Ideas for managing sustaining donors

Patrick Hansen

Just got some great questions from Katie at Free the Kids on managing sustaining donors in Convio:

- that thread references Report Writer, which most Go! clients don't have enabled initially.  Report Writer is an advanced reporting tool in Convio; if you take the online training on Report Writer and decide it's something you'd like to try using, just let your Go! Program lead know and we can enable Report Writer for you.)

But ... that's an aside.  You'll want to use Convio's Query tool to create the groups you need.  You can then set these groups to rebuild themselves and automate messages to the group, or you can manually rebuild and the group and periodically send messages reminding them to update their credit card info and/or renew their gift.

As an example:

1. Go to Data Management > Query
2. From the list of Queries set up on your site, click "Create a new Query"
3. Give your query a name and description and click "Next"
4. Now, choose "Sustained Giving Information" as your field type, and "Status" as your field, then click "Add Field Clause"
5. In the pop-up box that appears, choose "equals ... Current Sustaining Donor", click "Save"
   
6. Now, choose "Sustianed Giving Information" as your field type, and "Card Expiration Date" as your field, then click "Add Field Clause"
7. In the pop-up box that appears, choose "equals" and "Relative - 30 day or days prior to Today", click "Save"
   
8. In the query tool, if you see an "OR", highlight that line and click the "And" button.
9. Click "Save Query", then "Run Query"
10. Once you have the results of the query, you can click "Use Query" to add these constituents to a group or to create a dynamic group that rebuilds itself daily or month if you'd like to automate daily reminder messages to individuals whose credit card will expire in 30 days.

You can follow these same steps to query off other sustaining gift fields.  I've created a query in your admin tools called "Sustaining Donors - 30 days to Expiration" as an example.

For anyone else browsing this thread, if you don't have access to the Convio Query tool yet, ask your Convio Go! lead about it in office hours or watch the online training and post back to request access.

-patrick

Meredith Fay

I tried building the query as discussed in your example, but I don't have the option for "Sustained Giving Information" as a field type. I looked at the Query training and that didn't appear to be an available field type mentioned in the training either. I definitely have access to the basic Query tool, but does that particular field type require additional permissions to access?

Thanks!

Rachael Ahrens

Meredith Fay:

I tried building the query as discussed in your example, but I don't have the option for "Sustained Giving Information" as a field type. I looked at the Query training and that didn't appear to be an available field type mentioned in the training either. I definitely have access to the basic Query tool, but does that particular field type require additional permissions to access?

Thanks!

Hi Meredith,

Strange! For some reason, these fields were turned off in your database. It wouldn't have affected who could be a sustained donor, but you just couldn't see those fields. I think I have it fixed now. Log out as an admin and then back in and you should see it.

Thanks for your patience!

rachael