Hello!
Currently at the organization I work for we do not use Designations and I would like to.
I will be setting up our Designations for the first time and I would love some advice from anyone who uses designations and has success with them. Do you keep them more generalized? or more specific? We have show specific donations so I thought I could set up a designation for every show in the next season. Is this a good idea?
Thank you!!
There are many ways to answer this question!
At City Center our Designations are general-ish. They either match the descriptions of the funds they go with: (ex: the GO - General Operating designation goes with the GO - Ind., Go - Corp, Go - Found. funds)
We typically only create more specific designations for projects that will recur year to year within each area of funding. For example, our GO - Membership fund includes major support and lower level memberships, so we split them up into GO - Membership and GO - President's Council. A recurring designation lets us compare it from year to year.
If we get specific support for a production, we give the contribution a designation that matches its area of support (ex: MS - Main Stage Theater or MS - Main Stage Dance), but the show itself is only listed in the notes. This satisfies our Finance Department, but depending on how you report on your giving, a show-specific designation might be an OK idea, but you will lose the ability to use it for a year-to-year comparison.