Hi there,
I wanted to put this out there and see if others are doing what we are considering.
In the past we have had two separate campaigns for our AF individuals. One was for what is considered major or higher level donors and the other for the rest of us. When someone gives multiple smaller level gifts during a FY that would total the major donor amount we would have to do a campaign adjustment in order to get them into the correct membership category and level.
The companies I have worked for in the past used the campaign to help reconcile with the finance department since the major donor and member donor each had individual line items and gls.
The Opera does not and this separation appears to simply be a development set up. Is there a downside to one AF campaign and fund with memberships and/or designations helping to distinguish between the giving levels?
We have also used fixed memberships in the past and are just now working with a consultant to move everything into rolling memberships. Moving forward would the one campaign help our development department better identify the needs of the constituents within the memberships as they really could see the micro and macro trends?
Looking forward to your feedback and sharing with our development department.
Michelle
Hi, Michelle:
We have one annual fund campaign into which most gifts go, of all levels. In the eleven years I’ve been in my current position, we’ve gone from five membership campaigns (separate membership organizations for corporations, individuals, foundations, government grants, and support of our young artist program) to one campaign (all of the above in one annual campaign) to two campaigns (annual campaign and young artist program support) to track gifts.
We do our financial reconciliation at the fund level, because that’s where the GLs are—and, a couple of years ago, started tracking giving levels with new funds, so, now, three funds for every one fund we had before. This does mean that when someone moves up from one membership level to a higher one, the Development department needs to do gift adjustments to move from one fund to another, but it does make reporting easier. I don’t see how the added gift entry work (and opportunity for errors to occur) is worth it—and we’ve taken away the opportunity to track consecutive gifts to the same fund from within an account—but this is not my problem!
This is entirely Development-driven, having to do with how they choose to assign benefits to various groups.
Lucie
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Lucie Spieler Florida Grand Opera
Thank you all, so very much. I think we are definitely moving in that direction. Too many adjustments make people's heads spin as our generous donors move up the giving ladder.