Entering Gifts From a Past Year for Historical Purposes

Miki Martin

I learned this week that one of our athletic teams raised money on their own during the 2021-2022 school year to cover an improvement. That money was not funneled through our Advancement Department. We want to capture that information, though, since technically they did donate to the school. How have others handled this type of thing? I do not feel like adding a Note to the record is sufficient since that would not be captured under their lifetime giving. All I have, though, are names and the amounts; I have no idea in what form(s) the donations were given or specific dates.

Thank you all so much for your perspectives!

Joe Moretti

@Miki Martin Don't have an answer for you, but these are the types of things that should be KNOWN IN ADVANCE. Some non-profits lack basic common sense communication. For all good data base folks that have protocols and procedures, leave it to upper management to always through a monkey wrench into the mix without ever thinking ahead. Makes one wonder why even have protocols if management is going to do whatever they want without any though process involved. Just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. Then management wonders why reports, lists, etc. never come out right.

JoAnn Strommen

@Miki Martin Sounds familiar. If it were me, I would enter the gifts. Use one date - I might chose Dec. 31. I would put info in reference field like ‘notified in 2023, 2022 gift’. Based on how you work with finance, decide if the gifts need to be posted or should be coded do not post. I would just use cash as pay method.

If those names are not currently in db, we have a specific constituent code for records created only due to support of athletics.

If we could all have everyone do everything correctly, sigh!

Dariel Dixon

@Miki Martin I think this is a data governance issue. If you have a data governance group, or a document that details the information needed to create a record, fall back on that. Reading your post makes it seem like you might not have enough information to tie back to existing records and there doesn't seem to be a way to ever contact the donor.

What is the goal of entering these gifts? You can't steward them, and you'll never be able to line them up with other giving for recognition. They've already hit the accounting side for the institution, so maybe this is just a learning experience and move on. I understand the desire to count them to make the fundraising numbers look better, but in that case I'd enter it under a cash or anonymous record and keep it moving.

Miki Martin

Thank you @JoAnn Strommen and @Dariel Dixon for your insights. I know we need to have documentation school-wide for gifts/donations/sponsors but we are just not there yet. We do have all the donors in NXT already, as they're all parents, so that helps. We just want to be able to get to a point where we can fairly accurately say “this is how much you have contributed monetarily to our school” and be confident in that, minus event stuff.

@Joe Moretti I definitely feel your frustration, and I'm sure a lot of others do, too. I am hoping with our new president we can really get our school to work together instead of having so many moving parts that do not know what each other are doing.