Entering a gift without affecting yearly totals

Monica Hanns · May 2014

Hi there, We would like to record gifts that are made to our international campus in Raisers Edge but we'd like the gifts to not be representative in our total fundraising for this office for the year. I don't know how to ensure that we can enter the gift (so that when we deal with the constituent we are aware of their giving history) without having it look like the money has come through our office (which it hasn't). Anyone else ever faced this issue? Thanks for your help. Best Regards, Monica

JoAnn Strommen · May 2014

Monica Hanns:
Hi there, We would like to record gifts that are made to our international campus in Raisers Edge but we'd like the gifts to not be representative in our total fundraising for this office for the year. I don't know how to ensure that we can enter the gift (so that when we deal with the constituent we are aware of their giving history) without having it look like the money has come through our office (which it hasn't). Anyone else ever faced this issue? Thanks for your help. Best Regards, Monica

If you are integrated with FE you'll need to clear it and set it up so that finance office knows what is going on in case it comes through to them.

We do a few gifts along similar vein that we want to show on constituent record for complete giving history.

I would create a specific fund name that clearly represents $ did not come through your office (International ABC, etc). Do you use the gift type of "Other"? We do not - so it works well for this purpose. When running reports it's easy to not include that gift type.

For any gift type, you can then mark gifts as "Do not post" when entering it. For ours, I also make sure there is no GL account info put on the fund record to prevent any accidental posting to finance.

Jason Black · May 2014

JoAnn Strommen:
If you are integrated with FE you'll need to clear it and set it up so that finance office knows what is going on in case it comes through to them.

We do a few gifts along similar vein that we want to show on constituent record for complete giving history.

I would create a specific fund name that clearly represents $ did not come through your office (International ABC, etc). Do you use the gift type of "Other"? We do not - so it works well for this purpose. When running reports it's easy to not include that gift type.

For any gift type, you can then mark gifts as "Do not post" when entering it. For ours, I also make sure there is no GL account info put on the fund record to prevent any accidental posting to finance.

In addition to JoAnn's suggestion, we also use the gift type of Other exclusively for gifts that don't count. Anything that we want included in a donor's total giving recognition, but that isn't a true gift, or that should not be counted in totals, is given the Other gift type. All of our reports, posting, and procedures involving real gifts exclude the Other gift type, so they're never counted for anything but honor rolls.

Nina Williams · May 2014

Monica Hanns:
Hi there, We would like to record gifts that are made to our international campus in Raisers Edge but we'd like the gifts to not be representative in our total fundraising for this office for the year. I don't know how to ensure that we can enter the gift (so that when we deal with the constituent we are aware of their giving history) without having it look like the money has come through our office (which it hasn't). Anyone else ever faced this issue? Thanks for your help. Best Regards, Monica

We also have a special fund for this type of gift. I make sure that the fund is excluded on all fundraising reports. I have, at a previous job, also used gift type "other" which is also easy to exclude. Either or both methods have worked well.

Melissa Graves 3 · May 2014

Monica Hanns:
Hi there, We would like to record gifts that are made to our international campus in Raisers Edge but we'd like the gifts to not be representative in our total fundraising for this office for the year. I don't know how to ensure that we can enter the gift (so that when we deal with the constituent we are aware of their giving history) without having it look like the money has come through our office (which it hasn't). Anyone else ever faced this issue? Thanks for your help. Best Regards, Monica

The answer to this 100% depends on how you use campaigns, funds, appeals and gift types. Of course, this can be done but if you've never done it before it may mean you have to change how you report on "this year's totals". If you create a separate campaign, you have to always remember to filter on campaign in your reports. If you create a special fund, same thing. If you are currently using "other" gift types and they count toward this year's totals then that is not an option but otherwise it is a good one since typically they do not count. Good Luck.

Monica Hanns · May 2014

Melissa Graves:
The answer to this 100% depends on how you use campaigns, funds, appeals and gift types. Of course, this can be done but if you've never done it before it may mean you have to change how you report on "this year's totals". If you create a separate campaign, you have to always remember to filter on campaign in your reports. If you create a special fund, same thing. If you are currently using "other" gift types and they count toward this year's totals then that is not an option but otherwise it is a good one since typically they do not count. Good Luck.

Thanks, everyone! All very good suggestions. It's really helpful to see what other people are doing in this situation. I think I will propose to my team that we attribute these gifts to 'other' and see if we can establish some rules around how that gift type is used.

Entering a gift without affecting yearly totals

Comments

Categories