Hello everyone. I feel like this is going to be an easy question for someone to answer. Does the fund of the gift get assigned by the campaign value or the appeal value during gift entry?We are seeing discrepancies that are impacting our GL. I have noticed on a few gifts the Campaign is FY24 but the Appeal for the same gift is FY23. I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not which is why I am asking the pros.Thank you,Jena
Hi Jena,
During gift entry, the user selects a Fund. The fund determines which campaign the contribution is attributed to. (It is possible though less common to manually select a different campaign associated with the fund.)
The user also selects a Source. The source determines which appeal the contribution is attributed to; the source and appeal describe the effort (marketing, solicitation, etc.) that led to the gift.
Of all these structures, the Fund and Campaign are relevant for financial reporting and the GL. The Fund determines the GLs are associated with the transactions, and the Campaign determines the fiscal year.
The appeal and source do not affect financial reporting and the GL. It is normal for a gift to be attributed to an FY24 campaign (because that's when it was received) and also associated with an FY23 appeal (because the constituent was responding to something sent in FY23).
Campaigns have 2 arms
1) fund/designation
2) appeal/source
Those arms can be independent, like you are seeing with your "cross-selection".
One example, is if you have a DM appeal in the Spring and then a gift comes in on that appeal's reply card in October of the next fiscal year. Your business practice could be to to record the gift within the current fiscal year campaign/fund/designation, but then select the Appeal/Source from the previous fiscal year. An amendment to that process would be to create a source that references the previous appeal/source. I have, for example, a DM Misc Appeal, and I have a source(s) that is "DEV24 DM Misc - FY23 SPAFDM", then I know that gifts to FY24 were received on the FY23 Spring Ann Fund DM Appeal that we sent out 5 months ago.