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Artez first off the mark with eReceipts
By Pat Porth
Canadian FundRaiser: March 15, 2000
If someone asked you as a fundraising executive what you needed to make your job easier, cut your costs substantially, and enhance the effectiveness of your donor, volunteer and sponsor relations, would you think of saying "electronic tax receipts"? You might not, offhand, but officials at the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF) did. Due to their response to that query from the foundation's IT supplier, Artez Information Services, the technology has been developed and the need has been met.
Donors to CBCF online will, right about now, receive their Revenue Canada-acceptable tax receipt, along with their confirmation and thank you letter, via eMail. As a simple illustration of the cost saving alone of this new system, CBCF's Deborah Kroeger is quoted as noting that the recent Run for the Cure collected $6.5 million from 190,000 donations - each of which had to be acknowledged and receipted through the post at a unit cost of about 70 cents. But 2,500 of the donations were sent in through the website. If even that number could have been receipted at much less cost via eMail, there would have been that much more money to put toward cancer research rather than into the bottomless pit of Canada Post.

No up-front investment in hard/software
Artez has developed eTaxReceipt - now available to all interested not-for-profits - so that it manages the database at its Mississauga headquarters, meaning the charity does not have to make any upfront investment in hardware or software. The system is 'rented' to clients for a transaction fee, which is set at an initial level reflecting setup and installation costs, and then reduced once those costs have been amortized, normally within a year. "The concept behind the pricing," says sales director Rick Poetker, "is shared risk/shared reward. There is no upfront fee, just a fee for each transaction. If no one donates, no one pays."
Artez's database is fully secure and fully integrated with the client's own fundraising software, so that each transaction is synchronized to update both databases. As far as the donor is concerned, all communication comes directly from the charity. The reason for offering to play the role of technical host, says Poetker, is to make the system accessible to smaller charities which couldn't afford the large investment in capital equipment or the information systems staff skilled at keeping up with rapid technological change. Even the larger agencies need to keep their resources dedicated to their main job of providing a service and raising money for their causes, not to developing and constantly upgrading technology, he points out.
"That's why we say we have 'Apps (applications) on Tap'" he says. "We're starting to brand ourselves as 'powered by Artez'. We take the client 'from the button back' - that is, from the point the donation is confirmed, whether on-line or by phone or by mail. Managing the program centrally, we have the capital investment, technical expertise, and highly skilled staff, already on board."

Long, but friendly negotiations with Revenue Canada
Having won Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (formerly Revenue Canada) approval for the system, Artez has been assured that any charity following the same process to set it up, will require no further approvals. In fact, negotiations with Revenue Canada to have the receipt system acceptable were lengthy but amicable, Poetker says, with the tax collectors insisting on two main issues:
Firstly, the receipt must be non-alterable by anyone. It is delivered in .pdf (portable document format, produced by Adobe Exchange and received via Adobe Reader). At Revenue Canada's insistence, it includes a hyperlink back to the Adobe site, in case the donor doesn't have Reader (which is free) installed.
The government's second concern was that all information in the databases (client and Artez) be recorded 'appropriately', i.e. there would be no duplication of receipt numbers, the format would be consistent and unchanged, etc.

Get that eMail address!
Rick stresses that, although charities would be wise to direct their marketing programs to increase the proportion of their donations coming in on-line, the electronic tax receipt can still be sent via eMail in response to telephoned or mailed-in contributions; the key is to ask for the eMail address to return the receipt and other communications, and then build it into the database.
Exciting as the eTaxReceipt program is, its developers see it as just the beginning link in an ever-more-valuable chain of enhanced donor, volunteer and sponsor communication via eMail, with the contributions from Artez soon to be eCampaigning and eVolunteering. Using the information in the database, charities will be able to target/narrowcast their campaigns to most-likely recipients instead of broadcasting appeals through the mails to all and sundry. They will be able to design appeals in such a way that they encourage return communication, such as "Yes I'll contribute" or "Yes I'll attend the event" or "Yes I'll be a sponsor" or "Not this time, but I'll volunteer for ...".

Communications increasingly a two-way street
Depending on the response, the charity will be able to return to the person with acknowledgement of the contribution, confirmation of an event registration, thank you for sponsorship or further information on volunteer opportunities with a request for a choice of activities and suggested timetable. Ideally, the person will become more and more involved and interested in the charity's affairs, and will be frequently on-line to its Web site, keeping up-to-date on its activities and checking other ways s/he might be of use, with money and/or time.
Eventually, the possibilities for meaningful charity-to-supporter and supporter-to-charity communications are boundless ... and none of it puts a penny in Canada Post's coffers!
For further information call Rick Poetker, Director of Sales, Artez Information Services, 225 Watline Ave., 2nd flr, Mississauga, ON L4Z 1P3, 905/507-0020, X 29, fax 905/507-0081, eMail rpoetker@artez.com>, website www.artez.com.