Tracking event prospects

Sandra Sanders:
I have a question regarding events. How do you track event prospects? Currently, our Development Team is using an excel spreadsheet coded for different levels of sponsorship requests to our signature event. The spreadsheet is where the team has recorded the request and the response from the prospects over the past three years. I am hoping all of this can be done in RE. We have the events module. I will be using it for the first time to track almost every aspect of the event. What I can't figure out, though, is how to tract event prospects using that module. I have considered using appeals, actions, even proposals and with some manipulation, I could make all of those work. But I'm sure there is a better way staring me in the face. Thoughts? Sandy Sanders, Park University

Sandra, I just went through this exact thing - with what sounds like the same spreadsheet! I'll give you what I set up, but keep in mind that there are many ways you can set this up - including probably some simpler things that may keep more things on the participant tab rather than switching back and forth btwn constituent record and participant record.  This was set up for our gala/ball for which we approach ind/corp sponsors to purchase tables and/or undwright the event.

• 
  
  All potential sponsors are entered as constituents (if not already)
  
  
• 
  
  We add New Sponsor to the event via the constituent event tab (or from the event)
  
  
• 
  
  On that sponsor record, we use the Status and Participant fields to track where they are in the process.  Participant selections include "Potential Sponsor" and "Sponsor" among others.  The Status tab includes "not approached," "Cultivating," "Committed"(i.e. pledged), "Paid" and "Declined" among others.
  
  
• 
  
  Because we needed more than one solicitor attached to some prospects, we created a solicitor type of "Event Lead" and added the solicitors as relationships on the Consituent record.
  
  
• 
  
  We created a Constituent note type of "2015 <event name>" that can be viewed or exported appropriately.  That is where we track specific discussions and specific approaches.
  
  
• 
  
  For past event approaches/results I created Particiapant currency attributes of "2015 Target," "2014 Ball," "2013 Ball" and used the comments field to record in-kind or other notes such as Not approached for that year.
  
  

To make it easy for our event coordinator and committee, I created an export with all the pertinent fields.  Then I created a spreadsheet where that raw data can be dumped into tab2 while tab1 used formulas to format and pull that data in a format that was close to what they were using previously.

Hopefully that helps! Again, that is certainly not the only way to set things up.  If you'd like a copy of my proceedure for entering a potential sponsor or the spreadsheet I set up, feel free to click my profile and send me an email.  Unfortunately I do not currently have permission to attach them to this post.