How is your organization tracking friend asking friends?

Rodrigo Guardado

We are thinking of launching a friends asking friends webpage and need to know how to track gifts originating from this effort. For example, let's say that Constituent X creates a webpage for his/her birthday and then sends an email blast to all his/her friends. Now, within the next couple of days, gifts start coming in via Constituent X's webpage and some send it in via mail and even phone calls. 



A month later, Constituent X asks, how much did I fund-raise? 



Any idea how to track this information in R.E. to later report it back? Of course, we wouldn't give Constituent X individual giving amounts just the overral fundraising dollar amount raised.



I've been thinking about using Appeals, Solicitor, and I've seen some organizations use "Soft-Credits" but in Blackbaud CRM. I don't think that soft credits are a good idea with Raiser's Edge 7.This leaves Appeals and or Solicitors. 



Many thanks in advance.



Best,



Rodrigo

Jen Claudy

If you use Appeal, I would create an Appeal with Packages for each of your participating Constituents.  Otherwise, you could end up with a lot of Appeals.  If you do create an Appeal for each participating Constituent, I would recommend you use an Appeal Type, so you can easily include/exclude these Appeals with/from your other Appeals.



Solicitor would work, but again, create a Solicitor Type to separate from your staff solicitors.  I think this is probably what I would choose to use.



If you have the Tribute Module, it might do what you need, as well.



You could also use a simple Gift Attribute, but it would take a bit more on the reporting side.



I think I'm with you on the Soft Credit...it's not really appropriate here, and I think it could cause you some reporting issues as well.



Pick one and test it out with some Dummy Records.  See what happens and either keep it (and document the heck out of your setup and process) or scrap it and try another method until you find the one that you like the most.  Then come back here and add a comment to let others know what you discover.

Amy Dana

I use Solicitor for our FAF appeals. That way I can run the solicitor Report and see who raised how much and also create a quick list of donors and addresses for the individual to send out thank you letters.

JoAnn Strommen

I would use solicitor and either solicitor type or gift code to further define/allow for reporting.