Fundraiser Credit Tracking when donor is transferred

Potique Johnson

Hi. This year we have been “turning” our donors almost every 3 months. Some we put in “eternal stewardship” where they need only minimum contact, but still need to stay in touch. Others we put on “hold” and in regular stewardship for 3 to 6 months until their pledge is paid off or maybe they requested no further donations for another 6 months, etc. The problem I am having is that when I transfer a donor out of the Current Fundraiser's portfolio and make her the “Former Fundraiser” IF a donation is made by this donor, the system will not credit the correct fundraiser or any fundraiser if not assigned to a “Current Fundraiser”. I need a way to “Tag” donors who had “Former Fundraisers” for a period of 6 months, because if a donor gives a gift then that Former Fundraiser is to receive the credit for that gift. I have tried a Query in order to create a “Business Rule” but that doesn't work either, because I have to “export” the information to get both the Current Fundraiser and the Former Fundraiser.

Has anyone come across this situation before? How did you “tag” the donor's record in order so that the database entry team realized that they needed to “look for a former Fundraiser” before credit was given for the gift? Did you use a business rule? If so, how did you structure the query?

Did you run a specific report? If so, what report and how did you structure?

Thank you for your help and ideas.

Tiki

Karen Diener

@Potique Johnson I've never worked in an organization that gave fundraiser credit unless they were actively assigned.

I think this would need to be manual. If you have the “date to” field populated on the solicitor assignment, the gift entry folks will still be able to assign the fundraiser to the gift based on how much time has passed. They will also need to do this for every single gift that they enter.

You could also periodically run a query of gifts entered in a certain timeframe to see if they need a solicitor added. It sounds like you've been doing that, and yes, it is cumbersome.

Honestly, I would go back to the root of the problem to get more details about why someone gets credit after being unassigned. Maybe they should be assigned for a longer period of time? Three months is VERY fast to churn donors through your process! I'm not sure what the strategy is behind that, but I have never seen or heard of it before. It seems like something that is creating a lot more work for everyone with little payoff.

Karen