Tracking Actions *BY* Constituents

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Jerod Shuford
Jerod Shuford ✭
Tenth Anniversary
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
I am in the process of redesigning our Raiser's Edge policy for our non-profit to make the database more consistent and useful.  I've run into one problem though that I cannot find information on how Raiser's Edge is designed to track it, and it seems pretty basic.  That issue is actions that a Constituent takes on our behalf.



For example, we are a food providing non-profit.  If a donor also organizes a Food Drive for us at their child's school, what would be the best way to track that?



Currently we track that through the Actions tab, but the more I read the less that makes sense.  Actions are supposed to be (according to Blackbaud), "a specific step you take toward securing a donation from a constituent. It can include meetings, mailings, telephone calls, and email messages."  In other words, Actions track us reaching out to donors.  Makes sense as the database is designed for tracking donation solicitation.  Actions are well designed for that.



However, what about when a donor acts on our behalf?



Other examples might be:



1) Board Member hosts a donor engagement event at their house.

2) Festival selects a day if you bring a canned food donation for our org, you get a discount on your admission.

3) A school engages in a letter writing campaign on our behalf.



All of these are crucial information to include in a Constituent's record, but I can't think of an intuitive place to put it.  As I said, right now we track these in Actions and use the "Task/Other" category.  I could see an argument for putting it in Notes, but then it wouldn't be very obvious or easy to pull in a query.



I'm curious, how do others address this?
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Comments

  • Azalea Schiller
    Azalea Schiller ✭
    Tenth Anniversary First Reply
    Hi Jerod,



    We track our Food/Fund drives as an appeal in RE. The appeal ID we use is FD. Hope that helps you out. We will also track who held the FD by using the reference line for example "Rocky Mtn School FD" or we also have a few that are constant and we added thoses as an package code.



    Thank you.
  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    If actions work for you - use them.  To me if the event is initiated by the constituent, it definitely should be recorded on their record.  The action can be assigned to the board member in your example.  

    I don't think your examples really fit the definition of appeal - to me anyway - appeals are initiated by us and sent to/involve contact with a broad group of constitutents.  You could use appeal if you are tracking donors they get you add to your database.  You could then use a solicitor relationship to track and report.  I'm just hesitant to get a list of appeals that is huge. 



    When a constituent does this do you have to set up special campaign or fund or is it just incorporated in your existing fund structure?  Do you know/keep track of who they invite/contact? 
  • Nicole S
    Nicole S ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 3 Name Dropper Photogenic
    I think that action can make sense, depending on what you want to track.  I don't like to muddle up funds, but I also think that may work because you could create a relationship between that individual and the fund and make them a solicitor on the fund as well as the gifts.  I can also see how you could possibly use events by making them the coordinator and linking all the gifts to the event.  You could also use an appeal -- similar to fund you could make the constituent a solicitor (no relationship option thought).  I definitely think that regardless of the tracking method I would make the constituent the solicitor on the gifts and possibly the donors too if appropriate.  (I know sometimes when solicitors are linked to donors they don't necessarily know personally they tend to get confused so linking just to the gift could make more sense.)
  • Rob Crenshaw
    Rob Crenshaw ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    At Oregon Food Bank, we are moving towards tracking food drive coordinators and progress via a proposal in their record - this allows us to use proposal attributes to flag things such as food poundage that should be considered part of the total raised as well as link the individual gifts to that proposal for a grand total. We also have a separate appeal for these and use the reference field as a pivot field when exporting data for reporting (e.g., "Walker School Fund Drive" would be the reference for all gifts coded to that specific drive). As long as the reference is consistent, it makes it pretty easy to create a pivot report in Excel to report on the total raised. Ideally, this would also be the proposal name used in the fund coordinator's proposal record. Also, another benefit of using the proposal is you can link Actions to the proposal so they are all in once place for the total picture. Feel free to send me a message if you'd like to chat about it some more!

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