Campaign/Fund/Appeal Setup

Daniel Bayer

It's been a while since I've worked at an org that had a C/F/A setup that I questioned, but it's finally happened. I'm very used to having a very small number of Campaigns (Annual Campaign, Capital Campaign, Restricted Funds, etc.) with different funds in each campaign for each year (AC21, AC20, AC19, etc.). But where I am now, they have JUST ONE general unrestricted fund in the Unrestricted Campaign, and have determined what year it's for by searching on dates (the fiscal year matches the calendar year).


Have any of you ever worked for an org that has a similar setup? What's the logic (he asked, as innocently as possible, as he tried to break his brain of the old way of thinking)? How do you work reporting? Especially when it comes to multi-year pledges?

Faith Murray

We actually keep the same Funds from year to year. It has never been a problem for us. The way of thinking at our org (which predates me) is that the Fund shows what designation the gift has. So if you have a Scholarship Endowment that people donate to every year, that designation does not change, hence neither does the Fund, or the GL linking, or the bank account that the GL attaches to.


Instead, we switch fiscal year notation in the Appeal. While the Fund conveys designation, the Appeal captures the communications channel that acquired the gifts. Obviously your Annual Fundraising appeal will renew each fiscal year, so you will have a new Appeal each fiscal year. And if every gift you post has an Appeal (as recommended in Bill Connors' Fundraising with The Raiser's Edge, then you should still easily be able to sort your reports using Appeal as your filter.

Dariel Dixon

This makes a lot of sense to me. In this case, your reporting is simply based of the gift dates. That seems like it makes creating reports much easier, as you only have to worry about changing one field in the report without having to create all new reports every year. However, it would seem like there would be something with the date on it. Would the appeals in this case be dated?


Pledges are a little more difficult, but as long as the gift entry was created correctly, it shouldn't be a problem. I think you would have to try to not count the pledge payments separately, and only count the full amount of the pledge in the calendar/fiscal year you are looking at. Otherwise, looking at Unrestricted Campaign/Unrestricted Fund would be confusing. I think this is where a dated appeal would be helpful, as all of the pledge payments would still be tied to the year of the pledge. That way, you can see that a gift came in 2020 was still paying on a 2017 pledge.

Miki Martin

Faith Murray‍ thanks for posting this! I'm glad I found it. Currently, we use the same Funds each year, too, but do not utilize Appeals at all. Since I'm learning everything as I go I like this idea and will take it to the others.

Karen Stuhlfeier

We use our campaigns to group our funds together for reporting purposes - Annual, Capital, Endowment and Restricted. Each fund is tied to one of those campaigns. Our campaigns and funds remain the same every FY - although several new funds are usually added each year. We have new appeals each year. The appeals are broad - FY21 Annual Campaign and the packages under the appeals are more specific - Fall Direct Mail. The funds are important because they specifically tie to the general ledger and they're how we balance with our finance department.


When your campaigns and funds remain the same each year it makes reporting easy. I have a report in the web view right now that compares campaigns over 6 years. I never have to change it because it's always the current FY compared to the past 5 FY's. Because the campaigns and funds are the same it uses on gift dates.


There isn't just one correct way to do this. For a good explanation of Campaigns, Funds and Appeals I would suggest Bill Connor's Fundraising with the Raiser's Edge.

Judy Spigarelli

I've moved orgs from year to year funds to establishing a fund that is consistent. We use fiscal year related appeals, because the ask (or communication) is done in relation to the fiscal year. In explaining funds to others, I ask them to think about a personal bank account. I do not go to the bank on January 1st and ask for a new account number. The fund is similar to a bank account and the gift date and fiscal year related appeal are great for reporting.

Christine Cooke

We use a limited amount of Campaigns - Annual Giving, Events, Capital, Endowment and Pass Through. All of the funds are the same year to year we do all searching/reporting by date. The different funds fall under the appropriate Campaign. Annual Giving is all of the unrestricted and temp restricted funds that are spent in the same year received. Events and Capital are self explanatory. Endowment is all of the restricted funds and Pass Through are the 2-2 things we record for posterity but do not count in our department reporting (and it's good to know if someone puts a significant amount in that direction) like the parent association activities, and was at a school that had a huge student run fundraising walkathon, we in development wanted to see who was giving all their $$ there and none or little to annual fund.

Elaine Tucker

To me this is dependent upon what your reporting needs are. I've been with my current organization almost two years now, and I've moved away from one fund that uses multiple campaigns & appeals to specific funds for each fiscal year along with specific campaigns for each year. This is driven by the fact that we need to be able to report on our development "revenue" somewhat mimic the "realized accounting revenue" for each fiscal year. Also, we have donors who have multi-year pledges and we want to make sure that those funds "stay" with the original coding in regards to fund and campaign. (which I know it does since it's a pledge payment). Also when doing comparison across years, it's much easier (in my opinion) to do a fund comparison via looking at gift dates and pledge payments that may cross fiscal years to compare funds.


Also, I'm suggesting to our development team to have a fund just for monthly/recurring sustainers so we can (again easily) see who is a sustainer and who is a one time donor. I really like using first class fields to provide information at a glance. That fund will remain one fund and the default campaign can be updated for it at the beginning of each fiscal year.


Yes, this creates more work for me as the database admin, but it has really elevated the information that is available to our development and finance team. We are integrated with FE, so all the gifts from RE will still funnel into the applicable Project in FE - we only create New projects when there is a special need or we have a new Donor Advised fund Created.

Anne Smith

I cannot seem to find anything on Bill Connor's Fundraising. How can I find it?

Thanks!

Dariel Dixon

Anne, you can find how to order the book at his website. https://billconnors.com/book/

Anne Smith

Thank you Dariel, I appreciate your help!

Susan Chomsky

We use the Campaign to identify the restriction level, 1 Gen. Op's, 2 Temp. Res., 3 Perm. Res. the Fund is linked to our GL acct and the appeals define the solicitation (including dates for Event Solicitations)

Karen Diener

This is a bit repetitive of me to post, because I believe it supports a lot of what has been said here. But at the beginning of March, Blackbaud presented a free customer success webinar about this and it was excellent. I highly recommend investing an hour of your time to watch it:

Collect, Fund, Analyze: A Framework for Campaigns, Funds, and Appeals


The part I like is that it subtly reminds people that you need a fundraising strategy BEFORE you decide how to code it. I've seen this for years - people want to go straight to the database and build a strategy or structure around what they understand. And that is not a terrible, it can definitely be limiting for a variety of reasons. In discussions about new initiatives, I have often told people to stop trying to translate to RE for me, and to stop even thinking about the database. Tell me what you want to accomplish first, and then together, we'll figure out what makes the most sense.


Karen

Anne Smith

Thanks Susan, great information. I will discuss this option with my team.

Anne Smith

Thanks Karen, I will look into that class. We have to rethink our way of thinking and start fresh with the new system.

Karen Diener

It might be worth having other staff watch it too. It saves you from having to explain the reasons behind any changes that you'll make and it comes from "authorities".


I've been in a lot of situations where staff make suggestions that are ignored. Then I come in as a consultant and independently make the very same suggestions and the response is "oh, the consultant said we should do this, so we definitely should do it!" I always make sure to give the staff credit, publicly, whenever I can.


Karen

Jennifer Boettger

Hi Karen Diener‍ - the link to the webinar isn't working for me. Any ideas?

Karen Diener

Jennifer Boettger‍

Try this link. It does seem that they occasionally rearrange / recategorize the webinars, and I don't see a permalink.


I also have a bookmark to the main customer success / adoption session page that I refer to frequently!


Karen