action solicitors

Jesse Calagna

I was just wondering what if any specific reason i would enter a solicitor for an action.  If i call a donor and thank them for a gift, should i put myself as the solicitor or is that unnecessary?  Are solicitors only necessary for asks?

Jen Claudy

I would definitely tag yourself as the Solicitor for any Action that you take.



If it's important enough to record in RE, it should include who made that Action, and the best place for that piece of data is the Solicitor field.  It doesn't take much more time, and you may be grateful to have that data somewhere down the line.  (You can also include Solicitor in an Action Default Set, which can speed up the data entry process.)  We run reports on how many Actions are recorded each month for each of our fundraisers, and that Solicitor field is how we do that.  They each have a goal of a certain number of Actions of certain Types for each month.



 

Jesse Calagna

What do you mean by "You can also include Solicitor in an Action Default Set, which can speed up the data entry process"?

Aldera Chisholm

We always enter a solicitor on each action - it's open anyway and doesn't make more work. My exception is: I have a solicitor called Donor Relations. We use it for actions like mailed a Christmas card, where the solicitor themselves is less important to us than the fact it was done.  Sure, we could just leave solicitor blank for those, but we are trying to build the habit for everyone of entering all the info in each action.

Nicole S

I actually have made solicitor a required fields for our actions. It's good to know who did it or is assigned to do it.  Almost nothing happens magically.

Rachel Slager 2

We require an assignment and train people that in the case of actions, Solicitor just means who is in charge of the action, not necessarily who is going to ask for money.  We have admin staff who assign actions to other people, and by listing the solicitor that other person now sees outstanding referrals on their action dashboard.  Plus, when you do big reports of a person's activiites in a year, you can't pull actions they completed if their assistant is the one who created the action, not unless there is an assigned solicitor on the action.

 

Jen Claudy

Jesse Calagna:

What do you mean by "You can also include Solicitor in an Action Default Set, which can speed up the data entry process"?

When you have an Action Window open, go to the Action Menu > Load Defaults From > New > set the options you want > Save and Close >  check the box at the bottom [Load Default Values Now] > [OK].  Whatever values you selected will now be on the Action Record.  If you want to use the same Set, press Shift+F2, which will load the most recently used Set (affected if you have multiple Records open at once, on Gift & Constituent Records).  And if you want just the Default from one field, press F2 when you are in that field (again, the value from the most recently used Default Set).

Jenny Kleintop

Yes we use solicitor on Actions for almost everything.  The only Actions we do not are mass Actions like Event invites sent to a group of 5K folks.  You can run Action Summary and Detail reports by Solicitor, my folks them to see activity.