Pros/Cons of various donor sorting methods/ fund specification

Victoria Brancazio

Hello! This might be a simple question, but I'd love to get a variety of feedback! I work for a small org (11 staff members, including admin, teachers, and facilities) and we recently began using eTapestry as a database (October, to be specific -- it's super new to us). We currently have our donations and grant info filed into various different funds (like Annual Fund 20, Annual Fund 19, Unrestricted Grants 2020, Restricted Grants 2020, Unrestricted Grants 2019, etc, etc) but we have a lot of backlogged data, and so, in turn, a LOT of Funds. Our Campaigns are separated by semester/season (Fall 2020 versus Spring 2021).


Because it's a lot of funds, a lot of the times our reports and charts that we pull will have excess information unless we specify to exclude certain funds -- which is doable, it's just an extra step. 


My question is -- what are the pros/cons that you've experienced when sorting your data this way. Have you found that it's easier to have one general "Annual Fund" and subcategorize years via campaigns? Has it been easier to just disable fund after a year or two and keep each fund connected to the FY? What's worked for y'all and streamlined the process? 


Thanks so much! 

Morgan Kunze

Hi, Victoria!  Although I currently work in school admissions, I spent a decade as a development coordinator/manager at several small orgs, so this topic is close to my heart.  In my experience, it's simplest to have the FUNDS be large, umbrella categories representing how the money can be spent (ours were typically Annual Fund and Scholarship, plus a couple of other restricted funds)  and then build CAMPAIGNS as subcategories under the funds (basically as you describe). 


What I like about that from a reporting standpoint is that you can pull granular data for a given time period or campaign type, or compare current/previous years' campaigns (ie. fall 2019 vs. fall 2020), but also see an overview of what you have raised based on fund (ie. if you had a fall mail campaign, a special phonathon, and an event that all fed into the Annual Fund, you can pull a fund total OR look at individual campaigns).  I also like this structure because your grant-seeking might feed different funds, ie. some grants are restricted and some are unrestricted, but you can name them as campaigns and then report on them either independently or as a set (ie. Playground Grant 2020 = campaign report, Restricted Grants 2020 = multi-campaign report which might include non-playgound fundraising, Playground Fund = fund report which can cross multiple FYs).


Full disclosure, I haven't used eTapestry, so I can't say if this will work within their structure - and if you have to re-code a million gifts, this may not make sense for you!  But I like the hierarchical structure of funds "above" campaigns.  Interested to hear what other folks do! - Morgan Kunze (Portland, OR)