Campaigns/Funds

Donna Hamill

I work for a very small organization and am currently the only person that does any data entry.   I came in to this organization without any non-profit experience, so I did not question how the database was set up, until now.  


Currently we have campaigns set up such as 2017 Annual, 2016 Individual, Capital, Exhibit Sponsor, Event Sponsor etc.    The funds that had been set up by a previous person are title - Unrestricted, Restricted and Designated.     When you enter a gift that is restricted you then have to enter in the notes field or as an attribute what that gift is for.


I do not find this to be an efficient and am wondering how other organizations do this.    The reason why I am asking now is that we are about to embark on our first large capital campaign, with two specific things we are looking for funds for,  a learning center and a memorial garden.   My thought is this:  Campaign = Capital, Funds - Fund 1 - Learning Center and check off restricted, Fund 2 - Memorial Garden and check off restricted.


Any thoughts and suggestions are appreciated.

Faith Murray

I think your current setup is backward!  


Campaigns should be the most broad category, such as Endowment Gift, Capital Gift, etc. ... Don't confuse BlackBaud terminology with Fundraising, in RE "Campaign" does not mean "capital campaign".


Funds should indicate Restricted or Designated, but should be more specific to what the item is designated to, such as Scholarship Restricted, Scholarship Unrestricted, Capital Campaign Restricted, Capital Campaign Unrestricted. If this means you have 20 Funds, so be it.


Appeals should be the method used to track 2017 Annual Appeal, 2017 Dinner Event, etc. This allows you maximum efficiency for using segments (called "packages"), etc. Think of Appeal as "the specific comunication venue you use to appeal to your donors".


It's also nice because you can auto-link an appeal to a fund or campaign. Say your 2017 Annual Appeal funds will be used to pay for Scholarship Endowment. Your setup might look like Appeal = 2017 Annual Appeal; Fund = Scholarship Unrestricted; Campaign = Endowment Gift. You can tie more than one Appeal to a single Fund, and more than one Fund to a single Campaign. Then when you are doing posting batches, you only have to fill in the appeal column, and the fund and campaign data will auto-populate. Sounds like you're on the right track, but have a lot of work ahead!

JoAnn Strommen

I agree with Faith, current set up probably not the most efficient.


I would set them up as you proposed.


Side note: if you have donors giving to both funds in one donation research knowledgebase and forums for viewpoints on entering as one split gift or as two separate gifts.  Little difference during gift entry but some real differences when pulling reports.

Kimberley Cote

What you've proposed certainly makes sense to me - keep it simple if you can! I've always understood and trained others this way:

-Campaign is overarching umbrella, big picture, so either Annual or Capital Campaign

-Fund is the donor's financial designation of the gift (so the bucket the gift falls into based on donor's wishes)

-Appeal is the way you either solicited or obtained the gift so like Fall Direct Mail Appeal, Annual Walkathon, etc.


I used to create new appeals annually, but I found that created quite a lengthy list, so I started using the same appeal year over year since all the reports will allow you to filter your results by dates, so you'll be able to capture it that way and keep a simple coding structure.


Good luck!

Andrea Grigg

One very important item for most non-profits is also fiscal year, so it's good  consider what field you will rely on for this FY info while re-organizing your gift entry fields ... On that note, I'm curious how everyone is tracking fiscal years - do you record it through gift subtype, adjust the gift date and rely on that field, incorporate "FY##" into the campaign or fund, create a gift attribute for fiscal year...? Our non-profit's policy is to use the gift date field to indicate the envelope/mail date of the gift (for donor's tax purposes and acknowledgements). At the same time, my team needs a straightforward way (a viewable field that says "FY##") to interpret fiscal year allocation, in particular for the temp. restricted gifts that come early and the pledge payments that come late. 

Christine Cooke 2

Donna Hamill:

I work for a very small organization and am currently the only person that does any data entry.   I came in to this organization without any non-profit experience, so I did not question how the database was set up, until now.  


Currently we have campaigns set up such as 2017 Annual, 2016 Individual, Capital, Exhibit Sponsor, Event Sponsor etc.    The funds that had been set up by a previous person are title - Unrestricted, Restricted and Designated.     When you enter a gift that is restricted you then have to enter in the notes field or as an attribute what that gift is for.


I do not find this to be an efficient and am wondering how other organizations do this.    The reason why I am asking now is that we are about to embark on our first large capital campaign, with two specific things we are looking for funds for,  a learning center and a memorial garden.   My thought is this:  Campaign = Capital, Funds - Fund 1 - Learning Center and check off restricted, Fund 2 - Memorial Garden and check off restricted.


Any thoughts and suggestions are appreciated.

oooh, this backwards and not how RE is designed to work.  You will never be able to use any of the canned reports.  I walked into an org that had done the same thing.  Zoiks. 


Think of it this way.  Campaign is the umbrella and Fund and Appeal stand under the umbrella.  Campaign is for example: Annual Giving, Endowments, Capital Campaign, Events ( and you can or not add a specific year to them and add new one every year if you want to utilize the year, personally I find it redunandant).  Funds should be the buckets where the $$ are designated to be spent.  Annual Fund is usually an unrestricted general operating fund.  There may be programs or other buckets such as Outreach Program, Professional Development, that are also other kinds of designated operating monies which are temp restricted.  And finally Appeal should really be how the $$ came to you -- Direct Appeal Ask, Face to Face meeting/ask, Event Invitation, Fall Ask, Spring Ask, FYEnd Ask.  And finally, Scholarship Fund, Smith Memorial Fund, Jones Scholarship Memorial Fund are all Endowments and are restricted $$.


When you set up the Funds, you can code them as Unrestricted, Temp Restricted and Restricted.  This is what I do for Funds.

a.AnnualFund

ap.Professional Development

ap.Gifts and Talents Progam

c.Capital Campaign-gym

c.Capital Campaign-library

end.Smith Scholarship

end.Jones Mem Schoalrship

end.General Endow

ev.Spring Gala Tix

ev.Spring Gala Table Host

ev.Spring Gala Underwriting

ev.Spring Gala Program Ad


I did do this housekeeping project.  I had to lay out a map and strategy in order to keep doing daily work and fix everything so I could report out.  Number one was figuring out what the funds are (consulting with your business/finance office will be very educational, along with your dept. director), figure out how to identify which $$ go to those funds from the swirl in RE.  Then work backwards with the most recent gifts being fixed first.  I did it in stages -- so that I could still pull regular reports for management -- with cleaning up the current year and 3 years back.  Then worked from there.  I am happy to talk to you about it if you like.  I'm sure others have tackled this at some point.  It took about 3 1/2 months of doing a little every day and/or night to go back through and fix everything going back to when they first started using RE in 1991.

Faith Murray

Andrea Grigg:

 

One very important item for most non-profits is also fiscal year, so it's good  consider what field you will rely on for this FY info while re-organizing your gift entry fields ... On that note, I'm curious how everyone is tracking fiscal years - do you record it through gift subtype, adjust the gift date and rely on that field, incorporate "FY##" into the campaign or fund, create a gift attribute for fiscal year...? Our non-profit's policy is to use the gift date field to indicate the envelope/mail date of the gift (for donor's tax purposes and acknowledgements). At the same time, my team needs a straightforward way (a viewable field that says "FY##") to interpret fiscal year allocation, in particular for the temp. restricted gifts that come early and the pledge payments that come late. 

 

We simplify that problem for our own internal bookeeping, by reporting on cash and pledges, but not pledge payments, for our annual department revenue. Then, when pulling reports for fiscal year, we are able to use the gift date as the criteria field. For tracking Appeal performance that overlaps two different fiscal years, however, we do create a new Appeal record every year and include the FY in the Appeal name. I know some people re-use the same appeal record every year, but the appeal record really is meant to be used for a single year appeal, for tracking things like packages, number mailed, expenses, fundraising goals, etc. That way you can also use Dashboard Appeal reports to swiftly compare the performance of multiple year appeals simultaneously. As long as you remember to mark old Appeals "Inactive" once you are no longer posting gifts to the record, it doesn't cause clutter that way.