How is your organization using Campaigns and Appeals in R.E?

Rodrigo Guardado · December 2015

I'm looking at an organization that makes the campaign code equal to the appeal code for whatever reason. I think it was because it made running the standard R.E. reports easier to use--instead of being able to use the dates to filter out the results via a query. For example, 15Ann (15 Annual Giving) is the campaign and the appeal code is also 15Ann. My understanding is that the appeal code represents the strategy/appeal effort used to solicit the gift. By contrast, the campaign code represents the overrall objective to raiser money which includes goals and an end date.

Now the question--how does your organization use campaign and appeal codes.

Annual Giving

Major Giving

Planned Giving

Corporate Giving

Friends asking Friends (appeal or do you use the solicitor function)

JoAnn Strommen · December 2015

To me having the appeal equal the campaign takes away some of your ability to report/filter that you would have if they were different. We use 'umbrella structure'. ExL campaigns are Annual Sponsorship Fund and Capital. Funds are Annual Fund 2015 and Shaping our Future (name of this capital campaign). Appeals not used on every gift but when appropriate - Dec Mailing appeal, Shaping our Future Board/Leadership Appeal. We generally default appeals to the appropriate fund and campaign.

For Friends asking friends we use solicitor and gift code to record. (Tried usiing appeal for this once but found RE does not support importing solicitor at appeal level, only fund and campaign, and that when in batch adding solicitor relationship does not include appeal level either. Too much manual work to get it all recorded so chose gift code for what we call different phases of our fund raising efforts.

Just my 2 cents.

Nicole S · December 2015

For me, typically:

campaign = buckets like annual, capital, etc. It really depends on what kind of reporting you have to do.

fund = designations, restriction/unrestricted I try to coordinate these with my accounting office, and, again, it depends on what kind of reporting we have to do.

appeal = is the ask vehicle like a mailing (we have multiple and code appropriately), an email, a board ask, etc.

I have been at places that use the same funds and campaigns over every year and at others where they made one for each FY. Depends on how you need to do your reporting. I prefer to use dates to figure it out and let the accounting office deal with pledge payments that belong to another FY. I have found that if I do need a new one for each year, it is best to use a new fund each year or a new campaign, but not both. Does that make sense? Makes reporting in different ways a little more tiresome in my opinion.

I use gift amounts to determine major gift status. Same goes for date or constituency (there is a gift constituency on the misc tab). I try to use a field in RE to determine the details of the gift before I create a C/F/A to measure it for me.

I have seen orgs where there was no real understanding of CFAs and all three fields just had the same values which wasn't helpful at all. Talk to your BO and see if they ahve any requirements. Then think about what will make sense based on any reporting that you have to do. I try to start with the canned reports and see how my data will come out before I try to decide how to put it in.

Then just BE CONSISTENT.

Jen Claudy · December 2015

Even if you don't reconcile with your Finance Dept (with or without FE), I would look at the coding they use. This org and my last job we converted Campaign & Fund to mirror the Finance coding...and at the last job we also had a Required Gift Attribute with another part of the code, just to have it. It has come in very handy when reconciling. And if you don't reconcile now, you might need to in the future, so having a system (and a relationship with your Finance Team, which this can help develop) in place now will make that less painful. We're currently looking for a Chief Development Officer, so I'm in the mindset of needing to accommodate some new requests and not just what we have done for the last 4 years. When I started my job here, I had to overhaul the CFA data to be able to get out of RE what I needed...and I had to start a reconciliation process as well. Now, we've got it down to a science and I meet monthly with a member of the Finance Team...we schedule an hour, and usually are done in 20 minutes, plus 5 minutes for chit-chat. It's extremely easy to do since her Account Code is my Campaign and her Cost Center is my Fund. And when someone sees a gift that has been coded incorrectly, it's not only easy to spot (our former VP of Development would often realize that our assumption when coding the gift did not align with what he discussed with the donor, which may not have made it into RE on the Proposal yet) but easy to adjust/discuss/explain, and easy to confirm that the coding has been adjusted in both systems. Appeal then tracks the vehicle, if applicable, and the Package is available for further detail within the Appeal. This also means that the bottom line on Development Reports matches that on the Financial Statements each month...or it's close and we can easily explain why there is a discrepancy.

This means we have a set of Cpgns and Funds, and use the dates to pull lists of gifts rather than a new set of Cpgns and/or Funds every FY.

shani traum · December 2015

We do as follows:

Campaign by FY general category of funds: 2016 Annual Fund, 2016 Gifts and Pledges, 2016 Friends, 2016 Planned Giving

(Annual Fund is made up of unrestricted funds, G&P is made up of restricted giving, Friends is made up of "Friends" event funds and other funds specific to the Friends organization)

Funds are not year specific - the campaign they are part of is (as above) as well as some appeals (see below)

Appeals are seperate initiatives that feed bring the money in:

2016 December Annual Fund Direct Mail (16DecAFDM)

2016 November Annual Fund Email (16NovAFEM)

Unsolicited

Personal solicitation

etc....

Within appeals, we have packages that are the segment breakdown of the donors.

Lybunts

Sybunts

CYD

etc...

Hope that made sense!

Shani

Debra Holcomb · December 2015

We use Campaign to record our overall goal and appeals as the strategies to achieve that goal. The canned Campaign Performance reports work very well for us with the strategy in measuring progress towards our goals daily.

Bill Connors' book "Fundraising with the Raiser's Edge: A Non-Technical Guide" provides a great overview of how to use these fields effectively.

John Heizer · December 2015

This is a common error for organizations that haven't gotten proper training in RE. Fundraiser's naturally think of "campaign" as a particular push for raising money, but RE uses "appeal" for that.

Rodrigo Guardado · December 2015

John Heizer:

This is a common error for organizations that haven't gotten proper training in RE. Fundraiser's naturally think of "campaign" as a particular push for raising money, but RE uses "appeal" for that.

Yup. That's a common mistake used. How does your organization use Campaigns or track friends asking friends efforts (specifically whenever a donor creates a fundraising webpage to raise money for the organization?)

Rodrigo Guardado · December 2015

Debra Holcomb:

We use Campaign to record our overall goal and appeals as the strategies to achieve that goal. The canned Campaign Performance reports work very well for us with the strategy in measuring progress towards our goals daily.

Bill Connors' book "Fundraising with the Raiser's Edge: A Non-Technical Guide" provides a great overview of how to use these fields effectively.

Does your organization use year-based campaign codes (like 16Ann, 15Ann, 14Ann, 16CORP, 15CORP, 14CORP) or does it use a GENERIC AnnualGiving, CorporateGiving, campaign code? I'm guessing the yearly campaign codes will make using the standard R.E. reports. Let me know.

How is your organization using Campaigns and Appeals in R.E?

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