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Solicitations, Actions and Gift Tracking and Analytics in NXT

Sanja KlimaAbboud

We are in the process of setting up our processes to be able to track our capital campaign fundraising efforts and to view actionable analytics. Until now we have relied on a combination of reports in Excel and Raiser's Edge, a process that is extremely time-consuming and cumbersome.

I have 2 general questions:

-Has anyone implemented the NXT dashboards and analytics and successfully replaced these old methods of operation?

-We want to use NXT to track and manage our Capital Campaign using the NXT dashboards and analytics tools. Will our Capital Campaign structure outlined below allow us to create accurate dashboards and analytics? (side note-we have been unsuccessful in this until now)

Campaign: Academic Year (2122, 2223, etc.)
Funds: Restricted or Unrestricted
Appeals: Capital Campaign

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Comments

Matt Connell

I have a follow up on your Campaign, Fund, Appeal structure. Appeals are designed to represent your outreach efforts and their success. Using Capital Campaign as your appeal may be limiting if you have multiple efforts under that umbrellas, meaning your campaign announcement, follow-up, last chance, etc. would be harder to separate and report on independently. Appeals do have Packages to help with that separation but the level of reporting available for Packages vs. Appeals is not as in depth. I hope this helps with your thinking.

Angela Tuttle

We just came off of a campaign and we ended up setting up several campaigns. If a gift was not counted in the campaign we used a different campaign than if it could be counted. For funds we have Unrestricted, Temp Restricted and Perm Restricted. I agree with @Matt Connell about the Appeals.

Dana Burton

Sanja KlimaAbboud:
We are in the process of setting up our processes to be able to track our capital campaign fundraising efforts and to view actionable analytics. Until now we have relied on a combination of reports in Excel and Raiser's Edge, a process that is extremely time-consuming and cumbersome.
I have 2 general questions:
-Has anyone implemented the NXT dashboards and analytics and successfully replaced these old methods of operation?
-We want to use NXT to track and manage our Capital Campaign using the NXT dashboards and analytics tools. Will our Capital Campaign structure outlined below allow us to create accurate dashboards and analytics? (side note-we have been unsuccessful in this until now)
Campaign: Academic Year (2122, 2223, etc.)
Funds: Restricted or Unrestricted
Appeals: Capital Campaign

Matt Connell explained appeals well. Since our beginning a year ago with RE, we (admins) have been tracking campaigns (RE recommended we only have 2-one for basic budgeting, the other for ‘something special’-ex: our building fund) by different methods, designations, donor retention and type of donor, giving for the fiscal year, etc. When you click on a section of this report, it opens a window with a summary.

Karen Diener

I do sometimes get concerned with people using “Capital Campaign” for a multi-year campaign. If it is comprehensive, and every gift counts, you might not need to do any other coding. You just need to know the official start date of The Campaign, and then you may be able to use gift dates. If that is the case, webview dashboards have dates as filters, and you can use those.

Another option might be the Campaign Category. It is on the record for the Campaign, and is also a filter in webview dashboards. If you have multiple Campaigns that are also part of The Campaign, use the Category field to group them together.

It is hard to say what will work specifically without knowing more about your ongoing structure and your Campaign, but I always advise to NOT disrupt your usual gift coding structure in order to manage a campaign. There are other options.

Karen

Jeannie Goings

NXT dashboards are great IF you do not have split gifts or gifts from a DAF where multiple donors are listed. For split gifts, if you want to see totals at the fund level, the FULL amount of the gift displays in the dashboard. For gifts from a DAF where multiple donors are listed, if you try to analyze by constituency or ---say class of, if you are a school--- the full amount posts to the dashboard. The dashboards are great if ---close--- is good enough.

Miki Martin

Welcome to the Community, @Sanja KlimaAbboud!

I started using NXT dashboards last year and I love the ability to now allow other users to quickly see information at a glance. I think what's already been shared here is great information. I am appreciative of the points @Jeannie Goings shared about them capturing full amounts. I feel like I may have known that but seeing/hearing it again is really helpful to keep in mind. @Matt Connell and @Karen Diener always offer great advice, too, and are spot on regarding appeals.

Building your own dashboards, which is what I have done, is great because you can specialize exactly what you want to pull. Do you need to create a new campaign each year for the academic year? These, like reports in DB view, can run off your fiscal or calendar year, or even a specific time period. Having the same campaign (and fund, for that matter) over several years is helpful for comparing different years. I have restructured some of ours over the last year because of this. Our fiscal year doesn't quite line up to the academic year but it's close and helps a lot when dealing with Finance.

Hope all of these ideas help!

Potique Johnson

@Matt Connell
Matt,

I have taken a class and read the Appeal Users Guide. It seems that I remember that you are able to put in “Actions” within the Appeal record so that they record on all of the Donor Records. But currently I can't figure it out. How does the appeal record action communicate with the Donor Records which we used for that particular appeal? I see no way to attach our query? Are we required also to do a global action? or Import a list?

Also, I read information on Packages, but again how do we attach the various queries to the packages?

Any assistance or direction you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

Potique Johnson (she) Call me Tiki