General Appeal Names

Cynthia Cummings

Hello, We are trying to come up with some general appeal names. We currently have so many and just need a few to cut down on the amount and drop unsolicited gifts into (without calling it unsolicited.

Thanks

Ryan York 2

@Cynthia Cummings

Personally, I believe it's a good thing to keep these so specific since past appeals can be made inactive. It allows you to measure the performance of appeal over time.

Examples:

EventName 2022

Annual Fund FY22

Giving Tuesday 2022

For the more general ones-- Proposal, Tribute, and Unsolicited/Unknown are good options. Obviously, we try to avoid using Unsolicited/Unknown as much as possible and only in those situations where we really aren't sure what prompted the gift.

Also, interested in others' suggestions.

Good luck!

Christine Cooke 2

@Cynthia Cummings I tend to not have a year tied onto each appeal name but instead utilize date windows with the appeal when reporting. With that said a few are:

Fall Appeal, Spring Appeal, End of Calendar Year, Annual Magazine, Through Website, Personal Ask, Event Invite, Day of Event, Giving Tuesday, Matching Gift, IHO, IMO, DAF

Faith Murray

@Cynthia Cummings, I second what Christine Cooke has said about using reporting dates to filter fiscal year reporting instead of creating a new appeal each year, in some cases.

To us, an Appeal denotes a specific communication channel, and so we do have different appeals for 2021 College Appeal, 2022 College Appeal, etc. Our appeals hit about halfway through our fiscal year, and so we want to be able to see their performance over a multiple fiscal year span.

However, for general appeals – that aren't really an “appeal”/communication outreach at all, but simply a bucket to deposit unsolicited funds – we keep the same 3 appeals and funds rolling year after year: Abbey General, Seminary General, and Campaign Board-designated.

For naming, we try to keep the name donor-centered, so that when we run end-of-year tax summaries, it makes sense to the donor. No donor wants to see “Acquisition Appeal” on a tax statement, so we make the Appeal “description” name donor-centered and the Appeal ID is our internal name. The way this works out is we have: (public “description”/internal “ID”)

Abbey General - Abbey Undesignated

Abbey General - Acquisition appeal

Abbey General - campaign BD (board-designated)

RE of course will not let you have 3 appeals with the same “description”, so we have learned to be crafty with our use of spaces and punctuation. ?

Tom Klimchak

@Cynthia Cummings

We are in the same boat as you… We used to have HUNDREDS of appeals each year, now we're down to about 50 in a year… Here are some of our general appeal IDs, names and a brief description.

FY22AAEVENT - FY22 Alumni Engagement Events (all the “little” alumni events throughout the year)

FY22ATH - FY22 General Athletics (any money that comes in through Athletics dept or coaches that doesn't come from any sort of specific appeal)

FY22DEV - FY22 Development Gifts (larger gifts that come through development officers. We use proposals to track who brought in what gift)

FY22EGC - FY22 Employee Giving Campaign (payroll deduction gifts and employee gifts)

FY22EVENT - FY22 General Events (little events held by schools or departments that are not alumni or athletics)

FY22GEN - FY22 General Gifts (all the little “unsolicited” gifts that come in through the mail or are handed or brought to us)

Those are the ones we used last year. They account for about 40% of all our gifts in. We then use specific appeals for specific events and appeals like Giving Day, various mailings, emails, other “larger” events like Galas and Golf Outings, etc…

Cynthia Cummings

@Tom Klimchak
Thank you for your help!!!

Cynthia Cummings

@Faith Murray
Thank you for your help!!!

Cynthia Cummings

@Christine Cooke bCREPro
Thank you for your help!!!

Cynthia Cummings

@Ryan York
Thank you for your help!!!