Tracking Major Donors

Eleonore Buet

Hi all-


I wanted to get the community's feedback on how they track major donors with RE. We have a group of about 75 people that we have decided to classify as Major Donors. I want to designate them as such, and then be able to easily pull data on them as a group, track where they are in the cultivation process,i.e., create actions for them, etc...


I just wanted to get some feedback on how other people are using RE to do this, what works, what are some of the things to watch out for?


Thanks!!

Grace Tate

Eleonore Buet:

Hi all-


I wanted to get the community's feedback on how they track major donors with RE. We have a group of about 75 people that we have decided to classify as Major Donors. I want to designate them as such, and then be able to easily pull data on them as a group, track where they are in the cultivation process,i.e., create actions for them, etc...


I just wanted to get some feedback on how other people are using RE to do this, what works, what are some of the things to watch out for?


Thanks!!

Hi Eleonore,


This is a great question. There are lots of different ways to track your major donors from within the Raiser's Edge. The two ways I most commonly see are either by using Consituency Code or Attributes. You will be able to query on either to make it easy to report and export information for this group of individuals. The most important thing is be consistent. I've included a few resources below about both options that may help you make an informed decision on how to proceed.

What are constituent codes and how best to use them? https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/37425

What is an attribute? https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/44156
When to use a constituent code vs. an attribute: https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/45047


Hope this helps!


- Grace

JoAnn Strommen

We use an attribute for this purpose.  Primary reasons we chose attribute over constituent code were: 1. keeping constituent code list clean and manageable. 2. Due to interests they may be a major donor for annual but not for capital campaigns.  Attributes allow us to have an attribute for each with different info.  (Our attribute description field data is all pulled from tables for consistency and ease in pulling/filtering.)

Patti Posey

Grace Tate:

 

Eleonore Buet:

Hi all-


I wanted to get the community's feedback on how they track major donors with RE. We have a group of about 75 people that we have decided to classify as Major Donors. I want to designate them as such, and then be able to easily pull data on them as a group, track where they are in the cultivation process,i.e., create actions for them, etc...


I just wanted to get some feedback on how other people are using RE to do this, what works, what are some of the things to watch out for?


Thanks!!

Hi Eleonore,


This is a great question. There are lots of different ways to track your major donors from within the Raiser's Edge. The two ways I most commonly see are either by using Consituency Code or Attributes. You will be able to query on either to make it easy to report and export information for this group of individuals. The most important thing is be consistent. I've included a few resources below about both options that may help you make an informed decision on how to proceed.

What are constituent codes and how best to use them? https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/37425

What is an attribute? https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/44156
When to use a constituent code vs. an attribute: https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/45047


Hope this helps!


- Grace

If you have the prospect module, that is the best place to track major donors.  In prospect tab, we use the general tab Assignment: Major Donor, Campaign Donor, etc. and Prospect Status: Quilify, Cultivate, Solicit, Close, Steward, Decline.  We use the proposal when they are being cultivated and track all meetings, calls, etc in actions within the proposal.  We also use the Rating for wealth screening.  I don't recommend using constituent codes.  I feel those should be used only for specific groups of people i.e. individual, staff, corporation, organization, matching gift company, board member.  If you don't have the prospect tab your best bet would be attributes, setting up a category Prospects and description major donor, annual fund donor, special events sponsor, etc.  It would be easy to query on the attribute and description.


Hope this helps.

 

 

Ryan Hyde

We use the system Patti indicated more or less, and we also assign solicitors to anyone identified as major gift prospect. So depending on how granularly I want to make my report (All MG donors? All MG Donors & Prospects?) I can query this group in a couple of different ways, either by the prospect info or by simply whether or not a person has an MG solicitor assigned (query looks like "Relationship - assigned solicitor is one of specific record: Solicitor1, Solicitor2...")

Christine Cooke 2

Eleonore Buet:

Hi all-


I wanted to get the community's feedback on how they track major donors with RE. We have a group of about 75 people that we have decided to classify as Major Donors. I want to designate them as such, and then be able to easily pull data on them as a group, track where they are in the cultivation process,i.e., create actions for them, etc...


I just wanted to get some feedback on how other people are using RE to do this, what works, what are some of the things to watch out for?


Thanks!!

Do you have the Prospect Module?  If so I would utilize that to tag them as Major Donors.  If not, my suggestion is an Action.  I know a lot of peeps are probably going to suggest an attribute, but you cannot add as much info there, and I do not like to muddy up Attributes with that sort of info that really should be more date and Fund/Campaign driven and tagged as such.

Eleonore Buet

Thanks, everyone! This has been really helpful.


I don't believe we have the Prospect Module, but I did just see that the Scoring link at the bottom of the record is live, so I am looking into what that is all about.


Does anyone use the Solicit Codes for prospects, or do you use it more for Do Not Contact type of stuff?

JoAnn Strommen

Don't know if anyone uses solicit codes to code prospects, but if they do don't think it's many.  It is used more as you said for the 'no contact' type. 


If you are referencing the giving score field at bottom of records, it means that someone at your org ran the giving score option with Blackbaud and results were returned for individuals with street addresses.  We have hundreds of records that received no score as they are businesses or PO addresses.  We have one small community where everyone uses a PO box so no scores for the whole community.  If you're looking at the field for the prospect info you can only use the 4 default scores.  Don't think it's a good option for what you need.

Gracie Schild

As you suspected, lots of people will respond to say that Attributes are the way to go. I have to disagree with Christine - I think Actions should record an actual action or touch, and Attributes should describe or label the Constituent.  If that person is a major donor, then the easiest way to check on your activity with them (Actions or Appeals) or their giving or whatever it might be is to group them.  We have a couple of Attributes that we use. The President's Circle Attribute tells us that they are already a major donor by our definition.  We use that designation for all kinds of other things - mailings, invitations, recognition, annual summaries - basically everything related to the higher level of stewardship. The date is the "expiration" based on the fiscal year in which they gave at the level that got them into the President's Circle, and the Description is a table with the four levels. We can pull on people who are expiring and should be asked to bump up the current year's gift to remain in the circle for the next year, for example. The Legacy Circle Attribute is the same thing for the planned givers. And we have Major Donor Prospect Attribute with a Description table of Planned Giving, Capital Campaign, Scholarship, Endowment, and General so that we know what area they might want to focus on when approached. I have "master queries" to capture any of these groups, as well as plenty of others - Gala Sponsorship Ask, Mailing Flags (people to add to mailings even when they don't qualify under other criteria), and so on.  

I hesitate to use Constituent Code for major givers because we reserve that for our principle connection, so it isn't a personal "attribute". We have Board members who are also alumni, so they already have 2 important constituent codes - and people come and go in the President's Circle without changing their constituency. The only time we use the Constituent Code for something like that is with Prospects - and we have to change that once we really engage them.

Hope that helps!

Katrina Freeburg

Following.


We also use attributes for both major gift prospects (tracking interests and wealth indicators) and actual major donors. Curious to hear how other orgs do it.

Katrina Freeburg, CFRE

Seattle Preparatory School

Director of Individual Giving
kfreeburg@seaprep.org

206.577.2237 desk