When To Use the "Ask Amount" Field on an Opportunity Record

Nate Laning · August 2020

When it comes to the "Ask Amount" field on an Opportunity record, when do you advise your gift officers to populate this field -- when they are planning to ask a given amount, or once they actually complete the ask? Like some other organizations, we had repurposed the Likelihood field in our database side of RE to use it as a Target Amount field. We asked gift officers to select the hoped for amount here, and we reserved the "Amount Asked" (past tense database view label) for populating the amount once the ask had been made. However, now that we're on NXT, I'm noticing that the default reports are calculated on the Ask Amount field, as opposed to any inclusion of Likelihood, since it can be so org-specific.

How have you handled this at your organizations?

Quick follow-up: how do you record the asks by solicitors who only ask for 'a gift' without a specific dollar amount?

Steven Cianciarulo · August 2020

The short answer is that we do both. When a proposal has not yet been sent (for us, a status of Planned) the Amount Asked represents what we plan to ask for. If this changes once the solicitation happens, the gift officer updates the Amount Asked with the new information. We're not on NXT so I can't speak to how things interact with those reports, but I would use $0 if there was no true amount asked and then update the amount expected with what the donor indicates.

Nate Laning · August 2020

Thank you, Steven Cianciarulo‍. I hadn't thought of just updating the Amount Asked mid-way through the process. That makes a lot of sense.

Sunshine Reinken Watson · August 2020

The ask amount will be what the planned ask is prior, and what the actual ask was after. I think our fundraisers use either zero or the unspoken target amount for those ambiguous asks.

Brian Davies · August 2020

We use the ask amount for the amount we are hoping to ask (blank if there is no amount) and update as the ask changes. At another organization we created an "Original Ask" attribute to track ask amount changes. We use the expected amount to track what the gift officer hopes will come in which sounds like the way use are using likelihood. If all is populated you should be able to use the NXT reports nicely and see the value of asks for a given purpose as well as how much you hope to close and how much you have received.

Daniel R. Snyder · August 2020

Just to chime in on the Original Ask Amount piece, there is a field in database view at the bottom of a proposal record where the original ask amount and date are listed and you can export those fields. Unfortunately, it is not in NXT. However, I would agree with what others have said about using the ask amount and expected amount fields as it would lead to good information in the canned NXT opportunities reports.

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Carrie Aranda · August 2020

Because we are primarily on NXT with our fundraisers and some reporting needs that have arisen, we use the Ask Amount for what is planned for the ask or hoped for. Once entered, it is not to be changed and our fundraisers use the Expected Amount to show any changes as the solicitation process unfolds. This way, as we set annual giving goals/asks for donors, we can run what we planned versus what is expected versus what was actually received. This plays out well on the NXT dashboard for Opportunities.

There is another step in our process and that is once they have a confirmed amount, it becomes a pledge (or registration fee if linked to an event). That is our ultimate "confirmed but not yet received" category.

When To Use the "Ask Amount" Field on an Opportunity Record

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