Track Reporting to Donors

I just wanted to interject that the campaign you select for an appeal doesn’t matter in 99% of circumstances.  Sources (through appeals) do not control which campaign contributions or ticket purchases are attributed to.  All that campaign/appeal association will do is link expenses from the appeal to the campaign on an expense report buried on one of the campaign detail tabs.  When you select a campaign on a source report it does not select associated appeals, but rather transactions attributed to that campaign.  In other words it selects which products and contributions are listed.  Any source from any appeal that is used for one of the transactions selected by the report will be listed, whether or not the appeal is associated with the campaign.  So, selecting a random campaign or a dummy campaign is totally o.k.

The 1% circumstance when the campaign on an appeal might matter is when you are selling a gift certificate.  If there is no product in a ticket order from which a campaign can be selected, the campaign will be taken from the source used for the order.  And that generally only matters because the fiscal year assigned to the gift certificate transaction is pulled from the campaign (just like any other transaction), so if the source is from an appeal tied to a campaign with an old fiscal year the gift certificate sale will be assigned to that old fiscal year on the GL reports (which generally makes finance people unhappy).

The moral of my story is don’t let that campaign field on appeals hold you back when you are devising your appeal structures.  And I guess make sure gift certificate purchases use a an up to date source.

Kevin Sheehan

Documentation & Learning Resources Specialist

Tessitura Network

1 888 643 5778 ext 329 Office

ksheehan@tessituranetwork.com

I just wanted to interject that the campaign you select for an appeal doesn’t matter in 99% of circumstances.  Sources (through appeals) do not control which campaign contributions or ticket purchases are attributed to.  All that campaign/appeal association will do is link expenses from the appeal to the campaign on an expense report buried on one of the campaign detail tabs.  When you select a campaign on a source report it does not select associated appeals, but rather transactions attributed to that campaign.  In other words it selects which products and contributions are listed.  Any source from any appeal that is used for one of the transactions selected by the report will be listed, whether or not the appeal is associated with the campaign.  So, selecting a random campaign or a dummy campaign is totally o.k.

The 1% circumstance when the campaign on an appeal might matter is when you are selling a gift certificate.  If there is no product in a ticket order from which a campaign can be selected, the campaign will be taken from the source used for the order.  And that generally only matters because the fiscal year assigned to the gift certificate transaction is pulled from the campaign (just like any other transaction), so if the source is from an appeal tied to a campaign with an old fiscal year the gift certificate sale will be assigned to that old fiscal year on the GL reports (which generally makes finance people unhappy).

The moral of my story is don’t let that campaign field on appeals hold you back when you are devising your appeal structures.  And I guess make sure gift certificate purchases use a an up to date source.

Kevin Sheehan

Documentation & Learning Resources Specialist

Tessitura Network

1 888 643 5778 ext 329 Office

ksheehan@tessituranetwork.com