Tracking gifts from appeals

Mercedes McCayRead · August 2016

I'll preface this by saying that I am basing this question on how my predecesors were using the system, not necessarily on how it's supposed to be used. When we send out appeals we globally add the appeal to the records of those constituents who received it. When the gifts come in and are enterd in the batch, we select the appeal that it is related to for tracking purposes. What I'm wondering is, is there a business rule somewhere that I can add (so far I haven't been able to find one) so that when gifts come in for those appeals and the appeal is on the constituent's record that it changes the reponse to "yes" as opposed to nothing happening? Or...are the yes and no really to be used for tracking whether or not they received the appeal and the tracking just happens in the "total given" column?

Thanks in advance!

Jen Claudy · August 2016

I don't think you're missing anything. To the best of my memory and a quick second looking just now, you can't Query on Total Given, and you can't Global Change to update the Response field. The Total Given field will automatically update when you enter the gift, however, the Response field either must be updated manually or not used at all (which is what I've done). Even Import doesn't give you the Total Given field. It does give the Response field, so you could Query on those who have given in response to an Appeal, then use Import to Update those Records. I would test this (thoroughly) first, though, as RE doesn't always do what you expect, particularly with Assigned Appeals.

I find it somewhat crazy that you can't add a Package with a Default Set, you can't change (as in this example) the Response for just one Assigned Appeal (it will do the same for every Assigned Appeal on the record), etc.

You CAN set a unique Response when you Globally Add the Appeal, and then use Global Change to replace the Response for a Query of Constituents who have given in response to that Appeal.

And I recommend checking out the RE7 Idea Bank to see what others have suggested to Blackbaud...vote and comment (and if you can't find it, add it). Come back here and post links to any related Ideas you find.

Lauren Schler CFRE bCREPro · August 2016

If you create an export file from import, you can isolate those
assigned appeals that need to have response changed and then import
the changes back into RE. However, when you create the query to
feed the import function (i.e. Assigned appeal = XYZ) the export
file that Import produces will include all assigned appeals
for any constituent who has that assigned appeal. You will need to
sort the list in Excel and delete the assigned appeals that don’t
apply. It’s a bit of a pain but this does allow you to update very
specific information for assigned appeals. Please feel free to
reach out to me if you have any additional questions on
this.

Faith Murray · August 2016

According to this KB article, the Response column doesn't have to be a Yes/No field. It can be used to flag when a person has responded without sending a gift, for instance, when they request more information or want to be removed from the mailing list. Just another thought. To be honest, though, we use Solicit codes for mailing list removals, and Notes or Attributes if they requested additional info without donating.

Importing the updated Appeal Response fields seems to be BB's preferred approach to mass updates (see KB article) although it does indicate also that you should be able to set up a business rule to remind gift batch entry staff to manually update the constituent's record.

Tracking gifts from appeals

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