Recording Merchandise Requests for Corporate Partners

Pete Hall · November 2015

Hi there,

We have a number of corporate partnerships with companies that have a number of branches. We will often send these branches charity branded merchandise to use in their fundraising efforts (balloons, t-shirts etc). We're currently recording this through a 'Merchandise Request' action with the specific items requested as a 'Merchandise' action attribute and the quantity in the notes.

The original idea was to use this information to look at the return on investment for specific fundraising activities.

This seems a little like a square pegs in round holes solution. Does anyone else do something similar? If so, how do you record this in RE?

Many thanks in advance for any responses.

Pete

Jen Claudy · November 2015

I've not encountered this situation myself, but I think your Action Attributes idea is probably what I'd go with. I would, depending on how many Action Attribute Categories you have for other purposes, devise an Item Code for each item (and attach a picture/image of the item with it's code as the Title to the Media Tab of a Dummy Record, or your org's record). You can then put the Item Codes as the Action Attribute Category, the Quantity as the Description (set as a number field), the date of the request or the date of fulfillment (or even leave it blank and use the Action Date, although I would recommend the current date [F3] if nothing else applies), and the Comments field for additional information. Including the option of "see ActionNote" and putting a longer, more detailed account of anything important to know on an Action Note.

If you already have a number of Action Attribute Categories, you can prefix "MR-" to your entries for Merch Request, or you can use an Attribute Category of "Merchandise Request" put a dropdown table of your Item Codes for the Description, and put the quantity in the Comments field. This means that you need to either train your staff to only ever put the quantity in the Comments field and nothing else, or do regular audits of this field to be sure there are only numbers. When you export the data, you can then total that column. (Which may be what you're currently doing...if by "quantity in the notes" you mean the Comments field of the Action Attribute and not a separate Action Notepad.)

If you want to move away from using Actions, you could keep an Excel spreadsheet, with whatever information you need to track, and then put it in RE as a Media Record. Easy to do if you are a Local Install and can Link that document to RE:7...in this case, you can either open it from RE and edit the document, saving upon closing, or you can access the document wherever it resides on your org's network...either way, it's in RE, which is the important piece. You could do this as separate xls docs for each company/branch/constituent, or one master list on a Dummy Record (I would include the Constituent ID in the xls document).

If you are Hosted, this option becomes much more complex, as you need to Embed Media and can't edit without saving to a local desktop and re-embedding after making edits. If you are on RE:NXT, you can save it to a Dropbox (or similar) folder and Attach a link to the document, which will work similar to the Local Install/Link description above. Or you can drag-and-drop to NXT and use a process like the Hosted/Embed, although easier because it's simple drag-and-drop to the browser window.

My two cents...

Pete Hall · November 2015

Jennifer Claudy:

I've not encountered this situation myself, but I think your Action Attributes idea is probably what I'd go with. I would, depending on how many Action Attribute Categories you have for other purposes, devise an Item Code for each item (and attach a picture/image of the item with it's code as the Title to the Media Tab of a Dummy Record, or your org's record). You can then put the Item Codes as the Action Attribute Category, the Quantity as the Description (set as a number field), the date of the request or the date of fulfillment (or even leave it blank and use the Action Date, although I would recommend the current date [F3] if nothing else applies), and the Comments field for additional information. Including the option of "see ActionNote" and putting a longer, more detailed account of anything important to know on an Action Note.

If you already have a number of Action Attribute Categories, you can prefix "MR-" to your entries for Merch Request, or you can use an Attribute Category of "Merchandise Request" put a dropdown table of your Item Codes for the Description, and put the quantity in the Comments field. This means that you need to either train your staff to only ever put the quantity in the Comments field and nothing else, or do regular audits of this field to be sure there are only numbers. When you export the data, you can then total that column. (Which may be what you're currently doing...if by "quantity in the notes" you mean the Comments field of the Action Attribute and not a separate Action Notepad.)

If you want to move away from using Actions, you could keep an Excel spreadsheet, with whatever information you need to track, and then put it in RE as a Media Record. Easy to do if you are a Local Install and can Link that document to RE:7...in this case, you can either open it from RE and edit the document, saving upon closing, or you can access the document wherever it resides on your org's network...either way, it's in RE, which is the important piece. You could do this as separate xls docs for each company/branch/constituent, or one master list on a Dummy Record (I would include the Constituent ID in the xls document).

If you are Hosted, this option becomes much more complex, as you need to Embed Media and can't edit without saving to a local desktop and re-embedding after making edits. If you are on RE:NXT, you can save it to a Dropbox (or similar) folder and Attach a link to the document, which will work similar to the Local Install/Link description above. Or you can drag-and-drop to NXT and use a process like the Hosted/Embed, although easier because it's simple drag-and-drop to the browser window.

My two cents...

That's great, thank you so much for such a detailed response. I'll have a think about it but it sounds like our current solution might be best. You were right in your second paragraph - I did mean the comments of the action attribute (It's been a long day!)

Thanks again

Pete Hall · November 2015

I was looking through the RE gift record and noticed the 'Benefits' section. This looks pretty much like it would be ideal for recording merchandise.

It has the following fields:

Benefit drop down field which would be for t-shirts, pin badges etc
Count
Unit Cost
Total Benefit / Value (auto calculated)
Sent / Fulfilled date
Comments field
Notes - associated with all the Benefits recorded on the record

I guess in our situation we'd set it up with a gift type of Other and a gift sub-type of Merchandise Sent with an amount of zero.

Would this be an appropriate way of using Benefits? Anyone see any issues?

Many thanks in advance for any responses

Jen Claudy · November 2015

Hadn't even crossed my mind! It's been a long time since I've used the Benefits button on a Gift. That might work better than anything else. Just set up $0 Gift Records and entries for whatever your required fields are. I would suggest a Campaign and Fund, and possibly Gift Subtype, that will allow you to very easily report on these specific gifts, and more importantly exclude them from other lists and reports.

You'll want to test this, because you might have problems if you want to record the Value of the Benefits...RE might not let you save a Gift where the value of the Benefits is greater than the Gift Amount. Again, separate Campaign & Fund should let you enter them as $100 Gifts (or whatever amt) if you need to do that. And be sure to create new Campaign Category and Fund Category if you use those for anything.

Also be aware that this could impact lists and reports using Last Gift fields. But then, there's nothing to say that you couldn't export the Gift data and move it elsewhere if this causes problems for you.