Tables - Gift Codes examples

Kate Hudson

Hello,



I'm in the process of looking at and cleaning up our tables. While I think I have a good handle on tackling our constituent codes, attributes, and a few other things, I'm a little stuck on gift codes.



In the past, a previous gift processor was the sole RE user with almost no training or oversight, and created codes out the wazoo for every possible name of a sponsorship for an event. The gift code options range from "Donation" to "Golf Dinner Bar Sponsor - X Team" to "Lonestar Level Underwriter" etc. I've made most of these codes inactive, because frankly, the ED never asks for data at that level (maybe because it was so minute it was worthless?), and I was able to steer our most recent event to a code of Sponsor/Underwriter or Tickets.



I would love to see examples of gift code tables. Gift codes seem a little useless to me right now, but if I understood how others use them, maybe they could be a huge help in reporting. What are all of the gift codes you use? What do they signify?



We do have a few "memberships" to giving circles but no membership module, and some memberships get a code of membership or membership renewal, and others just get the name of the circle. It's arbitrary and makes tracking and reporting very time consuming. We also receive gifts directly from employers that are payroll deductions or things like Network for Good, as well as matching gifts, and have a big giving day with the Communities Foundation as a pass-through site and we get the donor data.



If anyone could provide some real examples or point me to a resource that's less vague than the RE Knowledgbase/Guides, I would greatly appreciate it. 

JoAnn Strommen

We use gift codes but do not use gift codes on all gifts.  We just use them with certain funds.



My examples: board, staff, community, event, memorial, kid builder, mailing...



Our reason for using them on these funds two-fold:

1. Inability of RE to easily assign solicitor relationships for appeals. If it could be done via import and during gift entry in batch, we might not need to record as gift code.
2. Report requested by exec with gifts broken down for these funds by these categories.  Gift code was the easiest way to enter and report out.

Field is certainly open to many uses.  This is just one example.

Kate Hudson

Thank you, JoAnn! Looks like I may be worrying about nothing...if it's usable for you only in certain situations, then maybe I can continue to to consolidate and then apply only to certain funds based on events or direct mail campaigns to help with classifying constituents or means of giving.

JoAnn Strommen:

We use gift codes but do not use gift codes on all gifts.  We just use them with certain funds.



My examples: board, staff, community, event, memorial, kid builder, mailing...



Our reason for using them on these funds two-fold:

1. Inability of RE to easily assign solicitor relationships for appeals. If it could be done via import and during gift entry in batch, we might not need to record as gift code.
2. Report requested by exec with gifts broken down for these funds by these categories.  Gift code was the easiest way to enter and report out.

Field is certainly open to many uses.  This is just one example.

 

 

Debra Holcomb

We use gift codes to help us include/exclude special language in our acknowledgement letters and only assign them to gifts that need them.  Gift codes provide us with a little more detail about the gift we don't store anywhere else and allow us to easily group certain gift types.  At other organizations, these might be attributes.  



Our gift codes are:

Crowd Funding

Cy Pres

Donor Advised

Estate*

IRA Distribution*

Vehicle

Workplace Giving



*We do not have the planned giving module.  

Ryan Hyde

We've been using RE since 2010 and have only recently started using Gift Code. Specifically, we use this field to track donor intent. We're an animal shelter, so when a donor wants their donation to "go to the cats" we add the code "cats" to the gift. So what we're actually recording is donor intent when there's no way to fulfill the donor's request - we do not have a fund for cats, dogs, horses, or any other specific animal as that would be an insane way to do business. 



This also applies to grants that are not restricted but were obtained using specific language. In the case of grants, this serves as a soft earmark for the usage of the funds and it helps us keep track of funder intent as well (this same information also lives in the proposal, but sometimes it's just easier to see it on the gift record).



 

Patti Hommes, bCRE-PRO

Hi Kate,



I completely understand where you are coming from! I am still trying to figure out how and why the gift codes are what they are where I am (almost 1 year in this position.)



In my former position we used gift codes specifically for reporting purposes. We had custom Crystal Reports that used the gifts codes to define what category the gift fit into (Grant, Bequest, Annual Gift, Capital Gift, etc)  



I'm in the same situation as you are at the moment - The codes in the database I inherited are all over the place. I am looking forward to  other responses to your post! Hopefully we will both get some help!

Lacy Kowalski

I am in a similar boat as Patti.  I have been in my position for just over a year and have made several of our gift codes inactive.  We currently have four that are used: Business Contribution, Individual Gift, Matching Gift and Trustee Gift.  These are the four that at least have some relevance for year end reporting.  Hope this helps!

Kate Hudson

Thank you all so much for your responses!



This has been very helpful.



We currently don't use gift attributes, but that may be something we consider adding. Thinking in terms of reporting, we often want to know if a gift gets the donor recognition on a wall or in the annual report (which is the vast majority of gifts, so really having a 'not in annual report' might be better), so using the code to "tag" these things instead of categorizing the way we do right now might be better. There are ala lot of breakdowns we want to see in our annual fund and gala that overlap so some of the current codes might be much better off as attributes. If an annual fund gift was made on the giving day via the community foundation, but also qualifies the donor for the donor wall, having both of these as attributes rather than trying to decide which code gets added will probably be better.



Thanks all again! If anyone else such as Patti others in our position want to reach out to me about this, please feel free!

JoAnn Strommen

Everyone certainly uses fields differently.  The codes shared by Lacy would be recorded as/are similar to gift constituency for us.

Lauren Noel

We use gift attributes for specific reporting requests. For example, we currently use it for donor types as so:



Category: 'Donor Type'

Description: Must be 'Individual' 'Trust' 'Organisation' or 'Other'. 



This way we can easily report each month on the breakdown between the four categories. Not the most sophisticated way of reporting but it certainly gets the job done!