Little Green Light is a cloud-based donor management system for fundraisers.
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If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by your day-to-day tasks and short on time, you’re not alone. When we ask customers what would help them make the most of LGL, one of the most common responses we hear is, “I need more time to spend in the system.” Unfortunately, more time is often hard to come by!
Here is an alternative to consider: For a reasonable monthly fee, you can hire a part-time professional to help manage your LGL work. I recently spoke about how this works with Jordia Benjamin, Executive Director of Indigo Arts Alliance (IAA) in Portland, Maine.
IAA is a long-time Little Green Light customer, and in 2023 the organization contracted with an agency for a part-time person they affectionately call their “LGL assistant.” To be clear, this is not an employee of the nonprofit or of Little Green Light. It is a person they contract with to work in their LGL account for 10-20 hours per month. This LGL assistant is the primary person responsible for data entry in LGL, sending acknowledgments (with monthly changes to the acknowledgment template), sending pledge reminders, and pulling reports. Last year, the assistant also helped with a significant database cleanup, in which the organization went through all constituent coding that had accumulated over the years and consolidated the tags being used.
Jordia appreciates that the LGL assistant is well versed in how Little Green Light operates. She also brings a fresh perspective and makes suggestions on how to improve the organization’s use of LGL. Jordia credits this arrangement with making IAA more efficient and effective in its fundraising efforts, and would love to expand the relationship even further.
I was curious how this work relationship had been set up to be so successful, and I discussed a few aspects of that with Jordia.
At the outset, the LGL assistant received several training sessions over her first two weeks. Jordia said it was very helpful for the assistant to be able to meet one-on-one with the various people she would be working with, which included Jordia as well as the in-house administrative assistant and the accountant.
The LGL assistant has her own login (something we at LGL strongly encourage, as described in this help article). The organization has a well-grooved process for the assistant to get the information she needs, including the log of checks received and the text to use for the monthly updates to the acknowledgment template. IAA and the assistant have a monthly check-in meeting and communicate over email as needed during the month.
This arrangement provides significant time savings for IAA, relieving in-house staff members from much of the data entry and donor management work. It has also allowed the organization to maximize its use of LGL. Jordia said that prior to working with the LGL assistant, IAA was using a fraction of what LGL offers. But now they are using more of the software, and she’s looking to expand that even further. It has also enhanced their care of donors through consistent communications.
Jordia found her LGL assistant through the More Than Giving Company, which offers trained support professionals on a fractional basis. They have a special training program for the assistants who work on LGL accounts. You can contract for 10-40 hours per month with flexible-length contracts, and LGL customers receive a 10% discount for their first 6 months.
Virtual assistants from The More Than Giving Co.
Another place to look is the LGL User Group. This private Facebook group has over 5,000 members, and it’s a great place to run ideas by other LGL users. There is no job board per se, but occasionally members of the group ask each other about part-time support.
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