June 28, 2001 | Read Time: 1 minute
By NICOLE WALLACE
Fund raisers have long used gift pyramids to plan fund-raising campaigns. Now a Portland, Ore., communications company has introduced an inexpensive software program that allows them to easily generate gift-pyramid graphs to track their campaigns’ progress.
John Stuart May, a vice president at the Metropolitan Group, got the idea for the program when he was executive director of Doernbecher Children’s Hospital.
When the hospital was in the midst of its first capital campaign, Mr. May spent hours using Microsoft PowerPoint to create a gift pyramid that was divided into levels. Each level on the pyramid represented a gift amount in the campaign — for example, $100,000 gifts — and each level was then further divided to represent the number of gifts the hospital was seeking at that amount — for example, 25 gifts of $100,000 each. He then recorded gifts that came in by filling in the corresponding box on the pyramid with a highlighter.
The software Mr. May has developed automates the process. Users enter their campaigns’ gift levels and the number of gifts they are seeking at each level and then record the gifts as they come in. The program fills in the boxes on the campaign pyramid and calculates how much money has come in at each gift level and all together.
Mr. May says that the pyramid graphs are particularly helpful for campaign volunteers. “The campaign pyramid makes it easier for volunteers to ask for money — always a challenge because it visually displays the gifts that have been received and those that are needed.”
The software can be downloaded from the Metropolitan Group’s Web site for $29.95, and is available on CD-ROM for $39.95.
For more information: Go to http://www.campaignpyramid.com.
