Cross-posting from the Fundraising Forum!
Does anyone here use the "Initiator" field in gift entry to track contributions that count towards a Trustee's "Get" amount? We have a Give/Get amount for each of our trustees, and want to make sure that we're tracking the donors that they bring in and the gifts from those donors. At TLCC, it was suggested that we use "Initiator" for that function, but the v.15 documentation refers to "Initiator" as being for households and other groups, to track who in that group drove the decision to make a gift.
Old Forum posts on this topic refer users to assign Board Members as Workers on Plans for their prospects and contacts, and then to track the contributions attached to those workers. It seems like that would work for tracking in Analytics, but may not be as easily pulled in reports or as part of the Print Acknowledgments data...
Beyond this, I can't seem to figure out the pros and cons of each approach. Anyone have any insight?
I would love to learn how other orgs are doing this, as it's a challenge I've struggled with and while I found a solution that works for us, I don't love what I do. I create an incomplete Plan Step for each Board member with the Step Type of "Board Get" (which is what we call the additional gift we request that they secure). If a gift comes in that is a Board Get, I go and update their Plan Step with the details and mark the Step complete. Then I use Plan Step reporting to see who has completed this and who hasn't. It's clunky, but it works, and ultimately we just want to see who actually secured their gift. I do like the idea of using Initiator, but I admit that's not a feature I use at all - so I'm not sure where it shows up and how reporting works with that. I'll have to do a bit more reading about it. Mostly commenting here to share my solution, and to see what others do for this same issue. Thanks for asking this question!
Good idea or not, we do both of these simultaneously.
We assign Trustees as initiators on gifts in order to track their "get" amounts. As you correctly anticipate, it's helpful for reporting--including a custom trustee report card report we have--and keeps a record right in the Contributions tab linking Trustees to these gifts.
We *also* attach Trustees to Plans they're working on, but generally use a role of "Solicitor," while we're often giving the role of "Relationship Manager" to the staffer who makes sure the work gets done and giving the staff the Primary indicator.
Though we don't talk about it formally, the notes that end up in Plans effectively capture gift initiator, in that it's generally clear who we've been talking to, etc. by reading through them. That's never been something we wanted to analyze en masse, so the fact that it's woven through the paper trail is no big deal.
As you figure this out, my advice would be to think about what would be helpful to your team in terms of reporting (first) and day-to-day management (second) and then back into a business process from there. Standardized fields are how you can coax information into a system-wide report. If you're only looking for information on a per donor basis, it's less of a deal to have it living in prose, etc.
For us, it's driven by how our donor list for program books should look, and also what our reporting needs are.If someone should truly bear the credit of the gift (like a Board member who secures their get through their corporation), we list the Corporation as the Owner and the Board member as the Initiator and Creditee. When we create the donor list, their total giving is calculated with their gifts + any gifts for which they are the Creditee.If It's more like a referral get that doesn't really count directly towards their contractual $$ obligation as a Board member (like if they encouraged a friend to buy a Gala table), the Board member is only an Initiator (not the Creditee).Like Kate mentioned, you can also get at this through Plans and it's helpful to know the reporting needs in advance.I use the Fund Activity Report with great regularity to check our numbers, create donor lists, proof contribution accuracy, etc. Downloading the spreadsheet allows me to see all the Owner, Initiator, and Creditee data for what I need.
Thank you for this! I think where I'm challenged in figuring this out is determining what is lost by tracking this in Plans (via Worker Roles) vs in the gift entry process (via Initiator). I'm still getting familiar with Analytics, but it looks like the Plans Cube can track activity across Worker Roles, though it might take some doing to look at actual Contributions (from the Contributions Cube), so we'd have to keep our Plans up to date.At the same time, my boss like to glance at the Contributions Tab to get a quick sum of any given trustee's giving. Since the total on that tab adds up all of the gifts on the page (Initiator and Owner alike), it would throw her off. But maybe that's another kettle of fish...On a totally different note, I'm very interested in your Trustee Report Card - we're trying to build towards that in our Tessitura, because our manual spreadsheet is a hideous mess. Is there anything you can share about how you got that all together? Happy to email if that's easier! - I'm at jaimet@tdf.org.
Plan Step reports and I are definitely not friends! I will say that I've played a little bit in Analytics for Worker Portfolios and other widgets that pull from the Plans cube, and it might at least be easier to read...As for the Initiator role, I at least see it appearing in the Contributions Tab when listing gifts, in Fund Activity Reports, and in the Print Acknowledgments Report, which we use to help generate our acks.