Best practice for marking major donors in their record

Karen Brown:

I understand that you can code the attribute tab or make it a constituent code; and I would like to hear some thoughts on how users code their major donors.

Currently, we add an attribute, with a date on the record. We regularly run a query to identify anybody that has given a total gift of $1000 or more during the fiscal year, in order to catch smaller gifts that come in and we don't realize that their total giving is over $1000.

I have also tried to limit the number of constituent codes on an individual's record (maybe I should not be concerned with that...) We have Alumnus, Student, Present Parent, Parent of Alum, Present Grandparent, Grandparent of Alum, Fac/Staff for individuals and some others for businesses.

What is a good rule to follow? 

Best practice - no code necessary. If you can query on it from gifts you do not need a code. Having a code means you will constantly have to update it and the next day another person gives and the code is already out of date.

Susan Zolbe:

We don't use a code but we use "Solicitors" and assign a solicitor to ALL "Major Gift" donors.  We query and report on assigned donors at the end of each month and have a series of dashboards which the solicitors use to track who has given. The solicitor calls ALL donors and thanks them within the 1st 24 hrs. of gift receipt. This is more manageable then assigning an attribute or constituency code to Major doors.

 We also use the "assigned solicitor" list as part of our suppression file for direct mail appeals. 

 Feel free to contact me directly if you'd like more details on how we manage the lists.  

 

We do this too but we not only assign actual major gift donors but also donors who have the capacity and are being groomed to be a major donor. If we want to know who has actually hit the major donor level, we just would query on their giving.

JoAnn Strommen:

Keeping an attribute or constituent code up to date is a challenge.  Much easier to query.  If you want to know that the constituent is a major donor when a RE user goes to the record, you can set a business rule to notify. Just run the query regularily to keep the query current and you'll get the pop-up.

 We use this for our Board members and it works great!  Need to rethink this rule and maybe use it to help with the Pre-Major Donor constituents

 

Melissa Graves:
JoAnn - why do you have to run the query regularly? If it is a dynamic query it runs itself everytime you open a record.

Sorry, not thinking or thinking about something else. 

JoAnn Strommen:

Sorry, not thinking or thinking about something else. 

This thread has been very timely for me as we are in the process of setting up a Major and prospective Major Donor program and I'm looking at best practise for recording this.

Can I ask, why is there a preference to managing your major donors by assigning a solicitor against adding a constituent code.  They both need to be added and both have a start and end date. Both can be used in underlying queries but I see constituent codes as giving more flexability because they can be used directly within mail functionalty and in reports (inc Dashboards).

CCodes can also be linked to gifts and because the intention here is not to make this an income stream, this seems the best way of recording this income.

Any comments greatly apreciated.

Alan

Alan Kay:

This thread has been very timely for me as we are in the process of setting up a Major and prospective Major Donor program and I'm looking at best practise for recording this.

Can I ask, why is there a preference to managing your major donors by assigning a solicitor against adding a constituent code.  They both need to be added and both have a start and end date. Both can be used in underlying queries but I see constituent codes as giving more flexability because they can be used directly within mail functionalty and in reports (inc Dashboards).

CCodes can also be linked to gifts and because the intention here is not to make this an income stream, this seems the best way of recording this income.

Any comments greatly apreciated.

Alan

There is definitely a preference.

a) get Bill Connors Book: Fundraising with the Raiser's Edge: a non-technical guide. It is by far the bible on dos/don'ts on using coding from constituent codes to campaigns, funds, appeals, etc.

Cons codes have a very particular purpose and typically they identify the 4-8 basic groupings you would want to produce a pie chart for your annual report of your donor types. Using them for any other purpose is not recommended. Typically it constituent codes change very rarely and are not based on giving.

Once you HARD code someone based on giving and someone's giving changes the next day your codes are out of date and using it to query your query will be WRONG. Why add a code so you can query on something when you can already query on it using gift fields which will always be accurate???

If your major donors are all assigned to prospect managers/solicitors then that solicitor goes on the gift. No need to use the constituent code to ALSO show it was a major donor who made the gift. I also have a campaign with a goal for the major gifts program. Within it I can see (based on constituent code) if the gift was from a board member, an individual, a family foundation, etc.

Please get the book and read it cover to cover.

Melissa Graves:

Karen - to your point about heirarchy and the answer to your quest to which takes priority is NO it is not always the first one - it is the first one with the date range appropriate for your query/report.

I recently talked about this in this thread http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/p/22061/437678.aspx#437678

And additionally as to whether it pulls only on the primary constituency code or all is - it depends. Sometimes it will be the primary - sometimes all - often you get a choice but you need to know where to go to set that choice in each report you work in.

Karen Brown:

Thanks, Melissa,

I did read this thread before I posted my original question. After re-reading it, I guess it does seem to be the same question/answer. Also, I have the book you are referring to and I am re-reading the parts about Constituent Codes.

I think the problem here is that our database has had many users over the last decade. So it is kind of messy because some things were handled different ways. Even though I have been pretty consistent for the last 5 years it doesn't mean that it is the best way to do things!!!!

Thanks, again, for the suggestions!!!

Every day is a new chance to make improvements - so long as they are not changes that get made every year and you change your mind all the time about the way you want to do things. I am consistently working on policies and procedures and making tweaks to the process when there are opportunities to improve things. My database is not perfect (yet ) so I do not expect everyone else's to be. I do think, though, that making changes - improvements needs to be completely thought through and use all of your resources (including other users on forums like this and your own users) to find all of the pros/cons before making your final decision.