Campaigns, Appeals, Packages and Funds Coding

Rita Nicholson

Hello,


We are cleaning up our coding in Campaigns, Appeals, Packages, and Funds.   It has never been used consistently (unfortunately).    We are a Children's Health Foundation who fund three main Health Care Partners, plus an "Undesignated" fund.


What I am proposing is:  


Campaign = Health Care Partners (i.e. Hospital, Children's Research Centre, Children's Rehab Centre, Undesignated)

Appeal = Solicitation type (so, FTF, Signature Event, Direct Mail, Radiothon, etc)

Package= specific to the appeal (segmentation of DM program, etc)

Fund = Designation - which is tied to the Campaign, (so Cancer Research would be tied to the Children's Research Centre, if "General Fund" then that would be tied to "Undesignated")


I would track the giving level in the "Gift Code" field which would talk directly to our budget line, i.e.  Major Gift, Annual Gift, Signature Events, Legacy, Tribute, etc)


The one piece missing is the coding of the fund to the grant, I'm not sure how that would be done unless I re-create the funds to the grant bucket(s), or is this where we need the Grants Module.


Any alarm bells with the above?   Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!


Thanks Rita


 

JoAnn Strommen

Not sure exactly what you are desiring for coding fund to the grants, but you do still have the 'gift sub-type' field on every gift record that you can link to GL accounts or not.  We have a mix, some gift sub-types link to GL account, others are for informational purposes.


Everyone uses RE differently. Your C/F/A/P structure makes sense to me.


Don't know much about RE & Grants.

Tom Klimchak

I agree with everything JoAnn said: it looks pretty good from an outsider's perspective and, yeah, every organization will be unique.


If specific funds are tied to specific grants (I'm not entirely sure if I understand that, either) then you may want to simply change the Fund type, category or include an attribute on funds to designate the grant.  We have learned to use Fund Attributes pretty well, to the point where we can slice-and-dice our data in reports based on the gifts given to hundreds of different funds. 

Rita Nicholson:

Hello,


We are cleaning up our coding in Campaigns, Appeals, Packages, and Funds.   It has never been used consistently (unfortunately).    We are a Children's Health Foundation who fund three main Health Care Partners, plus an "Undesignated" fund.


What I am proposing is:  


Campaign = Health Care Partners (i.e. Hospital, Children's Research Centre, Children's Rehab Centre, Undesignated)

Appeal = Solicitation type (so, FTF, Signature Event, Direct Mail, Radiothon, etc)

Package= specific to the appeal (segmentation of DM program, etc)

Fund = Designation - which is tied to the Campaign, (so Cancer Research would be tied to the Children's Research Centre, if "General Fund" then that would be tied to "Undesignated")


I would track the giving level in the "Gift Code" field which would talk directly to our budget line, i.e.  Major Gift, Annual Gift, Signature Events, Legacy, Tribute, etc)


The one piece missing is the coding of the fund to the grant, I'm not sure how that would be done unless I re-create the funds to the grant bucket(s), or is this where we need the Grants Module.


Any alarm bells with the above?   Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!


Thanks Rita


 

 

Rita Nicholson

thanks Tom and JoAnne.


Here's an example of what I'm trying to do.   We want to track down to the grant level.   We have 38 grants across 3 health care partners.    So for instance:   Children's Hospital has 5 granting areas, Clinical Support, Patient & Family Assistance, Research, Education, and Equipment.   Within each area we have multiple grants, so for Clinical Support we have 3 different grants.    If a donor makes a major gift and wants to split the gift into multiple grants how could I do that.  Is it possible in RE?  How could attributes work for this example?   Really appreciate your help.


Donor A:

Amount:  $50,000

Campaign:  Children's Hospital

Appeal:  Personal FTF

Package: N/A

Gift Code:  Major Gift

Fund:  Split:  Clinical Support ($25,00) and Equipment ($25,000)

Grant:  Clinical Support, $12,500 to Mental Health, $12,500 to Mobile Applications for Mental Health

Grant:  Equipment - $25,000 to Special Beds.

*************************************************************************************************************************


Tom Klimchak:

I agree with everything JoAnn said: it looks pretty good from an outsider's perspective and, yeah, every organization will be unique.


If specific funds are tied to specific grants (I'm not entirely sure if I understand that, either) then you may want to simply change the Fund type, category or include an attribute on funds to designate the grant.  We have learned to use Fund Attributes pretty well, to the point where we can slice-and-dice our data in reports based on the gifts given to hundreds of different funds. 

Rita Nicholson:

Hello,


We are cleaning up our coding in Campaigns, Appeals, Packages, and Funds.   It has never been used consistently (unfortunately).    We are a Children's Health Foundation who fund three main Health Care Partners, plus an "Undesignated" fund.


What I am proposing is:  


Campaign = Health Care Partners (i.e. Hospital, Children's Research Centre, Children's Rehab Centre, Undesignated)

Appeal = Solicitation type (so, FTF, Signature Event, Direct Mail, Radiothon, etc)

Package= specific to the appeal (segmentation of DM program, etc)

Fund = Designation - which is tied to the Campaign, (so Cancer Research would be tied to the Children's Research Centre, if "General Fund" then that would be tied to "Undesignated")


I would track the giving level in the "Gift Code" field which would talk directly to our budget line, i.e.  Major Gift, Annual Gift, Signature Events, Legacy, Tribute, etc)


The one piece missing is the coding of the fund to the grant, I'm not sure how that would be done unless I re-create the funds to the grant bucket(s), or is this where we need the Grants Module.


Any alarm bells with the above?   Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!


Thanks Rita


 

 

 

 

Tom Klimchak

Rita, So, if I understand you correctly each Fund (Clinical Support) might have sub-components/grants that designate what the money is to be spent on (clinical support, mobil app, etc.)


Right?


In our organization we would probably do that with multiple funds (essentially what you said about tying funds to grant buckets)... So we might have something like this:

  Fund Name ("Grant" in your case) Fund Category or Type or Attribute ("Fund" in your case) Clinical Support-Mental Health Clinical Support Clinical Support-Mobile Applications for Mental Health Clinical Support Clinical Support-Mobile Applications for Diagnosis Clinical Support Equipment - Special Beds Equipment Equipment - Surgical Supplies Equipment

Fund ID

1000

1050

1100

2000

2050

 


This is what it might look like if you made a separate Fund record for each grant, and use the Fund Type field (or category or an attribute field) to designate the overall "fund" in your case.


Depending upon your situation you may need to also coordinate all this with your accounting office. 


That's how we would approach the problem, but I'm sure there are other clever solutions...

 

Rita Nicholson

AWESOME, thanks so much Tom.    I actually started down that path yesterday afternoon but didn't get very far.   This is great help and very much appreciated.


Rita




Tom Klimchak:

Rita, So, if I understand you correctly each Fund (Clinical Support) might have sub-components/grants that designate what the money is to be spent on (clinical support, mobil app, etc.)


Right?


In our organization we would probably do that with multiple funds (essentially what you said about tying funds to grant buckets)... So we might have something like this:

 

Fund Name ("Grant" in your case) Fund Category or Type or Attribute ("Fund" in your case) Clinical Support-Mental Health Clinical Support Clinical Support-Mobile Applications for Mental Health Clinical Support Clinical Support-Mobile Applications for Diagnosis Clinical Support Equipment - Special Beds Equipment Equipment - Surgical Supplies Equipment

Fund ID

1000

1050

1100

2000

2050

 


This is what it might look like if you made a separate Fund record for each grant, and use the Fund Type field (or category or an attribute field) to designate the overall "fund" in your case.


Depending upon your situation you may need to also coordinate all this with your accounting office. 


That's how we would approach the problem, but I'm sure there are other clever solutions...

 

 

 

Rita Nicholson

Rita Nicholson:     Just discovered an issue.   Donors are giving to Clinical Support or Equipment, not necessarily down to the actual grant level, we make the decision which grant to apply the funds to in some cases, so I'm wondering if I can reverse this, so the Fund ID = Clinical Support, and the category or type = Mental Health, or Mobile Applications, but the issue with this is it's one-to-one, one fund to one category.  I can't choose which grant the actual donation gets applied to.

 

AWESOME, thanks so much Tom.    I actually started down that path yesterday afternoon but didn't get very far.   This is great help and very much appreciated.


Rita




Tom Klimchak:

Rita, So, if I understand you correctly each Fund (Clinical Support) might have sub-components/grants that designate what the money is to be spent on (clinical support, mobil app, etc.)


Right?


In our organization we would probably do that with multiple funds (essentially what you said about tying funds to grant buckets)... So we might have something like this:

 

Fund Name ("Grant" in your case) Fund Category or Type or Attribute ("Fund" in your case) Clinical Support-Mental Health Clinical Support Clinical Support-Mobile Applications for Mental Health Clinical Support Clinical Support-Mobile Applications for Diagnosis Clinical Support Equipment - Special Beds Equipment Equipment - Surgical Supplies Equipment

Fund ID

1000

1050

1100

2000

2050

 


This is what it might look like if you made a separate Fund record for each grant, and use the Fund Type field (or category or an attribute field) to designate the overall "fund" in your case.


Depending upon your situation you may need to also coordinate all this with your accounting office. 


That's how we would approach the problem, but I'm sure there are other clever solutions...

 

 

 

 

 

Tom Klimchak

Hmm... You have a a couple options (I think):


1. You could create general funds (Clinical Support, Equipment, Etc) and just track the "grant" for each gift in a Gift Attribute.  So the overall Fund would just be Clinical Support, but each and every gift to Clinical Support would have to have an attribute assigned to it showing the Grant area.  That seems pretty straight-forward in my mind. 


2. You could stick with the example I gave and just have a "Clinical Support - General" fund for things that don't go to specific grants.  If you have someone who gave $50,000 to two grants you could list the Fund CATEGORY on the acknowledgement letters and the donor would see "Clinical Support" but in your records it would be Clinical Support - Mental Health" and "Clinical Support - Mobile Apps"....


I don't know if you split gifts (use one gift with multiple funds) or do single gift records (two gift records, one for each designation) at your shop.  This all might work a little better if you did NOT split gifts. 


Not sure if that helps or just makes things trickier


 

Rita Nicholson:

Hello,


We are cleaning up our coding in Campaigns, Appeals, Packages, and Funds.   It has never been used consistently (unfortunately).    We are a Children's Health Foundation who fund three main Health Care Partners, plus an "Undesignated" fund.


What I am proposing is:  


Campaign = Health Care Partners (i.e. Hospital, Children's Research Centre, Children's Rehab Centre, Undesignated)

Appeal = Solicitation type (so, FTF, Signature Event, Direct Mail, Radiothon, etc)

Package= specific to the appeal (segmentation of DM program, etc)

Fund = Designation - which is tied to the Campaign, (so Cancer Research would be tied to the Children's Research Centre, if "General Fund" then that would be tied to "Undesignated")


I would track the giving level in the "Gift Code" field which would talk directly to our budget line, i.e.  Major Gift, Annual Gift, Signature Events, Legacy, Tribute, etc)


The one piece missing is the coding of the fund to the grant, I'm not sure how that would be done unless I re-create the funds to the grant bucket(s), or is this where we need the Grants Module.


Any alarm bells with the above?   Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!


Thanks Rita


 

 

Rita Nicholson

Rita Nicholson:    funny, I just me with our director of finance and we discussed your option 1 as the way to go.    Question:  I dont' usually do split gifts, never worked in the other software I used, but I'm new to Raiser's Edge.   What are the downfalls to splitting gifts, other than duplicates in reporting.  I've been using the giftsplit table amount which actually splits the total amount donated, which seems to solve the duplication issue.   Is there another issue I should be aware of?


 

 

Rita Nicholson:     Just discovered an issue.   Donors are giving to Clinical Support or Equipment, not necessarily down to the actual grant level, we make the decision which grant to apply the funds to in some cases, so I'm wondering if I can reverse this, so the Fund ID = Clinical Support, and the category or type = Mental Health, or Mobile Applications, but the issue with this is it's one-to-one, one fund to one category.  I can't choose which grant the actual donation gets applied to.

 

AWESOME, thanks so much Tom.    I actually started down that path yesterday afternoon but didn't get very far.   This is great help and very much appreciated.


Rita




Tom Klimchak:

Rita, So, if I understand you correctly each Fund (Clinical Support) might have sub-components/grants that designate what the money is to be spent on (clinical support, mobil app, etc.)


Right?


In our organization we would probably do that with multiple funds (essentially what you said about tying funds to grant buckets)... So we might have something like this:

 

Fund Name ("Grant" in your case) Fund Category or Type or Attribute ("Fund" in your case) Clinical Support-Mental Health Clinical Support Clinical Support-Mobile Applications for Mental Health Clinical Support Clinical Support-Mobile Applications for Diagnosis Clinical Support Equipment - Special Beds Equipment Equipment - Surgical Supplies Equipment

Fund ID

1000

1050

1100

2000

2050

 


This is what it might look like if you made a separate Fund record for each grant, and use the Fund Type field (or category or an attribute field) to designate the overall "fund" in your case.


Depending upon your situation you may need to also coordinate all this with your accounting office. 


That's how we would approach the problem, but I'm sure there are other clever solutions...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gina Smith 2

Rita Nicholson:

Rita Nicholson:    funny, I just me with our director of finance and we discussed your option 1 as the way to go.    Question:  I dont' usually do split gifts, never worked in the other software I used, but I'm new to Raiser's Edge.   What are the downfalls to splitting gifts, other than duplicates in reporting.  I've been using the giftsplit table amount which actually splits the total amount donated, which seems to solve the duplication issue.   Is there another issue I should be aware of?


 

 

Rita Nicholson:     Just discovered an issue.   Donors are giving to Clinical Support or Equipment, not necessarily down to the actual grant level, we make the decision which grant to apply the funds to in some cases, so I'm wondering if I can reverse this, so the Fund ID = Clinical Support, and the category or type = Mental Health, or Mobile Applications, but the issue with this is it's one-to-one, one fund to one category.  I can't choose which grant the actual donation gets applied to.

 

AWESOME, thanks so much Tom.    I actually started down that path yesterday afternoon but didn't get very far.   This is great help and very much appreciated.


Rita




Tom Klimchak:

Rita, So, if I understand you correctly each Fund (Clinical Support) might have sub-components/grants that designate what the money is to be spent on (clinical support, mobil app, etc.)


Right?


In our organization we would probably do that with multiple funds (essentially what you said about tying funds to grant buckets)... So we might have something like this:

 

Fund Name ("Grant" in your case) Fund Category or Type or Attribute ("Fund" in your case) Clinical Support-Mental Health Clinical Support Clinical Support-Mobile Applications for Mental Health Clinical Support Clinical Support-Mobile Applications for Diagnosis Clinical Support Equipment - Special Beds Equipment Equipment - Surgical Supplies Equipment

Fund ID

1000

1050

1100

2000

2050

 


This is what it might look like if you made a separate Fund record for each grant, and use the Fund Type field (or category or an attribute field) to designate the overall "fund" in your case.


Depending upon your situation you may need to also coordinate all this with your accounting office. 


That's how we would approach the problem, but I'm sure there are other clever solutions...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rita - I am using split gifts when it applies.  The main thing I had to adjust in reporting was to be sure to use the  output field "Fund Split Amount" found in the funds section of queires/exports in order to get the correct amount when exporting gift amounts.  If you use the "gift amount" for a split gift - it will show the FULL GIFT AMOUNT in the output field.  If you use "fund split amount" in the output, it will show the appropriate amount for split and non-split gifts.  This works well in RE database view well - not sure about RE NXT analysis since I haven't tried that yet. 

 

JoAnn Strommen

As Gina said you need to remember to use different output field for correct reporting.  Not sure if it's an option for all canned reports. 


Where splits gets messy is if it's a pledge for split gift/multiple funds and you want to apply gift to certain fund.  RE will automatically spread percentages to all the funds recorded in the pledge.  I found it also messed up a report of anticipated revenue prepared for our auditors.  We choose not to use the split gift option.


My 2 cents....