Hi all,
My org has set up campaigns & appeals that don't exactly fit best practice. Since taking on Tessitura in around 2007, the devo side has set up campaigns as follows:23/24 President's Circle (individual gifts 1k-10k membership umbrella)23/24 Impresario Circle (individual gifts 10k+ membership umbrella)23/24 Bequests23/24 Foundation Gifts23/24 SponsorshipEtc.The appeals look something like this:
23/24 President's Circle Direct Mail23/24 President's Circle Telefund23/24 President's Circle Personal Solicitation23/24 Box Office DonationsEtc.And inevitably, the source codes end up being identical to the appeals: 23.24 PC Letter, 23.24 PC telemarketing, 23.24 PC personal solicitation, etc. Just feels like a repeat.It's my understanding that best practice would be to create campaigns that are time specific, but are purpose-driven, for example: 23/24 Annual Campaign - then the appeal in that would be 23/24 President's Circle, then source codes would be how we contact them, like Fall Appeal letter, Personal solicitation, etc. (I hope I understand this correctly!).Might there be folks who wouldn't mind sharing what their campaigns in a fiscal year are? I'm stuck on ideas besides Annual Giving - just wondering how others structure these umbrellas. Also a bit concerned about how to compare historical records if I go about changing these. Any insight to any part of this is much appreciated!
Hi Amy,
So for us our FY-specific campaigns are just FY# Annual and FY# Gala. Within in the campaigns we've got funds which are mostly tied to the donor type, though with some specification of the gift type as well (so Individual - General, Board - Gala, Individual - Major Gift, Foundation - Project, Corporate - General, etc.) and then designations to indicate if the gift is for GenOp or a specific project/area (i.e Education, Show #1, Show #2, Olney Outdoors, etc). For a while our Appeals basically matched the funds, but I've been slowly changing that as it was creating way too many appeals than was necessary, and it made it difficult to when a gift could conceivably be tied to two sources (for example, if someone made a Major Gift in response to our Winter Appeal do I code it to the Major Gift appeal or the Winter Appeal appeal?)
In terms of comparing historical records, I don't have a good idea at the moment. Are you talking about reporting through canned reports/analytics, or simply looking in a donor's record at their giving history? Maybe you could create a key of what previous iterations where to use when comparing past years?
Hi Colleen,Thanks for replying - this is helpful info!Yes, mostly talking canned reports - I think if we change our campaigns, we will have to pull historical comparisons by fund, and not by campaign - or alternatively, by source codes. Unless there is a way to compare a campaign in one fiscal, to an appeal in another. Hmm. Something to ponder on my end. I can probably find a workaround using analytics as well.