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?
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.