My question is related to Plans set up. Presently our organisation has a set up where our campaigns are set up against our financial year. This has led to some constituents having multiple plans relating to the same goal and therefore all the steps are spread across multiple plans, because there is a version for 2019, 20, 21, 22, 23 etc
I’m considering setting up campaigns specifically for plans that go across multiple years to reduce the duplication. Can anyone share their plans set up and the advantages of that set up? Or potential downsides from setting up as I’m suggesting?
My second question is related to workers. As staff leave are workers simply swapped out or is there a preferred process that retains the information about who has taken what action?
Thanks for any advice – I’m fairly new to Tessitura!
Hi Natalie! So our plans set up for annual giving are similar to your current set up. So Joan Smith might have a plan for FY22, then FY23, and then FY24. Even though it's the same goal, it's going toward a different campaign (and we can possibly track moving her up in giving levels through different goals each year). However, for our Capital Campaign folks have one plan spanning across multiple years, since this is a single project we're asking them to support. Does that make sense? I think ultimately it's up to you to decide what works best for you and your organization. I've seen different places use plans in different ways, so I don't think there's really a wrong or right way to do it.
In regards to workers, for multi-year plans if the primary worker leaves we swap them out (if it's for an annual plan we probably won't unless it's very early in the FY). However, I wouldn't swap out workers for steps already taken since it's still good to know who did what. In our case in doing that we sometimes realize that the worker who left was really the only reason a specific person was making gifts/interested in the project at all.
Hope this helps!
Hello Natalie, Like Colleen, we also build our Plans by fiscal year. For example, donor Susan Smith has an annual fund Plan for FY21, then a new one for FY22, then FY23, FY24, etc. For long time donors it does create quite the list, but I feel the benefits of this system makes it worth it. You can easily track your annual goals for each donor this way, track their history easily of who was their primary worker 5 years ago vs now, and it keeps the Plan Steps manageable. I feel that one Plan for all annual fund efforts would get quite muddled with how many Plan Steps would collect in there. We also store gift documents in our Plans, so if I want to find the documentation for their FY19 pledge, I can easily find their FY19 Plan, open it, and search for the Step with the document. I also feel this setup helps make Portfolio management easier, and reporting on next steps. We also create separate Plans for donors that we're soliciting for our annual Gala, as the ask around that gift is very different from their annual fund ask. We do have two Campaigns that aren't fiscal year tied that have continuous Plans. We're in the middle of a multi-year campaign, so that's just one Plan for each donor, which will end up spanning around 5 years. We also created a "fake" Campaign to use just for Plans, to track Planned Giving details. The Planned Giving button in Tessitura doesn't allow for collecting all the relationship steps and documents that we need to track, so we have a generic Planned Giving Campaign that we use to build Plans and track all touch points for that donor's entire life. Curious to hear how anyone else does it, and best of luck as you figure everything out for your museum!
Thanks so much - this is super helpful and I now think this is the approach I will take too, with only capital campaigns spanning over multiple years.
Thanks Sara, Great point about the plan steps becoming unmanageable if too many years are combined. I believe I have what I need to proceed with a setup that works for our org and create a process document that everyone can follow. Ngā mihi nui (Te Reo Māori for Thank you very much)