Strategic Planning reporting for four separate fiscal years

Marcia Reed

I need help getting started with this task: seems daunting at the momen.



Our CEO has asked for the following information for each fiscal year beginning with 2011-2012 and ending with 2014-2015:

 

Total dollars raised (not earned income)

Total # of donors

Total # of gifts

Top 10 gifts

Total gifts by type (grants applied for, estate gifts, individual gifts, etc.)

Total amount of unrestricted dollars raised

Total dollars provided to the college broken down by program/area

 

For all fiscal years, please prepare a report with gross numbers only.  For 2014-2015 can you please also prepare a report with the following information in alpha order by last name. Please highlight the top ten gifts.

 

Last name

Primary Addressee

Salutation

Address (City, state, zip in separate columns)

Constituent Code (individual, org, etc.)

Gift Date

Gift Amount

Fund Description

 

For constituents making multiple gifts, please show only one constituent line, but list all gifts in chronological order.

 

Leilani McHugh

Hi, Marcia, 

Though these series of tasks sounds daunting, if you break it down to the individual reports that Raiser's Edge has, you might find the tasks at hand less so.  Hopefully your database is clear in regards to gift entry.  Do you use campaigns, appeals, funds and gift types correctly so that you can easily segment them by type, restricted/unrestricted, and funds (to determine program/area)?  If you don't know, it's imperative that you find out.  To me, that would be step one.  After that, it's a matter of creating the correct gift detail/summary reports and analytic reports to answer each question posed by your boss.

Basically, my suggestion is to break the job down to several smaller jobs (reports) instead of trying to think of a single larger report to get your answers.  Once you create a report for one fiscal year, you can apply it to the other fiscal years.

I’m not clear what your CEO is asking for when asking for addressees, etc….   Does he/she want the contact information for donors of the Top 10 gifts?  Or does the CEO want the top ten gifts of every 14-15 donor?  Though, your CEO might find the top donors (using total amount of all gifts) more useful.  Also, make sure you and your boss assign soft-credit the way he wants to see it.  

Hope that helps!

 

JoAnn Strommen

As Leilani posted some of the options for pulling the info depends on how you use campaigns/funds/appeals. 



Other than options in Reports, if all your funds/campaigns are year specific you might be able to use options under Records > Campaigns/Funds (how you can group them by year) > select campaign/fund > View  > Summaries > Campaign Summary.

This can give you number stats, top donors etc but would only work in your case if say all your 2012 funds were under heading of 2012 campaign.



I also think they are asking for a lot of info that they probably really are not going to use.  For 2014-15, I'd start with a query of all donors with gifts in the year and then take it to Export to get bio data as well as.  If you're just looking at $ received, not pledges, Reports > Financial > Cash Receipts Journal can give you all gifts, address info, sorted by constit in ascending order.  You'ld have to mark top gifts but to me it is the quickest way to pull that info.

Marcia Reed

Thank you both! Yes, sometime yesterday afternoon, I decided I couldn't produce everything in one report and have it make sense. I have been perusing reports and trying them out. I have little experience with them.

The initial query I produced is giving me different total amount by quite a bit from the report, which I produced drawing from the same query.

I am now taking bite-sized pieces to see how I fare. Thanks again.

Marcia

JoAnn Strommen

A mistake I have made when querying gifts is remembering to filter the gift types.  If you're running a query or report and it's pulling both pledge and payments the amounts will always be inflated.  That's a first spot to check for me when my amounts are off.  Just a spot to check.

Marcia Reed

Thanks, yes, that's a problem I solved awhile ago.

so much to learn. I have now created so many reports and so many queries and so many exports...my head is spinning!

 

Gina Gerhard

Well, if people stopped asking you for all this data you wouldn't have to create so many queries, exports and reports -- good luck with that!!

Linda Allen

For the first part consider creating a comparison report, found under demographis and statistical reports, I have one that compares the last 5 years (an another for the 5 years prior) that gives total, # gifts  and # donors. You set the parmeters and donation periods, there are other colums as well.

Total dollars raised (not earned income)

Total # of donors

Total # of gifts



For your top 10 gifts use a Top Givers report fround under analytical reports, under format you can choose addressee instead of name, of course many of your top donors might have given more than one gift so need to clarify if its a single large gift or total.



I would use a fund or campaign analysis for the others, but as others noted it depends on how you enter gifts. Good luck.