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Creative Uses of Fundraising Hierarchy Category and Report Codes

Chris Nungesser

Hey Community!

My organization is about to migrate into Altru. We're starting the configuration of our new Altru database. As you know, each designation in the fundraising hierarchy has fields for Category, Report Code 1, and Report Code 2. I was wondering if anyone has ideas about how we can use these fields.

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Our hierarchy set-up will allow us to separate out Corporate gifts, Grants, and Individual contributions. Capital gifts and Fundraising Event revenue is being tracked separately from the other gifts. So we don't need to use Category for those types of break-outs.

I was thinking that I could group designations by their departments or focuses - Education, Conservation, General Operating/Unrestricted, etc. But that's basically the best idea I've had. I'm a bit stuck. So if you have any best practices suggestions for me or maybe a weird outside-the-box idea, I'd love to get your thoughts on this.

Thank you.

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Comments

Karen Pigg

Chris,

I am trying to work out how to set up our Fundraising Hierarchy and came upon your question. I was wondering how you ended up configuring your Hierarchy.

Karen

Chris Nungesser

Hi Karen Pigg‍!

I hope you're doing well. Thank you for your question. I haven't done too much with the hierarchy with regards to Category or Report Codes. I haven't forgotten about them. I am just being patient to see what my reporting needs are as I use Altru. So I don't have much too much to share there - yet. I have been using the Description text box to enter codes that help me with reports (sort of like entering GL codes there).

With regards to the Fundraising Hierarchy itself, I structured in a way that would pretty closely match the reporting structure of our finance department. I thought about my needs in terms of reporting and storytelling. I also spoke with my director and my teammates in Finance. I would walk them through the pros and cons of each structure and get their feedback. And I was totally in favor of this one structure I had mapped out. But after those conversations, it really became clear that this other structure would better meet our needs.

If you wanted to see a map of our basic structure, I could probably explain it better and quicker on a zoom while sharing my screen. I could also show you an alternate structure we had considered and ultimately opted not to go with. So if you want to hop on a quick zoom, let me know. We could set that up.

But here are a few basic thoughts for you:

The first thing for you to really question how many hierarchies you need. Blackbaud really pushed us to have only one hierarchy, one total. And there are definitely benefits to that. But, if you're organized, you could probably have several. Each hierarchy has one Total (the top level). So all your revenue rolls up to that one Total. This makes certain reports easier. Want to know how much revenue you pulled in? You could, basically, just see what's tied to that Total. So that's convenient. But in doing that you also lose one level of specificity. If some or all of your Initiatives (Level 2) were moved up to Totals (Level 1) then you free up the third level (Fund, Project, Program) to capture more detail. I'm not saying this is the right way to go, but it's something to consider. I feel like you would need to be more organized with your reporting than if you only had one hierarchy. I would also be very thoughtful about your reasoning for wanting to split them up. Ultimately, we went with one total and that was probably the right move for us. Having said that, I do wish our implementation team had spent more time considering the advantages to having more than one total/hierarchy.
Think about the reports you've been asked to pull in the past. I would let those reporting needs guide your hierarchy structure. I don't know your funding needs, so forgive the clunkiness of what I'm about write. But do you normally need to report on how much you raised for the butterfly house from any source? Or is it more about, say, the sources of your gifts? Like for us, we track general contributions (e.g. individual giving), grants, corporate giving, and fundraising events separately. So those categories became some of our Initiatives. So instead of having one fund for Butterfly House. I would have a Butterfly House fund under each of those initiatives (like Grants-Butterfly House, Corporate-Butterfly House, etc.). It feels crazy redundant, but makes it super easy to pull something like our Grants revenue into reports (because all Grants under tied under one Initiative). In my planning process, I realized that nobody really asks me how much we raised for the Butterfly House last year. But I frequently have to pull reports on Corporate revenue and Event revenue and so on.
This is kind of a small thing and it may not apply to you, depending on the structure you go with. But I mentioned earlier that we track "general contributions" separately. I split that category into two Initiatives. One for Unrestricted gifts and the other for gifts restricted by purpose. So Unrestricted and General Operations. This has been nice. It makes many reports easier. Also, and probably more importantly, it allows me to track the success of specific fundraising efforts in a way that I couldn't if, say, I only have one bucket for unrestricted gifts. Like if I only had the Annual Fund and that was it. So I have multiple unrestricted funds to allow us to tell different stories at the same time.
- A big consideration here is that each designation can have a donation page web form with Altru (and only one). So the Fund for Ladew might be one designation. And then maybe this year you all had a COVID relief type campaign. If so, maybe you'd want to see a online donation page with language tailored to that specific fundraising effort. You could either edit your Annual Fund web forms, which might work. Or you create a separate designation for that fundraising effort. So your online donation page needs can also impact your hierarchy.
- There's also a consideration around the use of Appeals and their tracking limitations with online gifts.
Lastly, I would just encourage you to think really long term when you are mapping your hierarchy. Ideally, the structure you design will work for your organization now, but also meets your needs down the road. It's not that you couldn't change structures later. But based on my experience, that can make historical reporting much more challenging.

Sorry this has gotten long. One more thing to share, it's more closely related to memberships. There are a several ways to handle your Patron Circle memberships. This was an area where Altru didn't not perform the way we had expected based on our conversations with Blackbaud. I'd be happy to discuss this with you as well and share the various options we considered.

Chris

Taylor Nord

@Chris Nungesser
Thank you for taking the time to share this! There are some really great points and I'm looking further into the utilization of categories and report codes to help with pulling this info in future reports.