Hi thereJust wondering how others deal with solicitations for trust funding applications - generally once we have received a pledge of money we mark the solicitation status as "pledge" and once the funds are received we change the status to "complete".
However some trusts require a report of how the money has been spent, X number of months after the donation is given.
The two options we've considered are:
1. using a solicitation status that marks these solicitations as requiring a follow-up (not great as they can be overlooked by staff when looking at which solicitations have been successful as they aren't marked as "complete")
2. using tasks - but we're complete newbies at using solicitations really and have never used tasks and have no idea how they work etc!Any help gratefully received :) Claire
Hi Claire,
I think I might be able to help...
We use 'reminders' within solicitations (previously called ticklers- I think this is the same think as tasks?). You just double click into the solicitation, add the reminder (we have a drop down list of types, one of which is 'send report') and assign it to the person who needs to do it (I tend to set one for me too if it's for someone else so I can make sure it actually gets done!) and then set a date when it needs to be completed by. You can add 'warn days' too so can put in an actual deadline, and get reminded a few weeks before so you have time to write it.
You can track all the things you need to do by going to Tools-> View Reminders/Tasks, you can set this as the first page you see when you come into Tess if you want (can't remember how, but I can look it up for you) and you can select the date you want to see when things need to be completed by, so you could have a look at everything you've got to do in the next month, or just as of today. I've started using Reminders for other things too, like inviting trustees to event/ contacting them to check about an application - I think you can get different task types added quite easily.
As yet I've not found a good way of reporting which allows me to see these reminders/ tasks alongside solicitation/ deadlines/ other info in an easy to use format (the solicitation tracking report has way too much info!)- any suggestions would be very welcome!
I hope that is helpful- any questions just ask!
Harriet