manager sends all three at kickoff and again whenever you ask. Your sign-in page lives at your own system address, set with your IT team during launch.
How do we add users and turn on single sign-on?
Your administrators add users inside the platform and assign each a role. Single sign-on is optional: Shibboleth SAML2, InCommon and ADFS are supported, and local sign-in works without any of them.
Who is our point of contact, and how often do we meet?
One account manager, from kickoff onward. After launch there is a weekly meeting for as long as you want it, and unlimited training and support in between.
Will the designs match our brand guidelines?
Yes. We design from the guidelines and assets your brand team provides, your colleagues review the designs, and nothing goes live until you approve it.
Everything your team built stays.
The designs, the templates, the fund data, the donor websites and every report already sent stay where they are. The successor inherits a working program with a season already behind it.
We invest heavily in the new person, at no charge: what Ovrture is, how it is connected to your data, what it does, and how your team’s work runs through it, in as many sessions as it takes for them to feel fully equipped. Then we stay beside them through the next reporting cycle, because that is the season that decides whether the program keeps its momentum.
- 01 Everything staysDesigns, templates, fund data, and every donor website already built.
- 02 We bring the new person up to speedWhat it is, how it is connected, what it does, how your work runs through it. As many sessions as it takes, at no charge, until they are fully equipped.
- 03 We stay through the next cycleThe same account manager, beside the new person through their first reporting season.
See it for yourself.
Book a demo and let’s think it through together. Come with whatever you are trying to solve, and we will start there.