Author: howard.rawlings

We have just added another new, exciting feature to our donations system – the ability to add a separate funeral notices page to your website, advising mourners of the latest funerals.

The page is inserted via another “iframe” which we give to your website developers, the page can be added in minutes. The page will also perfectly match the style, colours and fonts of your website in exactly the same way that our donation pages now do.

In the page configuration, you can choose if the announcement page will either contain only the funerals that have not yet taken place, or a fixed number of funerals to a maximum of fifty, (thus masking your funeral volume). The notices are sorted alphabetically by surname.

The details of the notices page can be configured in a number of ways:

• As shown below, you can add in a picture or graphic image beside each notice.
• The notice can have the deceased’s born in/died in years, their age, both, or neither, configured in the setup.
• You can also have a separate notice set of words to the notice (as shown in the top two) or the first sentence’s from the donation profile biography, as shown in the bottom example.
• You can also choose not to show a notice in the same way as you can choose not to show a donation profile.

Creation of each funeral notice takes literally a couple of minutes, taking most of the data from the donations system.  

The new page provides another, earlier reason for mourners to visit your website to obtain the funeral details, thus increasing traffic and we believe that it will also encourage more online donations via the link through page.   

So a new year and a new feature! We remain committed to developing our system and are pleased to inform you that this new feature comes at no additional cost. We will also be retaining the £6 plus VAT fee per donation profile for the fourth year running!

For information or a free demo to see how your donations can be managed more efficiently contact us on 01803 229467 or contact us here

Our latest version of the donation management system allows you to create a charity collection page on your website, for local group’s for fundraising activity that you wish to support.  Which is a part of your community engagement that we know is important to you all.

Our new “collection profile” makes it simple to help these groups by creating a page on your website using the “engine” behind our InMemory pages. The only cost to you is the same £6 +VAT per profile we charge for setting up a normal donation profile.

We provide you with the ‘iframe’ code for your web developer to, in minutes, integrate into a new page on your site.

The fundraising donation page shows how one of our customers is already using it to raise money for charity. Creating a page like this is as easy and quick as a normal donation page.

The page allows you to include photographs,test and an image gallery, just like an ‘InMemory page. Donors are invited to leave messages of support, and after every online donation, they receive an email from you thanking them for your support.  The system allows you to have one live page open for as long as you wish and all reporting & reconciliation features extend to the new profile.

Creating a charity collection profile page

To create your page, go to donations/collection profile and add. Firstly, give the collection a name that will appear at the top of the page, then you can decide to show a running total of all donations  on the page. The profile is opened/closed like a donation profile, but please remember – you can only have one collection profile open.

You add in the picture(s) and text which explain what the collection is all about, as well as adding below the gallery of photos which appear in the carousel.  Then add the charity/group  that you are collecting for, (having set them up in the charities section first). Remember, to be able to add gift aid, the charity must  be registered and the number added in the registration number field.

To preview how the page looks, go to the main home page and click on the “Collection profile page view “. Finally, go to users/profile and customise the email that each donor will receive from you in the “Collection donor email message” section of the profile to the collection you are making and all is ready to go!

When you want to set up your first profile on your system, by all means give us a call, we will be happy to help you, to ensure that you are comfortable with the process.

We have also in the user/profile section set up a separate set of terms and conditions for this service. Please review and make any changes that you feel may be required, we have tried to make them as simple as is practical.

We are committed to continuing to develop our InMemory software as our user base continues to grow and we thank you all for your continued support.

For more information or a free demo to see how your charity fundraising can be managed more efficiently contact us on 01803 229467 or contact us here.

Donatis is delighted to announce a new feature in the latest update of our ‘In Memory’ system.

InMemory users can now display funeral announcements / notices as part of the same process of setting up each ‘InMemory’ profile.

The notices will appear in a new, separate page on your website – via another iframe (just as your current ‘In Memory’ profiles integrate) giving mourner’s full information about current funerals.

The style of the notice and the amount of information displayed in each funeral notice is completely controlled by your preferences, set up in the system user profile – and of course you choose whether to use it or not.

• A photograph can be added to the side of each notice, or alternatively you could add a common photograph or icon (as shown).
• The deceased’s name will always appear as entered into the arrangement.
• You can opt to show their age, their life span (e.g. 1945-2018), both or neither.
• You can opt to display a more formal style of notice taken directly from the deceased’s obituary, or the first few lines of the personal biography in the InMemory page.
• Under each notice is an editable link which takes the viewer directly to the InMemory page with service details, condolence messages etc.
• You also have the ability to not show any notice where a family wish for privacy.
• You can determine the number of notices shown at any point in multiples of five or opt to show the notices for every funeral that has not yet taken place.

Taking information that has already been entered into the system for the ‘In Memory’ profile, funeral announcements / notices will not only allow people to view the details for the deceased’s funeral alongside their obituary and biography, it also presents another opportunity to access to their donation profile.

There are many benefits, both to the loved ones of the deceased and to you as a business:

• It improves the service you offer families and provides clear, printable service details.
• We believe it will increase the volume of mourners who obtain service details online and then link across to add a donation. 
• We know two thirds of donors viewing the page will live in your trading area and making them aware of your service.
• A simple search functionality at the top of the page, allows users to find the notice details
• The more mourners become used to obtaining information via your website, the more they will use the service and the fewer telephone calls you will have to field for funeral details.
• Last but not least, there is no additional charge for this feature and details of how to set this up in your user profile are outlined in the document attached to this email. Needless to say if you have any queries please call or email us.

For information or a free demo to see how your donations can be managed more efficiently contact us on 01803 229467 or contact us here.

A funeral director who stole thousands of pounds in charity donations has been ordered by the Exeter Crown Court to pay the money back.

The Funeral Service Times reported that a Teignmouth undertaker has been ordered to repay the charity cash he stole from the funeral donations. Robert Loveridge took almost £5,000 from various charity donations that had been given in memory of deceased loved ones at 26 funerals over a nine year period.

His illegal activities were finally discovered after a woman called two of the charities she had donated to – she was concerned that the donations had not been handed over.

How can we stop this?

The ‘In Memory’ donations Management System makes handling cash, cheques and card easy to manage, log and record, so donors can drop off or send in donations as well as making them online. By logging every donation that comes in the donation processing becomes much more transparent.

One of the main reasons for choosing ‘InMemory’, is that the charities being donated to in memoriam of a loved-one recieve the full donation plus additional Gift Aid.

For information or a free demo to see how your donations can be managed more efficiently contact us on 01803 229467 or contact us here.

We are delighted to announce we just added another new capability to your business, the ability to offer local fundraising via your website for local groups or charities or supporting your existing community involvement via events like Golf Days, Marathon running etc.

The idea for this came from one of our customers – Howard Chadwick Funeral Services, and we are indebted to them for it. We have taken the same donations engine capability that we have developed for our InMemory profiles and re-packaged it so that you can use it to fund raise via your website.

You now have the ability to add a separate fundraising page to your website.

The page is inserted via another “iframe” which we give to your website developers and the new page and service can be added in minutes. The page will also perfectly match the style, colours and fonts of your website in exactly the same way that our donation pages now do.

Instead of setting up a donation profile, for fundraising you now set up a Collection Profile in the system for the fundraising. You can add photographs, images and text exactly as you do now for the biography in the donations element. Add in the charity into the database, select it and any photos into the gallery and in seconds you are ready to start fundraising!

The new fundraising collection profile has a number of features:

• You can only have one collection profile on line at any time and you choose when to start and stop fundraising. 
• As it’s a different service to donations, we’ve added a separate set of terms and conditions for the service (which are as per the donation service totally customisable – as they are your conditions)
• As with the donations service you can log all forms of donations, so donors can drop off or send in donations as well as making them online.
• The collections fund raising system encourages donors to leave a message of support which are instantly added to the page.
• Every online, card donation is acknowledged with a customisable email sent from you thanking the donor for their support for your activity.
• All donations are logged in the exact same way as for the InMemory ones so the reconciliation reports and reporting works in exactly the same way.
• The fundraising can be used for any activity, be it a local group or charity or to support something that you as a company have organised such as a Marathon run – Our customer use  was a Funeral Manager walking up Snowdon to help fund some equipment for a local nursing home.

We know how many of our customers are involved in the communities they serve and hope that this new capability will assist you in those works.

The payoff for you of course is continuing to increase traffic of local people through your website, and helping smaller groups or local organisation who cannot easily raise funds online other than with the like of Just Giving – who continue to take 5% of the card donation and Gift Aid as well as the card processing fee and charging the charity £15/£39 a month as well!

Please let us know if you need some help settling up your fundraising initiative, we are here to help. We also can now work together on your local screen, whilst being remote, using some new support software that we have deployed.

We remain committed to developing our system and are pleased to inform you that each collection profile only costs the same as any other donation profile –  £6 plus VAT.

For information or a free demo to see how your fundraising profiles can be managed more efficiently contact us on 01803 229467 or contact us here.

The Funeral Times recently reported that a large amount of cash, including charity funds, has been stolen from a funeral director in Birmingham.

www.funeralservicetimes.co.uk/7815-charity-funds-stolen-funeral-directors/ 

The burglar broke into the establishment through the roof, he then knocked the door off its hinges before going through the drawers. He made off with the money which included charity funds.

We are please to say that this wouldn’t happen to one of our customers because the cash would have been banked and the donation recorded and saved online.

The best bit is that the  InMemory Donation Management System is unlike any other online donation management system available; because we do not deduct anything from any donation, so donors can rest assured, their chosen charity, or charities, will receive 100% of the donation amount (minus any charges from the card provider).

For information or a free demo to see how your donations can be managed more efficiently contact us on 01803 229467 or contact us here.

Mark’s daughter Niki joined the team with effect from January 1st to help continue to develop our donations management business. Niki will work with Mark developing new opportunities, acting as the chief tester of the produce and managing our product training…. Welcome aboard!

Huge change in UK payment methods as cards continue to grow at the expense of cheques and cash.

Payments UK – the trade association for the payments industry, have just released their annual report for 2016, showing that debit cards will overtake cash as the most popular payment method in 2018.

Debit cards were used 11.6 billion times last year – a growth of 14% in a year. Credit cards were used 3.7bn. times, up 9%. and the trusty cheque continues its slow decline, used just 417 million times last year, a drop of 14%.  Read the full report here…

Donatis are delighted to be showing their new integration with Funeral Manager and their InMemory Donations System at this years National Funeral Exhibition on 9-11th June.

Here are just a few reasons to pop by stand 69 at NFE…

1. They will be handing out their NEW and essential Donations Management Best Practice Guide for you to take away. This guide will ensure excellent working practices throughout the industry and safeguard each firm’s credentials. 

2. Donatis have been working hard over the past few months developing their InMemory Donation Management System, which now integrates seamlessly with Funeral Manager. Pop by their stand (69) at the NFE and see for yourself just how easy it is to use, and how every Funeral Director could benefit from the system in their business.

3. They will be launching their brand new Website!

COME AND VISIT THE DONATIS TEAM ON STAND 69 AT THIS YEAR’S NATIONAL FUNERAL EXHIBITION, 9–11 JUNE!

John Wilde; developers of Funeral Manager, and Donatis Giving; developers of InMemory, are delighted to announce the release of their product integration development. The data exchange ensures a seamless, automatic flow of data between the two systems.

Funeral Manager is the most widely used funeral arrangement software in use by Funeral Directors in the UK today. The integration allows Funeral Manager users to utilise the InMemory FD Info database which holds a comprehensive database on the various funeral locations (burial grounds, churches, crematoria and cemeteries), including customisable local fee structures and all relevant people involved from these locations e.g. ministers, celebrants, organists, vergers, location booking staff, church wardens etc. This data is then automatically updated and can be used when arranging the funeral using Funeral Manager.
 
When Funeral Manager saves the funeral arrangement, it then automatically sends the arrangement data to InMemory and adds the arrangement data into the InMemory system. Users then simply choose the charities, add the photographs and biography and the collection page is  then live and available to collect online and offline donations. InMemory manages the donations process and Funeral Manager manages the rest of the funeral arrangement.