Recording crowdfund gifts in Raiser's Edge

Debra Holcomb

We are just starting to receive gifts through crowdfunding and I'd love your input on the best way to record these gifts in Raiser's Edge. How do you track these gifts in RE?  



How do you record the donor's information, that the payment came through Network for Good on behalf of the Crowdrise platform, and who led the crowdraising campaign?



I'm trying to figure out if I need to create a new tribute type for these gifts so we can quickly tell how much a person has collectively raised; a new gift code since that is how we control if tax-language appears on the acknowledgement; and a new appeal so we can tell what initiated these gifts and then what should the packages be (the name of the fundraising platform or the name of the person who started the campaign); and how many of these four entities should get soft credit.  



I'd love to hear your thoughts and if you are currently receiving crowd-funding gifts.  

Jody Johnson

We use to create a Tribute for the Crowdfunding organizer and then link all the gifts donated to it to the Tribute. But now we are creating an event for the Crowdfunding and putting all donors as participant with that participant type and linking their gifts as other donations. 



This is allowing us to look at one event record and see all the donors easily and get a total amount raised. 

Stephanie Ulmer

We created an appeal for each initiative to track overall money raised. I wouldn't create tribute records but perhaps a gift attribute. 

Amanda Johnson

Currently we download the donor information from the crowdfunding site and enter the gifts as Other gifts in RE. We also enter the total amount that a fundraiser raised as an Other gift with the Fund type of "Crowdfunder Raised". That way we can look at a donor's record and see how much they've raised for us and/or how much they are giving to us via crowdfunding sites.  We include these Other gifts when we're doing stewardship and giving analysis, but we don't include the Other gifts in financial reporting. The disbursement from the crowdfunding site goes on the site's RE record and is what gets counted in financial reporting.  (Initially we were entering the disbursement on teh site's RE record, then soft-crediting all of the supporters and fundraisers, but this was too messy.)



I'm interested to know what others of you are doing to track crowdfunding gifts. We're about to greatly up our presence and participation on Crowdrise and I expect we may want to evaluate the gift-tracking procedure I described above.  

Krista Lippert

For Network for Good specifically, we actually enter the check as cash on a record we created for Network for Good. Then we enter the donor's gift as an "other" type gift. We do this because we want to thank the donor for the full gift amount but Network for Good has already receipted the donor. So it really shouldn't be added to the donor's record as a cash gift. Also on the gifts we have a specific appeal for that event and we add the crownfunding individual as the solicitor.

Brenna Capon

I would do exactly what Jody says.

Debra Holcomb

Thank you for the thoughtful replies to below.  There's much to consider with these types of gifts.  Another suggestion that has been presented is to use the solicitor field on the gift to record who initiated the crowdfunding project.  Any thoughts about that?  Anyone using solicitor?  

Angie Stumpo

We do what Krista said. This is interesting as we implement TeamRaiser of how to track who raised what. Right now that is done mostly on spreadsheets, but I will have to look into the other suggestions here.

Charles Staley

We have not had an attempt at crowdfunding that had a response which benefited our organization yet, it's coming but we'll probably follow Jody's Method for tracking when it does happen.

Brenda Engstrand

We haven't used crowdfund raising yet. Thanks for the great tips.

Debra Holcomb

Thank you all. This has been very helpful. Since these are not organized events that we sponsor, we've decided to manage these gifts as tribute gifts since essentially the gift is being made in honor of someone's accomplishment.  In this specific case, it's a high school student raising money for trail restoration while he completes a two week hike in Yosemite.  We decided that by recording these crowdfunded gifts as tribute gifts, we could provide a more personalize acknowledgement letter and apply appropriate solicitation strategies to these honorary donors in the future.  (We created a new tribute type, gift code and appeal -- a little bit of overkill but that's how our system works).  You all gave me many things to think about and if anyone else has questions about how this is working down the road, please feel free to ask me directly.