We're just beginning the process of recording donor cultivation or stewardship receptions that are paid events but not fundraisers. The income from these events is not added as contributed revenue but instead is used to offset the costs of the events themselves.
For example, our opera league members have the option to pay for and attend a handful of receptions each year. Another volunteer group also several reception events throughout the year. The fee charged for these events is not considered a donation.
With this in mind, we'd like to know if anyone out there has done something similiar and what are some guidelines for setting these elevated events up in Tessitura? Do we simply need to tie the income from the event to our appropriate expense GL number or is it more complicated than this?
Any help or guidance would be appreciated, thank you!
Hi Carla,
I wanted to point out that if you set these up as Elevated Events, they are going to be recorded in the constituents’ contribution histories. So while the money may go to a non-contribution GL, you still need to use a fund to take the money and in all other ways they are going to look like contributions in Tessitura. As Dale mentioned, you are going to have to filter out these not real contributions when you do your contribution reporting.
If you want absolutely no contribution record created when you take money for these events you should set them up as performances and sell them through ticket orders. A potential drawback there is that you have to do your reporting on who attended these events through ticketing reports, which isn’t hard or bad just possibly unfamiliar to you.
-Kevin
Kevin Sheehan
Documentation & Learning Resources Specialist
Tessitura Network
+1 888 643 5778 ext 329 Office
ksheehan@tessituranetwork.com
Thank you both for your feedback. It's started an interesting debate over here. :-)
We were planning to set up a separate fund and GL for these events. Since we already use a customized report to track contributions, my thought is that it would not be affected since it only pulls from selected contribution funds already. Does this sound right to you?
One of the biggest reasons why I'm interested in tracking it through Elevated Events is so that we can track guest names and include them in additional cultivation efforts. If we track the events as ticket orders, would we still have the ability to track the guests that they bring? We often don't receive the guests' names until well after the event tickets are purchased. My guess is no but perhaps there's a way that I haven't learned about yet?
Thanks again for your input!
Carla,
The nice thing about elevated events is that you can use them to track guests/seating/etc. without using them for the actual contributions. If you want you can have your tickets sold through a ticketing order then run reports on tickets sold and manually enter the information in HISTORY - EVENTS. There are then a number of useful reports you can use to pull the guest/level/seating information. I know of a few organizations that use the system that way.
Dale