Fundraising with Plant Records

Fundraising with Plant Records

“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.”

• Helen Keller

Our August Coffee Chat was given by Lynn Swain, the Director of Development from Cornell Botanic Gardens. She has served as the Director of Development since 2016. She has also served as the membership director at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the membership manager at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Prior to her work with gardens, she has had a long career behind the scenes in museums, serving most recently as the registrar at the Winterthur Museum near Wilmington, Delaware.  Lynn is someone who truly understand curation and many aspects of collection management at an institutional level.  Lynn shared with us how she uses the Garden Explorer in her donor engagement and cultivation work.

The maps below show the locations of all the gardens and arboreta represented by everyone that registered for the Coffee Chat - home offices not taken into consideration. 

Fundraising with Plant Records

Lynn shared about the importance for the Development Department to understand the information that the Plant Recorders have and maintain.  The IrisBG Garden Explorer helps the Development Department to respond to donors and to quickly find what trees and benches are available and where they are located.  The Plant Recorders need to understand that the donations for benches and trees can possibly help support their salary and the records should be kept current.  Arborists also can benefit from the Garden Explorer displaying where the potential trees for dedication are in the garden and check on the health of the tree if a donor is coming to view the trees. Below are slides from Lynn’s presentation.

Topics covered in the discussion

• Donors can sponsor collections, benches, art, and/or garden areas and this information can be tracked in IrisBG
• What to do when a tribute tree reaches the end of its lifespan?
  • Create legacy gifts from the wood
  • Talk with the donor or next of kin about moving the tag to another tree
  • Is there a minimum time limit before you ask for a new donation to support a new tree? 
• Do you send personalized packets with photos of the bench or tree for donors that are not locally based?

🌱 Did you know that IrisBG can store information for your development contacts? The information is accessible from the funding screen while you are entering an item.

🌱You are able to protect the contact information of your donors in IrisBG. The IrisBG Administrator is able to assign roles to the the IrisBG users in your organizations. A role must have access level = Update (or higher; Delete and Admin) to use or view the contacts.  If a contact has the status of protected,  contacts will be replaced by asterisks if access level = View.  For higher levels (Update and above) the name will be shown.

🌱You are able to edit the Entry Kind of things sponsored in the Code Lists menu (Examples include: Garden Locations, Benches, Art, Trees). Look for Funding Type and add your custom list here.

Do you have any suggestions or ideas you would like to share? Feel free to comment below in this article.