How do you name your RE campaigns?

Anita Li

And how do you relate them to a fund and an appeal?   Should we give our campaigns simple names (such as the Project ID that ties to the General Ledger)?

Or would it be better to name the campaigns in a descriptive way?

JoAnn Strommen

You'll find this varies greatly from org to org. If you haven't done so already, search the forum for previous posts. 


At previous org, we used campaign as umbrella - capital, endowment, annual campaign. Our funds were named for the specific capital campaign, each annual campaign. Appeals named/used as appropriate for the appeal-could be defaulted to one fund or relevant to multiple.  Fund is what ties directly to the GL. We used descriptive as name should be easy and clear to those entering data. Some times your FY vs CY vs. campaign time frame is a factor in naming structure. Many do not date funds or campaigns. I found it necessary as our annual campaign gifts crossed over 3 years so I could not just run analytics based on gift date - needed separate funds.


Current org seems to run primarily based on fund and appeal.  Campaign is present on some records but not all. I'm still learning about that. We've had RE since DOS days so some of field use is due to evolution of product.