Appeal Codes

Eileen Wallwork

Hello,


We currently use appeal codes which have the fiscal year attached, ex. 18 Direct Mail Spring.  How do you handle gifts that come in that appeal envelope, even though it is the following fiscal year?  So say our year end is June 30th and a gift comes in on July 15 in the 18 Direct Mail Spring envelope?  My inclination is to use the 19 DM appeal code (with no spring) on the gift, but historically they have used the 18 Direct Mail Spring code.  They do this so they can track mailing efficacy, however, when it crosses fiscal year, I think it muddies the waters.  


Thoughts?


Thank you for your help!


Eileen

Alicia Van Straten

Our procedure is that all gifts get booked as the appeal that it was solicited with but the campaign stays with the FY.  So we have 4 overarching campaigns and many appeals.  In this case, we would book it as FY18Direct Mail Spring and campaign would be FY19AnnualFund.  That way we truly book the revenue with the fiscal year it comes in at, but keep it with the appeal to track the effectiveness of the appeal. 

Christine Adams

We do the same as Alicia but we only have two campaign codes each year - one for tax-deductible gifts and one for non-tax ded gifts

shani traum

We keep the appeal the same because THAT'S the appeal they replied to.


We have the Campaign (which is also FY based) reflect when the gift was actually received.


So a gift in response to the 2018 June appeal with code 18JunAFDM received in FY19 would be entered as Appeal: 18JunAFDM Campaign 19AnnualFund


 

Sunshine Reinken Watson

Is this a common occurance for your organization? This is inspiring some forward thinking for me, as I am sure we will find ourselves in this situation in the future! We attach the FY to the appeal, but I would hesitate to place a direct response gift in a past year. I might opt to create a new package on the the current year appeal instead, or have a specific "past direct mail" appeal to assign to those gifts. Recording under the past FY might cause some problems for Finance and reporting in our case. We would only do that for things like an outstanding pledge for an event/giving club that is past due. I appreciate all the responses and look forward to hearing what other organizations are doing.







 

Heather MacKenzie

We keep our appeals alive for 1 year, then use the appeal code of "Direct Mail Other" to indicate it's over a year old.  We use packages for all our direct mail responses, so we still assign the correct package.

Ryan Hyde

We used to do the same thing, but I switched back to keeping appeals alive forever for a couple of reasons. First, it takes more time to enter a code, realize it's not there, and then enter the alternate code (especially when dealing with volunteer data entry). Secondly, it doesn't actually tell me anything different from adding the original appeal code. For any date, I can query on all DM gifts that came in during that time period, and when I export those appeal codes, I can easily group them by what's current and what is old and what is very old because my appeal codes have year and month in them (e.g., 1810BD for our "base donor" appeal in October of 2018). So all that said, I find it just easier to keep all appeals alive forever.

Tiffany Harder

Hi,

We have this occurrence all the time.  We have even received donations with a 4 year old appeal. 


We code like this: Campaign: Direct mail, Appeal: 2018 Spring Newsletter, 2018 Spring Appeal, 2018 Fall Newsletter, 2018 Holiday Appeal and so and so forth.  Our newsletters have 4 packages: Mail, Email, Mass (which is in the newspaper) and No package (that's literally the package name).  Our appeals have a deeper package breakdown and also the last one of No Package.  We consider 1 of each type of mailing open until the next one goes out.  So if the Fall Newsletter went out on Oct 1 that is when we close the Spring Newsletters.  For us the fiscal is not relevant - an appeal or newsletter could bring in revenue over the end of one fiscal and into the beginning of the next for the Spring.  Our fiscal year isn't really meaningful when evaluating the impact of the direct mail, when we mail it and the response rate is what we would analyze.  


We consider an appeal or newsletter in the hands of the donors to be live for the current season and 1 past season.  If right now someone sends in the 2018 Spring Newsletter, since it is closed, we would code it to the 2018 Fall Newsletter with the No Package package.  That tells us they sent in a newsletter but it wasn't current.  If they sent in say the 2017 Fall Newsletter we consider that no longer reflective of the direct mail's impact and we would code it to a general unsolicited donation.  


Lots of interesting replies on here.  Hope you have found some helpful information.


Tiffany