Corporate Sponsors on a Rolling Calendar

Miki Martin

We have a corporate sponsor program at our school that has typically been set to the calendar year even though we operate on a different fiscal year. Our Director of Development is looking to change it so the corporates can join at any time of year and still realize the benefits of tickets to all three events we hold.

Has anyone managed something like this in the past? We would need to track when their renewal date is if we are moving away from it always being January 1. The only thing I can think of is adding an attribute somewhere. I am beginning to use a few constituent attributes again but have shied away from them because some records are so full of useless information or things that are tracked elsewhere (I, unfortunately, have not been able to get the time to really clean up the unhelpful information here).

Any other ideas are welcome! Thank you all so much!

Faith Murray

A membership might work better, if you have that module: they have beginning/end dates. Otherwise an attribute or secondary constituent code could work fine as long as you're consistent with entering the “renew by” date and set up queries accordingly. The important part won't be which field you use, but how consistent your team is on pulling the renewal lists and following up throughout the year. From feedback I've heard with other development departments, ongoing membership maintenance like that (on any group other than major gifts) is tougher to follow up than a one-time push effort that happens once a year - so there's more room for followthrough lapses unless you have a good automated system.

Miki Martin

Being a high school we do not have the Membership module. I was contemplating an attribute, which I think would really be the best option for us. We are a very small department so the corporate sponsors are really managed and handled completely by our Director of Development.

I think you nailed it right on the head with consistency, Faith. I'm trying to move us into more documented procedures but it's a lot for one person to have to do on top of everything else, which I know many here can understand! Thanks so much for your insight!