What is an example of an Action with the Category of Advocacy or Task/Other?

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The Action Categories of Advocacy and Task/Other confuse me. I saw another discussion that mentioned Advocacy is an Action that relates to lobbying the legislature, which makes sense; but the act of lobbying and advocacy will still take the form of a meeting or a phone call or an email, so why does it even exist as its own Category in the first place? Advocacy would be more fitting as an Action Type.

I've started using Task/Other for when our staff appear at other orgs' events where they speak to our mission or when they appear on a discussion panel or a TV interview, basically events that are not hosted by us, but our Director or a solicitor was a significant part. I've added a new Type of Community Engagement because this Action is not directly part of solicitation or stewardship. We record those Actions on the record of the organization hosting the event. I.e., a 55+ residential community HOA committee wants someone from our org to appear to speak to our role in the community in order to foster a stronger link between us and the members of the community so that when that community holds fundraisers, more people are encouraged to give to us. The talk that our staff member gives is not an Email, not a Phone Call, but it might be considered a Meeting. Further, we don't record the Action under all attendees of the talk, so there's no direct link between an individual's gift and the Action, though ideally that would make most sense to do. Like everyone who is listening to our speaker is the one who's actually being acted upon, but we just will not know who the attendees or viewers even are. On the flip side, any event that we host is best recorded as simply an Event and wouldn't require an Action at all; except for when our solicitors engage with attendees of our event in a significant manner that's part of a solicitation or stewardship, and in those cases they'd be encouraged to record an Action on that attendee's record.

How do you use the Advocacy and Task/Other Action Categories?

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  • Karen Diener 2
    Karen Diener 2 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 3 Name Dropper Photogenic

    @Michael Moore I've seen organizations use Task/Other for internal work.

    For instance, one used Actions to track Prospect Status because it was important to assess how long prospects had been in a certain stage. I'm fully aware that it is now available in webview, but this was long before webview.

    Another instance is to keep track of research requests. If a major gift officer would like more research done on a constituent, they add an action with the type of Task/Other on that record, and assign the task to the staff member in charge of doing research. Once the researcher completes the task. The original requestor can keep track of it that way too.

    When you start thinking about Actions in that way, it can generate a lot of other ideas!

    Karen

  • Elizabeth Johnson
    Elizabeth Johnson ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    @Michael Moore Advocacy is a relatively new addition to RE (read - wasn't there 18 years ago when I started using RE) - and not a category that they have even included in the web view options. We do not use it for anything and simply ignore it as it isn't relevant to my org.

    I use Task/Other (Task in web view) all the time. Mainly to track the following items:

    • Clean up projects and database tasks
    • Why someone was made inactive or reactivated
    • Honor nominations or having been received by our constituents (Grammy's etc.)
    • Storing obituaries (dated for date died)
    • Deceased notifications (dated for when we learned someone died and how - used to go back to clean up the records.
    • Change of student status when someone doesn't graduate
    • Testimonials
    • Graduation profiles
    • When someone is featured in our magazine
    • Strategies
    • Research (that it occurred)

    I hope this helps and I look forward to seeing how others use this as well.

    Best,
    Elizabeth


  • Daniel R. Snyder
    Daniel R. Snyder ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    @Michael Moore

    @Elizabeth Johnson and @Karen Diener have provided some great examples, but I think the Task/Other is really for future actions to complete. Then they can be used to organize work or simply just be reminders to complete actions (ex. follow up on a solicitation).

  • @Michael Moore I use it for internal tasks, like tracking whether a new employee payroll donation deduction started.

  • @Sunshine Reinken Watson A payroll deduction that your employee would give to your own organization? That can all be recorded as gift details. A payroll deduction that your employee would give to another organization, I don't see why an Action would be necessary for that, and that sort of info would be part of your payroll platform. If you need to record an Action relating to your payroll department speaking to a new employee regarding payroll deductions to your own organization, I guess that makes sense but would just be a Meeting, Phone Call, or Email. Again, though, that's something that belongs more in an HR or payroll database, not a fundraising database.

  • @Elizabeth Johnson

    Clean up: like you give everyone who needs some kind of cleanup Action in order to identify the type of cleanup needed and by when? Seems like an unnecessary extra step when you can just query as-needed on the fields that need to be cleaned.

    Inactivation: that's not a bad idea

    Honors/Awards received by constituents: what purpose do you even use that info for? You can certainly have a Phone Call action from your director congratulating a constituent for receiving an award, but since you're not the awarding body, an Action to record it seems unnecessary

    Obits: we serve that need with a Note, but I can see it being an Action

    Student status: I gather you're in higher ed development, you don't track student status using constituent codes Student and Former Student with To and From dates?

    Testimonials & Graduation Profiles: how do you mean?

    Magazine feature: yeah, that's a good one

    Strategies & Research: do you not use the Prospect module for that?

  • I find I often use it for questions that can only be answered after some time has gone past. I've got one that asks “how much are X month through X month payroll giving instalments?” - I know this constituent's payroll giving instalments see fairly random amounts but maybe we can figure out the real frequency/amount after a few months have passed and put in an accurate recurring gift.

    Like Sunshine - we also track whether employee giving has started - not for our own employees (mostly) but for supporters who tell use they have started using this method. It can be some time before the instalments arrive so a future dated “task” just to check if we've had it can be useful. If we've not had it, the follow-up action can be varied so that gets recorded when it is done.

  • @Michael Moore We receive payroll donations from the health network we support and the medical group they are affiliated with. I don't have access to their payroll database. Donors fill out a form for us, we share it with the payroll department at the organization, and they start the deduction. Sometimes things fall through the cracks, and that task action helps us reconcile that the donation actually started when we receive the disbursement checks and reports. There are several hundred donors.

  • @Rachel Cavalier Cool cool, it seems like a lot of the responses tend to be examples of using it as an internal control measure, so “Task” would be defined as a thing that a development staff member has to do regarding the constituent, but that it doesn't exactly involve the constituent directly.

    My experience in using Actions has been only in the realm of moves management, so every Action should generally be tied to a specific ask or stewardship between asks, and adding more like the ways people here are suggesting would end up cluttering our solicitor performance measures.

  • @Michael Moore Since those Categories have been part of RE7 for as long as I've been using it, I imagine that these fields meant something different prior to the advent of the webview, but they're still around as a legacy.

  • @Michael Moore
    I use Task/Other as a reminder to gather pertinent documents three weeks before the annual online report is due regarding the Foundation scholarship.

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