How do you use the required "Name" field in the Opportunity record?

Kelly Pearson

Hi, we are beginning to really utilize Opportunity records and I am struggling with how to standardize the required "Name" text field. In our organization a donor can have multiple active opportunity records open at any time, the opportunity could be valid for only one year or the opportunity could be open for a number of years. 


I would love to hear how other organizations use this field, thank you.


Kelly Pearson

Regis Jesuit High School

Carrie Aranda

Your question made me laugh because I have been working on this for the past month and am just getting ready to roll out specific instructions for our development team on how to use Opportunities.  We want to use them to run some projections and analytics so we need them to be somewhat standardized.  Our naming convention is 20-21FY*EventName/GrantName/Program/AnnualPlan/Etc*Restricted/Unrestricted. The asterisks are required and the first piece and last piece have to be exact... the middle piece the fundraiser can name whatever he or she wants.  I really need the FY information and whether something is restricted or unrestricted.  What they name the opportunity (the middle piece) is up to them.  Good luck!

Karen Diener

I haven't been with a lot of shops that use Opportunities well, but when they did, they always used fiscal year in the name.  And it was the fiscal year in which the ask was made.  So there might be "FY19 Campaign" (we were in the middle of a large capital campaign) as well as "FY19 Annual Support" or "FY19 Event Name Support".


Usually they only had one open opportunity at a time, but I don't think it would have been a problem to have two or more open at once.


It worked well.  It was a pretty large organization with a lot of moving parts - I'd say 8-10 major / principle gift officers and a $700M campaign.


Karen

Anne Boudreau

Early on in our use of Proposals/Opportunities a consultant told us we should have the Name match the Purpose.  This was because, at the time, options for exporting data from the Proposal were extremely limited and you often couldn't get the fields that you wanted.  It's worked without any problems for years, so we've never changed the policy.  Raiser's Edge updates and the arrival of NXT have brought many improvements, but this system has always served us well.  It's worth noting, however, that we are a small office (8 people) and gift officers don't have permission to create their own Opportunities.

Kelly Pearson

Thank you all for your helpful responses to my question. As suggested I ended up adding FY dates to the opportunity name field, in addition to a generic campaign name and this seems to be working for now.


I appreciate your assistance!


Kelly Pearson

Tess McHugh

This thread addresses exactly something I'm tackling now, so I'm attempting to resurrect it with my question…

For those who suggest including fiscal year in the name of the Proposal/Opportunity, what do you recommend as a best practice for a museum where projects span fiscal years and occasionally the ask happens one or even two fiscal years in advance of a project? I.e. a grant application submitted January 2021 (FY21) for an exhibition opening in summer 2022 (FY23). I worry that using the FY the ask took place will bury it in a pipeline among older projects. This also leads into questions on best proposal reporting practices and using the name field more dynamically for criteria and sorting, but those can be for another day.

Thanks for any help or advice!

Tess

Karen Diener

I've always used the fiscal year when the ask is actually made as part of the naming convention, which obviously wouldn't interfere with the length of the opportunity itself. I think when you try to match names to things that might change over time - and in my experience, length of payment on a pledge often does - you can spent more time than you'd like managing that data.

Karen

Tess McHugh

Thank you, Karen! You're absolutely right about spending more time than I'd like managing data…

Since you were so helpful here, I hope you'll allow me one more question--how do you recommend using the Deadline field for an instance where an ask may happen in one FY and the project happens in the following FY, or a project spans multiple FYs? My understanding was to put the date by which we want to receive the funds/pledge, which translates for us into the end of the fiscal year of the project, but then I never know whether to choose the starting fiscal year or the ending fiscal year (or is it a totally case-by-case basis?). Or, alternately--should it be the end of the fiscal year in which the ask was made, similar to the Name field? Thank you again!

Tess