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!
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