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How Gifted Memory and Institutional Memory came into being According to several surveys of the profession, the average lifespan of a development officer in any single position is 24 months. Professional wisdom states that it takes 18-24 months for a major gift or planned gift to complete the solicitation cycle. The intersection of these two statements leads to an obvious problem. Just about the time a development officer has developed an effective relationship with a major donor, he or she moves on to the next job. This interrupts the relationship that has been nurtured between the institution and the major donor. One solution, would be to not allow development officers to leave, or pay them more to stay rather than respond to opportunities for professional advancement. Another solution it to accept the transient nature of society and create an 'Institutional Memory' that imparts information from one generation of development officers to the next. Reviewing the files to see what transpired between the institution and the donor allows the new development officer to pick up where the other left off. Given my campaign and annual giving experience at Roanoke College, I created a Prospect Tracking System, to organize our major gift effort. Without benefit of personal computers, I created a series of three part forms and reports to help us manage the effort. The top carbon went to the file, the second sheet went to the boss, and the third copy stayed with the development officer as a personal record of activity. Over time I refined the work that was eventually copyrighted in 1988 as the One Page Management System. This was a misnomer, because it was really a compilation of seven, separate one page, triplicate copy reports, one for each stage of the solicitation process. It was a fine system, but once I surpassed 50 prospects and 20 volunteers I spent more time filling out forms than soliciting gifts. While the development director at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, I became frustrated with the inability of the existing computer systems to support the fund raising process. They did a great job of recording gifts, laying a claim against matching gift companies, and producing direct mail or telemarketing pieces. But they did not support the labor intensive work of major gift fund raising. At the time, there were at least 8 places to go for information: the university mainframe, the school's computer system, the central files, the research office, the dean's office, the law school's development files, spreadsheets, and wordprocessing files. None of these were complete, none were current, and bouncing between them all was inefficient. By this time, 1988, personal computers were prolific and it seemed that we could translate the One Page Management System into a computer system. I started talking to computer programmers. In 1989 Institutional Memory was incorporated and work began on the development of the prospect management system. We conducted some market research in the winter of 1990 and the spring of 1991. With the DOS system completed in June 1991, I quit my job at the Law School in July and installed Gifted Memory at our beta sites: St. Michael's College and Baldwin-Wallace College. Given the need to remember various details about every prospect, each volunteer, and the progress of all staff members; and acknowledging my limited capacity to remember everything unless it was written down, we decided that Gifted Memory was a fitting name for our product. The logo for the software, a stylized gift pyramid with a gold bar, symbolizes the 80/20 rule and Gifted Memory's ability to help you move prosoects of the gift pyramid. Our system reinforces the classic fund raising techniques that enable you to successfully raise major gifts. Scott Lange Scott Lange founded Institutional Memory, Inc. in December 1989 to design a software system that would help organizations build productive relationships with their constituents. After 13 years as a major gift specialist, he left his position as Director of Development at Case Western Reserve School of Law in July of 1991 to devote full time to the company While at CWRU, Lange helped to quadruple the annual fund revenue during a $15 million law school campaign. He was also a member of the initial team for the university's $250 million effort. Before joining the staff of CWRU, Lange served as director of major gifts for The Cleveland Clinic Foundation. During his tenure at the Foundation, he helped to triple annual charitable gift receipts from $3 to $9 million. Earlier in his career, Lange worked as the director of development for the University of Missouri-Columbia and Roanoke College. At Missouri, he was instrumental in establishing the first endowed chair. At Roanoke, he helped propel the $1,000 gift club from $790,000 in receipts to $1,900,000 in 12 months. Scott was introduced to capital campaigns and annual giving in 1979 at Blackburn College when he was promoted from Admissions Representative to Director of Alumni Relations. There he increased alumni participation in the annual fund from 8.9% to 31%. Active in the profession, Scott served as chair of the CASE (Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) Conference on Annual Giving 1991-1992, and was a member of that faculty from 1981-1992. For several years, he was a faculty member for the CASE Conference on Capital Campaigns. In recent years he has been an active speaker at CASE/NAIS and HEERA/CASE Conferences. He co-founded two NSFRE (National Society of Fund Raising Executives) chapters: The First Virginia Chapter and the Central Missouri Chapter. Scott served on the National Board of Directors during the 1980's, and was Track Dean for the 1986 NSFRE International Conference. In 1998, he co-authored the chapter "Information Systems, Managing the Database" in the Josey-Bass Capital Campaigns series of New Directions for Philanthropic FundRaising. Scott is now serving his third term on the vestry of St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. |
