How do you use appeals for major donors or fundraiser-specific efforts?

Keri Barnhart

The recent question about going from 150+ Constituent Codes to a more manageable number got me to thinking about our Appeals - except in the opposite direction. We use them pretty standard for most of our outreach to alumni and annual giving donors - appeals by phonathon season, direct mail batch, etc. We use packages and try to keep as much Apples-to-Apples from year to year to aid with reporting and effectiveness of the various specifics.


However, we have one lump appeal for any major giving. Any donation that has direct involvement of one of our fundraisers gets put into the "Personal Solicitation" field. Which is fine, these are mostly not coordinated efforts and are tracked in Proposals, and we know for a fact that the solicitor on the gift was responsible for bringing it in.


But I feel like maybe this isn't super efficient? Our reporting for Appeal effectiveness is always overwhelmed by that Personal Solicitation. The Analyze - Appeals in NXT has this giant Personal Solicitation bar, then teeny tiny everything else.


How are you using appeals for gifts not linked to a central campaign or fund or other effort, just the solicitor's work?

JoAnn Strommen

All of our gifts are are linked to a fund - where the money goes. We use appeals for specific asks. In your case, I don't believe we would use personal solicitation as an appeal. Solicitor assignments would provide any info we needed. How you record it is pretty much determined by your reporting needs, IMO.

Keri Barnhart

JoAnn Strommen:

All of our gifts are are linked to a fund - where the money goes. We use appeals for specific asks. In your case, I don't believe we would use personal solicitation as an appeal. Solicitor assignments would provide any info we needed. How you record it is pretty much determined by your reporting needs, IMO.

Ooh, this made me relearn something! We require a Fund + Appeal on every gift, and I had completely forgotten that Appeal isn't a default required field.

I suppose I should think about whether we need to keep it default, if these personal solicitations (they all have the assigned solicitor) even need to be marked, or if we can safely assume that no appeal + gift solicitor is a personal solicitation.

I have a suspicion that our directors will balk, because we've been doing it this way for a very long time. At least 8 years, when I was first trained on it, and possibly since we first implemented RE circa 2003. But now I have a fresh idea of what's going on and can make informed suggestions.

JoAnn Strommen

If you're not utilizing the Gift Code field for something else, that could be used to identify your 'personal solicitations'. Just an idea.