Implementing a Sponsorship Audit

Rebecca Rawson

Running a query for how much income was received from Sponsorships in 2021?

Carrie Aranda

How do you track sponsorships in RE? For example, we receive sponsorships for events and use the Event module to track everything event related. In addition, every sponsorship has an Appeal of Sponsorship with the fund being the event name. So, our event director can run a Event income report and it is broken out by appeal which shows her what amounts come in from Sponsorship, Live Auction, Silent Auction, Raffle, Donation Sweep, etc. In addition, I can run a query for all FY gifts where the Appeal = Sponsorship and get a grand total of how much came in from Sponsorships for the year when our accounting department needs that total. It basically comes down to how you are coding your gifts as they come in.

Miki Martin

Being from a private high school, we have both corporate and event sponsorships. Each of those things has its own fund. While I have not been able to get my org to share all the expenses associated with a sponsorship yet so we can accurately track true income in RE (I'm working on it!), I have started this to show them the benefits. Similar to Carrie, I have created a different appeal for each sponsor level, whether corporate or event.

In NXT I have started using their reports more heavily for our Director of Major Gifts and Director of Development so they can see quick glances of numbers. These are great, too, because you can click on a number and get further information. I use the appeal performance a lot in the NXT reports and just specify the appeals I need for a particular report. These can also be shared with others in the org whom I have set up to just have view rights in NXT.

To truly get a full picture, you must be sure you are working with your Finance or other department so you're aware of any incidental costs to track so RE can factor that into the true income when you run reports either from NXT or the database proper. I think reports in this case, more than queries, would be more beneficial. Queries are just going to pull your raw data, whereas the reports will calculate those expenses for you and deduct them from the income to get a net income.

Hope this helps. Good luck!