Phonathon Form

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Pam Gealy
Pam Gealy ✭
Ninth Anniversary First Reply
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
What is the best tool for the Phonathon form?  Is the canned report sufficient?  I just created a word merge (from Export).  I hit the 61 field restriction, now we need to rework the doc.  I'm wondering if I should've done it differently...!
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  • Amy Dana
    Amy Dana ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Pam Gealy:

    What is the best tool for the Phonathon form?  Is the canned report sufficient?  I just created a word merge (from Export).  I hit the 61 field restriction, now we need to rework the doc.  I'm wondering if I should've done it differently...!

    Which canned report are you looking at? And are you wanting to pull PHN results or are you looking to pull info sheets for the callers to use? 

  • Carolyn Moatz
    Carolyn Moatz ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Photogenic

    Pam Gealy:

    What is the best tool for the Phonathon form?  Is the canned report sufficient?  I just created a word merge (from Export).  I hit the 61 field restriction, now we need to rework the doc.  I'm wondering if I should've done it differently...!

    Short answer: it depends. Long answer: at my old job, we just used the Phonathon Forms, and while we were a little disappointed with information it missed (major couldn't be pulled, for example, the ease and convenience made it worth it for us there. The forms provided a lot of space for callers to mark address changes and notes, and the tear off on the bottom made sending the pledge reminders easy. Now I'm at a Pre-K-12 school and we have 2-4 nights a year where student leaders or alumni will call a select group and since we don't need all of the call information, and they don't make direct asks, we have 1/3 sheet word merge that we use that just have name, address, class, activities and a 2 year giving history. People are only called once and if they don't answer, a note is sent. There's space on the sheet for a credit card if anyone gives that way.

  • Pam Gealy
    Pam Gealy ✭
    Ninth Anniversary First Reply

    Amy Dana:

     

    Pam Gealy:

    What is the best tool for the Phonathon form?  Is the canned report sufficient?  I just created a word merge (from Export).  I hit the 61 field restriction, now we need to rework the doc.  I'm wondering if I should've done it differently...!

    Which canned report are you looking at? And are you wanting to pull PHN results or are you looking to pull info sheets for the callers to use? 

     

    I looked at MAIL > PHONATHON FORM.  That didn't seem to have all of the fields that I needed, so I did the EXPORT/Word Merge. (which only allows 61 fields).  I don't know what you mean by PHN results...  These are info sheets for callers to use.

  • Amy Dana
    Amy Dana ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Pam Gealy:

    I looked at MAIL > PHONATHON FORM.  That didn't seem to have all of the fields that I needed, so I did the EXPORT/Word Merge. (which only allows 61 fields).  I don't know what you mean by PHN results...  These are info sheets for callers to use.

     

    OK, I wasn't sure if you wanted the caller sheets or a report on the amounts raised.


    We don't use the Phonathon forms for the reason as Carolyn - it doesn't list all the info we need like major. We actually created our own sheets through Crystal Reports with four alumni per page and a section for notes from callers.

  • roger berg
    roger berg ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Pam Gealy:

    What is the best tool for the Phonathon form?  Is the canned report sufficient?  I just created a word merge (from Export).  I hit the 61 field restriction, now we need to rework the doc.  I'm wondering if I should've done it differently...!

    Okay - dumb question, but do you really need more than 61 fields? I did ours for several years using a word merge and got by just fine with only 25 merge fields. I can't imagine where I'd even come up with an additional 36 necessary fields to include.on the form. I printed on paper that was perforated at the 1/3, so that a portion could be torn off and used as a pledge reminder.

    Besides the usual address info, I printed up to 3 phone numbers, ID, an phonathon affinity attribute code (based on pervious phonathon perticipation or lack there-of), class year, spouse name, date of birth, two different ask amounts (based on a formula in the spreadsheet), and contribution amounts from the three previous phonathons.


    Good luck!

  • Christine Cooke 2
    Christine Cooke 2 ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Pam Gealy:

    What is the best tool for the Phonathon form?  Is the canned report sufficient?  I just created a word merge (from Export).  I hit the 61 field restriction, now we need to rework the doc.  I'm wondering if I should've done it differently...!

    Every Org I have been at has not found the canned Phonathon form that RE provides to be sufficient.  Maybe it's because they have been schools and want to see who the kids are?  though really there is more info than that.  They want to arm their callers with a "story" of sorts, for having those conversations. 

    My solution has been to figure out what they want to see, build an Export that will provide all of those fields and then build a template in Filemaker Pro to drop the export into.  That way I could format the Phonathon form how they wanted to see it, with the info they wanted to see, and add any additional items like a customized/personalized tear-off for mail follow-up.  It has worked well.

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