We are preparing to start a multi-year campaign which will likely include gifts to Endowment, Capital, Planned Giving and Operations. Would anyone be willing to share their Tessitura structure for a similar Campaign? Or, thoughts on what has or hasn't worked for you? I'm not sure whether we should create one grand Campaign with Funds for Endowment, Planned Giving, etc or if Planned Giving should be it's own Campaign with a Fund for this specific Campaign...?
Thanks for any thoughts.
We have distinct campaigns for Endowment, Planned Giving, and two previous capital campaigns. Within each campaign we use funds and designations to differentiate between specific projects and needs, (except for Planned Giving--we don't actually process any gifts to that campaign, it's more for cultivation purposes.)
The biggest thing to be aware of is how it affects your reporting and list pulls. I typically just pull reports by campaign for annual fund, but that doesn't necessarily work for a multi-year campaign. So practically, If I want to look at a full picture of a group's giving over a fiscal year, I often end up pulling the annual fund numbers separately from the endowment numbers.
If you are using Solicitations, another (somewhat less significant) thing to think about is that each constituent can only have one solicitation per campaign/designation combo. So if you make an Endowment ask one year and then want to come back with another ask next year, you have to give the two solicitations different designations or you get an error. We've worked around this by having year-specific designations solely for our Endowment solicitations, (END 13 General, END 14 General, and so on...) It's perhaps not ideal but it works for us.
I'd love to hear what other people are doing with these, too. A few of us spoke about it at the conference and it's an area of much interest!
Matthew,
Thanks for sharing your system.
I agree, it is an area of much interest because of the options. Reporting out is my primary concern so I'm looking for the most report-friendly way of building it.
We also have an existing multi-year Campaign for Endowment. I'm trying to decide whether or not Endowment gifts from this new 50th Anniversary Campaign should go into that existing Endowment Campaign (tracked with a 50th Anniv appeal), or if I should build Endowment as a Fund of the 50th Anniversary Campaign.
Thanks again for your input!
Hi Keri,
Six years ago we started a Major Campaign that consisted of Endowment, Capital, and Programming options, so each of these were created as its own campaign, since where the money was going in the GLs was in 3 different areas. Although we had gifts that previously had gone to a generic endowment, we did create a specific Major Campaign Endowment campaign. Since these campaigns are multi-year, each year we change the Fiscal Year in the campaign setup, to reflect the year that it is being entered, although posting date/gift date also help to determine what fiscal year it came in.
Something to consider is what things do you want to report out. Often our reports separate how much came in from the board, how much from staff, so we created funds to reflect this for each of the campaigns and also funds to differentiate individuals, corporate, foundation and government. (It does create a lot of funds to sort through while doing gift entry, but we found the advantage of reporting to outweigh it.)
Since Planned Gifts go to the endowment once they are realized, we only enter those in the Planned Gift tab, not in contributions. However, we did create some protocol of entering/coding any bequest/Planned Gifts that was to be counted to our Campaign goal. Then once a planned gift was realized, we put it to MC Endowment and adjust the coding in the Planned Gift tab so it isn’t counted twice.
The one thing that some of the Devo staff have mentioned as a complaint is when a donor makes a multi-year pledge, such as $20,000 over 5 years, but make yearly payments from their foundation. We soft credit the payment to the person and adjust down their pledge, but it’s not easy to report to a donor that they have paid $4,000 on their pledge of $20,000 and now owe $16,000. It looks like their pledge is $16,000 and nothing has been paid on it, although they also have a soft credited amount for the $4,0000.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
T.C. Brown
Database Administrator
412.392.4834
From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Keri L. Noerrlinger Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 7:40 PM To: TC Brown Subject: [Tessitura Development Forum] Multi-year Campaign
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Keri -
For us, all of our campaigns are tied to fiscal years, so if you are giving a multi-year gift, it goes into several different campaigns, and can either be "tracked" by using a designation or as you mentioned, possibly an appeal.
We are on the verge of jumping into a new 5-year campaign tied-in with the university, and are looking forward to using Solicitations to track these multi-year gifts. It's true what Matthew said about a single combination of campaign and designation, but we've created a special campaign specifically for this multi-year university campaign, and its used ONLY in Solicitations.
Example: You want to give a $50k gift to the Victors Campaign, paid $10K/yr over 5 years. For us, your pledge is actually going into 5 different Individual Giving campaigns (covering the 5 fiscal years), but you will have one Solicitation in the Victors Campaign for $50k, so we can track you as a $50k donor there.
Since the campaigns don't "match", the one downside is that Tessitura won't automatically calculated the "cont amt" (received amount) as you process the payments each year. But in v12, you will be able to choose which Plan (Solicitation) you'd like to apply your gift/pledge/payment to - so that functionality is on its way.
We try to limit adding any new types of campaigns to our setup, and instead use designations more creatively. So to your question, if all the money is technically going to the same "bank account" - I'd maybe not create a new campaign. You're just looking for a way to track gifts to that account for a certain period of time - so an appeal or designation may be more appropriate.
Like I said, we're just on the verge of launching into this multi-year setup, so I'm not sure of the pitfalls of this process yet. Essentially our contributions are processed to match how Finance thinks of the gifts, and the Solicitations/Plans are setup to the way Development officers think. (The difference between a "$50k" gift and 5 $10K gifts over 5 FYs)
Not sure if that helps, but it is certainly an area for exploration...
Beth
We had a major comprehensive campaign in which contributions were going to multiple campaigns over multiple fiscal years and since we were in the silent phase (full disclosure that our campaign never got out of the silent phase) we were only tracking contributions that were specifically solicited for the comprehensive campaign. We did this tracking through appeal and source codes that were specific to the comprehensive campaign. Our reporting was done using a customized report that allowed us to pull on appeal category. Please let me know if you would like more details and I would be happy to share.
Best
Jess Levy
San Francisco Opera
415-565-3283
Thanks, everyone. This information on how others have handled the situation will be helpful as I propose a system for our own campaign.