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!
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.