Appeals for Recurring Monthly Donors

Shelby McNabb

Hi Everyone, 


I am working on updating all my appeals for our new fiscal year. We use the appeal to record what the donor responded to. So, when a donor signs up to be a recurring monthly donor, they will still receive the appeal for the solicitation they are responding to. Each of our appeals are coded yearly as well, and expire with the new year. For example, we have a recurring donor who signed up in response to our FY19 Spring Appeal, and some recurring donors who signed up in response to our FY19 Camp appeal. 


Now that it is a new fiscal year, I am not sure what appeal to code these gifts under. Is there any best practice that you all know of? As far as I can see, the options are: 

- Changing the year, but keeping the appeal name the same. So FY19 Spring Appeal would become FY20 Spring Appeal. This seems odd though, because they are not responding to FY20 Spring, and FY20 Spring hasn't even happened yet. 

- Keeping the appeal the same, FY19 Spring Appeal. This would potentially be problematic if we want to pull reports by appeal in a given year. 

- Using a designated "recurring gift/monthly donor" appeal that gets updated each year. 


Has anyone else run into this problem? How do you all code your monthly gifts? 


Thank you!! 

Sunshine Reinken Watson

Following previous advice here, I used a "Sustained Recurring" appeal with the appeal the gift originally came from as the package at my last gig. I know some people keep it in the old appeal for eternity, and others move them to a "Sustained Recurring" 12 months after the gift was initiated (so the original appeal is credited for a full year of giving). I'm interested to hear some fresh takes on this, as we are deciding what system to use for my new gig.

Shelby McNabb

Thank you these are helpful suggestions! 

Daniel R. Snyder

We will apply the first payment to the appeal the donor originally responded to, and then switch the appeal to "Recurring" for subsequent payments.

Crystal Bruce

Discussion moved to Raiser's Edge. Thanks!

Ryan Hyde

We also use the method of changing the appeal to our sustaining appeal, and putting the original appeal in as a package so we can really get a sense of what generated those sustaining gifts.

Tom Klimchak

We (generally) would keep the original appeal, even if it's a few years old.  The money we receive would still be "counted" in most of our reports because we generally look at gift date more than appeal.  But on our few appeal reports it's actually been helpful to see that "Wow, 10% of our revenue is coming in from past appeals!"