Tracking anonymous donations without creating an 'Anonymous' constituend

• It's not really anything to do with anonymous (which to me means there is a deliberate request/reason to maintain anonymity) but rather that you just don't really know who it is or the gift is minor enough to not really care who it is?

Madeleine Holdsworth:

We always associate anonymous gifts with constituent records with the Individual or Organization name.  Up until this fiscal year, we were using the Anonymous checkbox on Bio1 and indicating the gift was anonymous using that field during gift entry.  We also have an addressee field called Preferred Honor Roll where we also indicate that the honor roll listing is Anonymous.  We are moving away from using the Anonymous checkbox on Bio1 and the anonyous indicator in the gift record, simply because then the Anonymous gifts list as "Anonymous" in our gift reports and it is a royal pain tracking each Anonymous gift to its rightful donor.  Since our gift reports are for internal use and are confidential anyway, moving forward we will only note Anonymous in our preferred honor roll and in the Reference field of the Gift subrecord.  Also, we have some donors who sometimes make anonymous gifts and other times not, and we want all of their gifts on the same constituent record, not floating around in some anonymous constituent record.

Cheryl Haimann:

Now that we are at year-end, Barbara's comment has me thinking.



We automatically assign six-digit constituent IDs sequentially. If I were to manually add a different ID for Unknown, e.g. 20169999, would the next sequential ID be 20170000, or would it pick back up with the six-digit ID numbers?

I've done this, and I believe (98% sure) it picks back up where the auto number left off.  Unless something changed with 7.94.  But if it doesn't, JoAnn is right, just reset the number in Config.



I manually assign IDs for all "dummy" records in our database.  Actual dummy records, to use for testing or training purposes are 4567890, 4567891, etc. and records for storing other information are 456123 (our org's record), 4561231 (unknown donor), 4561232, etc.  My boss stores Actions, Notes, and Media on some of these records when there is not another appropriate place to put them in RE but we want them in there and not floating around on our network drive (or worse, someone's local desktop).  Easy to find/type the ID, and keeps them all grouped together.  Now when RE:NXT allows searching by Constituent ID, we'll be good. 



You could also prefix or suffix with an alpha character.  Just be sure that it won't affect any of your other functions, reports, etc.

Tiffany Harder:

 

John Heizer:

The other "2 cents" I have on this subject is to note that a lot of confusion happens when we don't use clear language.


"Anonymous" and "unknown" donors are two completely different beasts and need to be treated completely differently.  We sometimes get lazy and use the word "anonymous" when we really mean "unknown."


I don't see any way you could possible track gifts from unknown donors without a record specifically for those gifts, unless you decided to create a new unknown record for every gift in the hope that you could later identify the actual donor, but that sounds like a nightmare for me.  You could completely ignore unknown donor gifts, but that won't let you run accurate financial reports.


Truly anonymous donors are donors where you know their identity and they simply want to not be publicly acknowledged for their gift(s).  RE has great built-in mechanisms for tracking these gifts letting you track the donor (which has legal requirements) but not publish their name in a donor list.

Hi, great response!  We are trying to come up with some best practices on actual anonymous donations vs donors, and when to use the Bio 1 tab vs the gift tab.  I would love to hear your thoughts or processes you are currently using.  We would be using the tracking to keep names out of our annual report and are also looking for the best way to gather this information from the donor to see if their intention is to be completely anonymous vs just the current gift to be anonymous.


Thank you very much,

Tiffany

 

Thanks.  I'm glad you found it helpful.


RE is designed to track anonymous giving on a gift-by-gift basis (donors often change their minds over time, or based on gift amount, or based on the fund given to, etc.) .  The "Gives anonymously" checkbox on Bio1 is helpful for when the donor consistently gives with the intent of not being recognized for their giving because it will automatically flag any Gift record by the donor as "Anonymous" and I think should be used sparingly to avoid accidentally marking a Gift record as anonymous when that was not the intent for that specific gift.


All of our remit slips sent with each appeal include spaces to collect information on how the gift is to be recognized, with a checkbox if they want it to be anonymous and a blank line if they want it to be recognized as "The Jones Family" instead of "Mark and Mary Jones."


Yes, it can be a headache having to track each gift this way and it makes reporting an "interesting challenge."  But when it comes to recognition what matters most is keeping the donor happy, "bless their hearts."    (You may have to be a Southerner to get that last jest)