Recurring Gift Campaign/Appeal Changes

James Teague · July 2020

Hello,

I was wondering if there is a way to do a mass change for recurring gift appeals and campaigns?

I work at a university and we have 300+ recurring gifts each month from staff/faculty payroll deductions. Our fiscal year just ended so all of the recurring gifts need to be updated to the new campaign and some appeals need to be updated.

Is there a way to do this in bulk? I am fairly new to this position. My coworkers believe in the past it has been done one by one but I would like to find a quicker way to accomplish this if possible.

Thank you!

Linnea Oddie · July 2020

I think you could do this with either a Global Change or an Import in the Admin section. With an import, you can validate your data before changing anything, which is always good before making any changes for multiple records. You can also create queries for records changed, or for exceptions. For a global change, you can also make those output queries, but I don't think you have the ability to validate your data before making the change. I personally haven't used either of these methods for making changes to recurring gifts, so I'm sorry that I don't have any feedback for which method works best! Based on my experience with using global change or import for other things, I would suggest doing an import. I think it might end up having a few more steps, but it also seems to be the best way to make sure the data you are changing is correct.

If all else fails....there's always the one-by-one approach, hah.

Best of luck!

Carrie Aranda · July 2020

I just did this with a small group of recurring gifts through Global Change. It was fairly simple to do and worked well. I built a query of the records that needed to be changed and then used that query in the global change. Just make sure that you double check your query before making the change so you know the records that will be changed.

Daniel R. Snyder · July 2020

Hi James Teague‍, to add to the good advice from Linnea Oddie‍ and Carrie Aranda‍, make sure you use a gift query to get the specific gift records you are looking to change and whether you use Global Change or Import depends on if all of the recurring gifts are changing from the same appeal to the same new appeal.

For example, if you are changing the appeal from FY20RECUR to FY21RECUR or something like that then a Global Change is great. However, if there are multiple appeals you are either changing from or changing to, import is the way to go.

PM me if you have additional questions, but this can be less of a pain then manually changing all of them!

James Teague · July 2020

Thanks so much to everyone for the feedback. I'm going to work on building a query of these recurring gift records and then I think I'm leaning towards trying the Global Change. I'll give you all an update once we try it out!

Thanks again!

Jennifer Donlevie · March 2021

It seems like a lot of work to change the recurring gifts every year. Does anyone have any way that they are recording recurring gifts that they do not need to change them every year?

Karen Diener 2 · March 2021

When I was managing a big database (about 600,000 constituents) with a few hundred recurring gifts, we did not make changes to the coding each year. Our campaigns and appeals were annualized (i.e., they used fiscal years). The reason was that it always allowed us to identify the fundraising effort that sparked the original gift.

One very big source of recurring gifts was a live radiothon with a popular local station. If someone started a recurring gift during the radiothon in fiscal year 2010-2011, their gift coding was all for FY11. When we wanted to know how much money the FY11 radiothon raised, we queried on campaign and/or appeal. When we wanted to know how much money came in during a specific fiscal year, we queried on date ranges and gift types only.

I've never quite understood the need to change coding. Maybe it's because it isn't how I've learned it, and I have yet to be convinced that it is necessary? I'm quite willing to change my mind when presented with logical arguments! But joking aside, I also know that it isn't JUST about recurring gifts - it is a big conversation about all gifts and all reporting, so it isn't that easy to make the change.

Karen

Jennifer Donlevie · March 2021

Hi Karen,

Did you continue to keep the campaigns open? We make our yearly campaigns inactive after 2 years.

thanks

Jennifer

Cindy Gericke · March 2021

I created a Recurring Gift Campaign that does not change from year to year...we can always pull year specific data using gift date in the queries, etc. Has saved me a lot of trouble and we can pull it into/leave it out of reporting as needed as well as use that campaign for a filter for special appeals, mailings, etc.

Karen Diener 2 · April 2021

Jennifer Donlevie‍ I think we must have kept the campaigns open? It was awhile ago so I can't remember for sure, but I am pretty sure we must have.

To be honest, there were enough people whose credit cards would expire that the recurring gifts never really lasted all that long to be a concern. This was well before credit card updater services were offered, and while we certainly tried to reach out and get a new number / expiration, it was usually unsuccessful. It isn't like we had an active campaign for five years.

Hard and fast rules like "only keep campaigns open for two years" can obstruct better ways of operating. So it is worth evaluating those rules sometimes!

Karen

Recurring Gift Campaign/Appeal Changes

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