Campaign Structure

Lawrence Rush

My organization is trying to determine the best method for tracking campaigns. We currently have ongoing, static campaigns that span years and are assoicated with dynamic appeals (coded by year) and static funds. What are the advantages/disadvantages to this system as opposed to tracking campaigns by year? Is there a way to track campaign goals by year while maintaining ongoing campaigns? 

JoAnn Strommen

Is your current structure working for you?  If not, why?  Our structure is similar and it is working for our needs. Is there a reason you are looking at changing?


I don't believe there is any way to track a campaign goal by year for an ongoing campaign.  You would have to adjust the goal each year and it would reflect all gifts to the campaign unless filtered by date.  


Our campaigns also span years.  Goals/reporting is generally based on the fund which is year specific (fund raising initiatives, not necessarily calendar or fiscal year)

Lawrence Rush

It's working for us, but as we move forward being able to easily visualize yearly campaign performance is a big motivating factor to make the switch. Without tracking campaigns by year, I can't figure out a way to have the system automatically make this analysis. Part of the driving force is reporting available in NXT. We could easily visualize yearly campaign performance while simultaneously visualizing our goals for those respective years if we tracked on a yearly basis.


I should note that our fiscal year ends in Nov. I'm not sure how much of a factor this actually plays. Overall, I'm a little hesitant to generate these comparison reports based on gift date ranges. 

Stephanie Crawley

Lawrence Willim:

It's working for us, but as we move forward being able to easily visualize yearly campaign performance is a big motivating factor to make the switch. Without tracking campaigns by year, I can't figure out a way to have the system automatically make this analysis. Part of the driving force is reporting available in NXT. We could easily visualize yearly campaign performance while simultaneously visualizing our goals for those respective years if we tracked on a yearly basis.


I should note that our fiscal year ends in Nov. I'm not sure how much of a factor this actually plays. Overall, I'm a little hesitant to generate these comparison reports based on gift date ranges. 

At our organization, our Appeal year does not line up with Calendar year, nor with Fiscal year, so we have to go with date ranges when generating reports, and over the years they have seemed to continue to work well.  We aren't using RE NXT, though, so I can't address that piece of it for you.