Add Peer-to-Peer Participant Fundraiser as a Solicitor for the gift?

Jill Freidmutter

Hi all! I have a few related questions.


Background: We've had a successful annual peer-to-peer fundraiser for 13 years. For the first 8 we entered the gifts as tributes in RE, "in support of Jill's swim". Then we used Sphere/Kintera for 5 years. During this time the donations pulled through the connector and are in the donor's record, but they are not linked to the swimmer who they supported. We only have the link between donation and swimmer in Sphere. I would like to migrate the info from Sphere into Raisers Edge and am considering adding the swimmer as a solicitor of the gift.


1. I haven't used solicitors before, so my apologies if my questions seem obvious. After I add the solicitor to the gift and save the gift, I am being asked "One or more of the solicitors you have entered on this gift do not exist on the constituent's record as assigned solicitors. Would you like to add those solicitors to the constituent's record as assigned solicitors now?" Since I have probably given to more than 50 swimmers over the years, I think I want to say no, because I don't want 50 solicitors in my record or other donors' records. If I say no, I can still link the solicitor to the gift. What do you think about this approach? What am I giving up in the way of queries, reports or other functionality? What other suggestions or comments do you have?


2. I understand that TeamRaiser links peer-to-peer participants/fundraisers as solicitors. Is anyone out there doing this? Would you be able to tell me how it's done through TeamRaiser?


3. I created a solicitor type "WS Participant", but I can only add the solicitor type if I say "yes" to the question "Would you like to add those solicitors to the constituent's record as assigned solicitors now?" and make the swimmer/solicitor and assigned solicitor. Then it is added to the solicitor relationship in the donor record.


4. If I decide to add swimmers as solicitors, is there a way to group them so they are not in the mix as solicitors when we start a capital campaign? 


Thank you so much for your suggestions.    

Elaine Tucker

1. "One or more of the solicitors you have entered on this gift do not exist on the constituent's record as assigned solicitors. Would you like to add those solicitors to the constituent's record as assigned solicitors now?"   - this will add the solicitor as a relationship on the donor record under solicitors. I would NOT add them as an assigned solicitor because then they would be the default solicitor on any new gift that comes in from the donor.

2. We do not use team Raiser

3./4  -If you do decide to add them as an assigned solictor, you can exclude them if you have coded ALL of them as WS Participant Solicitor

Ryan Hyde

I struggled with this mightily last year, and we have virtually the exact same situation as you have (Kintera gifts, peer-to-peer). I tried for a while to make a solicitor stystem work. I did decide at one point to start adding these folks as assigned solicitors, but that way lay only madness. Our former DBA had decided to set all of these gifts up as soft credits, but as you might know, having tons of soft credits can cause some major complications when trying to do certain kinds of reports and queries, and I couldn't tolerate how difficult it was to clean up that mess every time I ran said reports and queries. 


I finally decided on a totally different solution to get this data to represent itself in a meaningful way in RE. Each participant now has an honor/memorial type that represents their year (e.g., Thon2015). Every gift that was brought in by that participant gets added to that tribute. This is a much cleaner way to represent the data in RE. 


I managed to reach back in time and globally put these gifts where they belong through a series of imports. It was a big undertaking, but I now have about 4 years of data in this format, which is enough for me - I don't feel the need to report on this stuff from the beginning of time. 


Honestly, I can't give you a step-by-step on how I did this. It's been a while, and I know a lot more now than I did then, so I would probably do it differently right now anyway. I'd say, start with making sure you understand how to update existing gifts so as to add a tribute to them via import. Then figure out a way to match up all of your gifts to the right people, and then line everything up in a .csv file and get your import cranking.

Melissa S Graves

Is there any reason why you can't go super simple and use appeal and package. Appeal = *Thon2016 Package = swimmer name.


Yes - there would not be a link to the swimmer but how necessary is that. I think the simplicity of appeal and package make reporting much easier.

Melissa S Graves

Elaine Tucker:

1. "One or more of the solicitors you have entered on this gift do not exist on the constituent's record as assigned solicitors. Would you like to add those solicitors to the constituent's record as assigned solicitors now?"   - this will add the solicitor as a relationship on the donor record under solicitors. I would NOT add them as an assigned solicitor because then they would be the default solicitor on any new gift that comes in from the donor.

2. We do not use team Raiser

3./4  -If you do decide to add them as an assigned solictor, you can exclude them if you have coded ALL of them as WS Participant Solicitor

To add to this - If they are an active assigned solicitor (with no end date) they could be automatically added to future gifts (which you likely do not want. If you choose to add them as assignments, be sure to add end dates and/or if you use a particular campaign or fund for your thon you can also add that to the relationship and then they will only be added to gifts matching that campaign or fund (while the relationship is active - i.e. no end date or before end date).


I am not sure I would advocate for adding them all as solicitors - just adding some info to help in your planning if you decide to go this route.

Ryan Hyde

Melissa Graves:

Is there any reason why you can't go super simple and use appeal and package. Appeal = *Thon2016 Package = swimmer name.


Yes - there would not be a link to the swimmer but how necessary is that. I think the simplicity of appeal and package make reporting much easier.

This makes meaningingful reporting pretty difficult. Also, in my particular usage case, the package is already being utilized to indicate the type of event participation (run vs. walk, for instance). 

Amy Dana

I do this with our athletic team fundraisers - add the athlete as a solicitor for the gift but say no when asked if I want to add them as an assigned solicitor.


When it comes to reporting, there are two ways to do it - you can report on all those constituents assigned to a specific solicitor or you can report on the gift solicitor. I use the Solicitor Perfomance Analsys report under Analytical Reports for this. I have Queries set up for athletes (we track team participation with a Consitutent Attribute) and on the report I use that Query to specify the solicitors.


There is a way in Sphere to have the gift import with the athlete as the gift solicitor (although I don't remember how we did it). I know TR does the same but we haven't fully transitioned so I'm not sure exactly how that works. If you are staying with Sphere, contact support and see if they can walk you through the solicitor peice. 


As for the capital campaign, you exclude all the athletes by setting up queries with just the MGOs/Capital fundraisers as Solicitors.

Jill Freidmutter

Ryan Hyde:

I struggled with this mightily last year, and we have virtually the exact same situation as you have (Kintera gifts, peer-to-peer). I tried for a while to make a solicitor stystem work. I did decide at one point to start adding these folks as assigned solicitors, but that way lay only madness. Our former DBA had decided to set all of these gifts up as soft credits, but as you might know, having tons of soft credits can cause some major complications when trying to do certain kinds of reports and queries, and I couldn't tolerate how difficult it was to clean up that mess every time I ran said reports and queries. 


I finally decided on a totally different solution to get this data to represent itself in a meaningful way in RE. Each participant now has an honor/memorial type that represents their year (e.g., Thon2015). Every gift that was brought in by that participant gets added to that tribute. This is a much cleaner way to represent the data in RE. 


I managed to reach back in time and globally put these gifts where they belong through a series of imports. It was a big undertaking, but I now have about 4 years of data in this format, which is enough for me - I don't feel the need to report on this stuff from the beginning of time. 


Honestly, I can't give you a step-by-step on how I did this. It's been a while, and I know a lot more now than I did then, so I would probably do it differently right now anyway. I'd say, start with making sure you understand how to update existing gifts so as to add a tribute to them via import. Then figure out a way to match up all of your gifts to the right people, and then line everything up in a .csv file and get your import cranking.

Hi Mark,


Thank you so much for your response. I would love to talk more with you about your process. Would you be willing to talk with me a bit more off-line? I've added my email to the end of this message.


You say that you tried the solicitor solution, but that way led to madness. What kind of madness?


The solution that you landed on is the original one that we did. I was planning to recreate it for the Sphere/Kinterathon gifts by creating a tribute for each participant, like you did. It would be easy enough for me to gather the Constituent IDs for the ~300 swimmers for each year and import or globally create a tribute record on each, but customer support said it wasn't possible, and that I'd have to go into each swimmer's record and generate the tributes one by one. Is that what you did?


I would greatly appreciate benefiting from your experience. 


warm regards, Jill

jfreidmutter@hospicare.org

Jill Freidmutter

Thank you Elaine, Ryan, Melissa and Amy! You've given me a lot to think about. Your experience is valuable to me. Customer Support only goes so far...

Ryan Hyde

Jill Freidmutter:

Ryan Hyde:

I struggled with this mightily last year, and we have virtually the exact same situation as you have (Kintera gifts, peer-to-peer). I tried for a while to make a solicitor stystem work. I did decide at one point to start adding these folks as assigned solicitors, but that way lay only madness. Our former DBA had decided to set all of these gifts up as soft credits, but as you might know, having tons of soft credits can cause some major complications when trying to do certain kinds of reports and queries, and I couldn't tolerate how difficult it was to clean up that mess every time I ran said reports and queries. 


I finally decided on a totally different solution to get this data to represent itself in a meaningful way in RE. Each participant now has an honor/memorial type that represents their year (e.g., Thon2015). Every gift that was brought in by that participant gets added to that tribute. This is a much cleaner way to represent the data in RE. 


I managed to reach back in time and globally put these gifts where they belong through a series of imports. It was a big undertaking, but I now have about 4 years of data in this format, which is enough for me - I don't feel the need to report on this stuff from the beginning of time. 


Honestly, I can't give you a step-by-step on how I did this. It's been a while, and I know a lot more now than I did then, so I would probably do it differently right now anyway. I'd say, start with making sure you understand how to update existing gifts so as to add a tribute to them via import. Then figure out a way to match up all of your gifts to the right people, and then line everything up in a .csv file and get your import cranking.

Hi Mark Ryan,


Thank you so much for your response. I would love to talk more with you about your process. Would you be willing to talk with me a bit more off-line? I've added my email to the end of this message.


You say that you tried the solicitor solution, but that way led to madness. What kind of madness?


The solution that you landed on is the original one that we did. I was planning to recreate it for the Sphere/Kinterathon gifts by creating a tribute for each participant, like you did. It would be easy enough for me to gather the Constituent IDs for the ~300 swimmers for each year and import or globally create a tribute record on each, but customer support said it wasn't possible, and that I'd have to go into each swimmer's record and generate the tributes one by one. Is that what you did?


I would greatly appreciate benefiting from your experience. 


warm regards, Jill

jfreidmutter@hospicare.org

 

Note to other readers: most of my response was via email. If anyone else wants instructions, pipe up and I'll write them here.


The "this way lay only madness" remark refers to two things. 


1.) There are just so many clicks involved with this! Whether you add the gift solicitor as an assigned solicitor or not, the process is just very very clicky. When dealing with large numbers of records, repetitive stress injuries are almost guaranteed.


2.) If you do go ahead and assign solicitors (as I did for a while; type = "Peer Solicitor"), it just results in some pretty mess records. And I mean your participants' records specifically. All of those new assigned solicitor relationships are going to show up in their relationship tab, and that could cause confusion later if one of those people ends up being solicited by one of your major gift solicitors. However, some people may see the population of relationships as a positive thing. You could do some data mining this as years progress, but the clutter it causes may not be worth it.


Adding tributes to gifts as they come in does result in a number of clicks as well, but since you're not sending tribute acknowledgements for them, it's really not so bad or as slow, at least in my opinion.

Jill Freidmutter

Thanks Ryan! I have a few more questions, if you're willing...

1. ​I'm thinking of importing the links between "solicitors" and "gifts", which would mean fewer clicks. Would that make a difference in your assessment of using a solicitor pathway to record peer-to-peer gifts?
2. Have you experimented with adding the solicitor to the gift but not as assigned solicitor?
3. When you created your tribute records, did you have to create each one individually, or did you find a way to globally add, or import them in bulk? 

Ryan Hyde

Jill Freidmutter:

Thanks Ryan! I have a few more questions, if you're willing...

1. ​I'm thinking of importing the links between "solicitors" and "gifts", which would mean fewer clicks. Would that make a difference in your assessment of using a solicitor pathway to record peer-to-peer gifts?
2. Have you experimented with adding the solicitor to the gift but not as assigned solicitor?
3. When you created your tribute records, did you have to create each one individually, or did you find a way to globally add, or import them in bulk? 

 

To clarify one thing, we moved from Sphere to Luminate last year, so I'm having to reach back into my memory a little bit here, so keep that in mind as I respond to your points.


1.) If you're talking about adding that link via import, then that would reduce labor greatly. Of course you're still going to need to set up a system to match each gift to the specific solicitor import ID (which is what you need to use to import a gift solicitor onto a gift record), but that shouldn't be terribly difficult. This would work best if you were doing everything after the event is over with, though even if you were doing a daily routine, it would be far fewer clicks and far speedier to do this type of job via import.


2.) I did experiment with this briefly, but again, I was doing this gift-by-gift in batch, and that was too labor intensive. I'm liking your import idea. Had I been comfortable with import two years ago, my point of view may be totally different on this topic.


3.) I thought I covered that part in my email to you, but maybe not. In any event, you can globally add tributes to participant records via Global Change pretty easily. Then you can export the tribute IDs for each participant and sync that up to the appropriate gift records (which you would have to export separately) and import that much in the same way you would import gift solicitors (obviously using different variables, but the idea is the same). There's a KB article about that which should help: https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/74927


Keep the questions coming! If you come up with a better, more streamlined method from this conversation, I'd love to see it. 

Jill Freidmutter

Amy Dana:

I do this with our athletic team fundraisers - add the athlete as a solicitor for the gift but say no when asked if I want to add them as an assigned solicitor.


When it comes to reporting, there are two ways to do it - you can report on all those constituents assigned to a specific solicitor or you can report on the gift solicitor. I use the Solicitor Perfomance Analsys report under Analytical Reports for this. I have Queries set up for athletes (we track team participation with a Consitutent Attribute) and on the report I use that Query to specify the solicitors.


There is a way in Sphere to have the gift import with the athlete as the gift solicitor (although I don't remember how we did it). I know TR does the same but we haven't fully transitioned so I'm not sure exactly how that works. If you are staying with Sphere, contact support and see if they can walk you through the solicitor peice. 


As for the capital campaign, you exclude all the athletes by setting up queries with just the MGOs/Capital fundraisers as Solicitors.

Thanks Amy! This is helpful. I wish the Sphere folks would have found that solution for us in the four years I have tried to find a solution, with many questions to customer support!!! Or that I had asked the Community earlier...


What do you mean when you say that you exclude athletes by setting up queries with must MGOs/Capital fundraisers as Solicitors? Is there a way to set up a type of solicitor that is not in the relationship with the donor? Or do you have a constituent code for Capital fundraiser?


gratefully, Jill

Ian Knauer

Ryan Hyde:

Jill Freidmutter:

Ryan Hyde:

I struggled with this mightily last year, and we have virtually the exact same situation as you have (Kintera gifts, peer-to-peer). I tried for a while to make a solicitor stystem work. I did decide at one point to start adding these folks as assigned solicitors, but that way lay only madness. Our former DBA had decided to set all of these gifts up as soft credits, but as you might know, having tons of soft credits can cause some major complications when trying to do certain kinds of reports and queries, and I couldn't tolerate how difficult it was to clean up that mess every time I ran said reports and queries. 


I finally decided on a totally different solution to get this data to represent itself in a meaningful way in RE. Each participant now has an honor/memorial type that represents their year (e.g., Thon2015). Every gift that was brought in by that participant gets added to that tribute. This is a much cleaner way to represent the data in RE. 


I managed to reach back in time and globally put these gifts where they belong through a series of imports. It was a big undertaking, but I now have about 4 years of data in this format, which is enough for me - I don't feel the need to report on this stuff from the beginning of time. 


Honestly, I can't give you a step-by-step on how I did this. It's been a while, and I know a lot more now than I did then, so I would probably do it differently right now anyway. I'd say, start with making sure you understand how to update existing gifts so as to add a tribute to them via import. Then figure out a way to match up all of your gifts to the right people, and then line everything up in a .csv file and get your import cranking.

Hi Mark Ryan,


Thank you so much for your response. I would love to talk more with you about your process. Would you be willing to talk with me a bit more off-line? I've added my email to the end of this message.


You say that you tried the solicitor solution, but that way led to madness. What kind of madness?


The solution that you landed on is the original one that we did. I was planning to recreate it for the Sphere/Kinterathon gifts by creating a tribute for each participant, like you did. It would be easy enough for me to gather the Constituent IDs for the ~300 swimmers for each year and import or globally create a tribute record on each, but customer support said it wasn't possible, and that I'd have to go into each swimmer's record and generate the tributes one by one. Is that what you did?


I would greatly appreciate benefiting from your experience. 


warm regards, Jill

jfreidmutter@hospicare.org

 

Note to other readers: most of my response was via email. If anyone else wants instructions, pipe up and I'll write them here.


The "this way lay only madness" remark refers to two things. 


1.) There are just so many clicks involved with this! Whether you add the gift solicitor as an assigned solicitor or not, the process is just very very clicky. When dealing with large numbers of records, repetitive stress injuries are almost guaranteed.


2.) If you do go ahead and assign solicitors (as I did for a while; type = "Peer Solicitor"), it just results in some pretty mess records. And I mean your participants' records specifically. All of those new assigned solicitor relationships are going to show up in their relationship tab, and that could cause confusion later if one of those people ends up being solicited by one of your major gift solicitors. However, some people may see the population of relationships as a positive thing. You could do some data mining this as years progress, but the clutter it causes may not be worth it.


Adding tributes to gifts as they come in does result in a number of clicks as well, but since you're not sending tribute acknowledgements for them, it's really not so bad or as slow, at least in my opinion.

 

I'm wanting to do exactly what you described here, is there any chance you could post what you did as a reply? We're already using the honour/memorial to track "collected by" for 3rd party events, but i'm having troubles figuring out how to get the reports i need out of Luminate and make the necessary changes in RE.

Christine Cooke 2

Elaine Tucker:

1. "One or more of the solicitors you have entered on this gift do not exist on the constituent's record as assigned solicitors. Would you like to add those solicitors to the constituent's record as assigned solicitors now?"   - this will add the solicitor as a relationship on the donor record under solicitors. I would NOT add them as an assigned solicitor because then they would be the default solicitor on any new gift that comes in from the donor.

2. We do not use team Raiser

3./4  -If you do decide to add them as an assigned solictor, you can exclude them if you have coded ALL of them as WS Participant Solicitor

A followup comment on the One or more solicitors question and answer.  You could add them all as assigned solicitors under relationship tab, utiliize the Year(s) to and from for whatever year the gifts were recorded.  Then after your migration is complete, you Uncheck the Is a Solicitor box on Bio 1, that makes them inactive.  And answer to number 3 also applies and/or gives you an additional filter.

Joy park

What about soft-crediting the runner/walker/swimmer/Ice Bucket Dumper  ;) to the individual's gift?  We don't hold many "-thon" events but we just link the Gift as "other donation" to an Event record, soft-credit the Participant and that's that.  Then you can pull Soft Credit Recipient or the Reference Notes to figure out who's who....