New Funds and Appeals for every new Campaign?

Lanny Fields

I'm taking over the RENXT gift entry for someone who is retiring, and I'm re-thinking the CFAP. Firstly, this is only for corporate/business gifts not individuals. We have one campaign per year for all of our corporate gifts. Commitments between July 2023 and June 2024 (the fiscal year) is one campaign. Let's call that 24CORP. Gifts between July 2024 and June 2025 will be the next campaign and so on. Let's call that 25CORP. That's easy. Our Funds don't really change from year to year. With that in mind, do I have to create a new set of Funds to go with each new Campaign? That's what the person before me has been doing for the last 2 or 3 years. And I find it to be very clunky. Our appeals vary. Some are very timely and project-specific, and some appeals stay the same from year to year. However, in reality no one appeal is going to be bound to any one campaign. For example, if a business gives in June toward a thing, and then a different business gives in July for that same thing, then it's the same “appeal” but different campaigns due to being in different fiscal years. The person before me was creating new appeals for each new fiscal year, and I find that to be clunky. Why have it broken down like FY22 appeal, FY23 appeal, FY24 appeal, etc. if in reality it's the same appeal each year? I hope I'm being clear with these questions. Thanks!

JoAnn Strommen

@Lanny Fields Welcome to the BB Community forums.

Yes, IMO, you have good reason to question the existing process.

Funds - that is the one I find hardest to understand why a new fund would be created for each year. Our funds do not change. (That said at previous org, our fund did change but not our CA as the giving for the appeal overlapped covered 3 FY/CY with giving in the fall 2010 thru spring 2012. So we could not filter by gift date.)

Campaign & Appeal - some orgs have campaigns specific to year. Appeals to in my experience are the one component to have specific years. What brought in the gift? We frequently have gifts come in with reply device from an appeal one or more years ago. Person may or may not have received any appeals since that. It's helpful for some reporting to know what brought in the gift. Most of the different uses of campaign and appeal seem to be based on reporting needs. If you can't determine from gift date what CA it was, then you will want a specific one.

You will find that orgs use the CFAP is quite a variety of ways. Each org has to determine what they need with data going in to get what they want for data coming out. I would start by looking at how org expects data to be reported.

Crystal Bruce

@Lanny Fields discussion moved to Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT community. Thanks!

Austen Brown

@Lanny Fields - Here's an informative webinar on best practices for the CFAP structure in RE NXT. I recommend considering what you need for reporting first, then building out a new structure to support that. In general, Campaigns and Appeals change, but funds remain the same. Ultimately it depends on your org and how you want to do it.

Christine Robertson

@Lanny Fields I agree with @JoAnn Strommen and @Austen Brown, but one thing I would add is that you should always discuss the Fund structure with your Finance team. In RE, the Fund is intended to coordinate with the GL, so it's advisable to make sure that any changes to that will not pose issues for reports, GL posting, etc. on the Finance side.

Lanny Fields

@Austen Brown Thanks! I watched the webinar. I have a hunch that we can follow the best practices for Funds and make our Funds evergreen. Funds will eventually be integrated with accounting. However, I'm still not exactly clear on Appeals and how they associate back to Campaigns. I jotted down the note “Appeals are nested under Campaigns”. Our Campaigns are defined by when the gift was committed to. A commitment in June is always going to be a different Campaign than a commitment in July. However both of those commitments - June or July - could each be toward the same Appeal.

Austen Brown

@Lanny Fields - Can you give me an example - say a gift comes in, in June. How would you code the gift for Campaign and Appeal?

Lanny Fields

@Austen Brown:
@Lanny Fields - Can you give me an example - say a gift comes in, in June. How would you code the gift for Campaign and Appeal?

We count campaigns by commitments. So if a sponsor signs an agreement in June 2024 the campaign would be 24CORP. However if a new agreement is drawn up and signed in July 2024, the campaign would now be 25CORP. In either case the appeal could be the same: a print ad in our fall 2024 publication. Let's call that appeal FALL24PRINT. So in June I would code for campaign and appeal as 24CORP + FALL24PRINT. In July I would code for campaign and appeal as 25CORP + FALL24PRINT.

Jillian Kramer

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/267798#Comment_267798

Hi - Can you repost the link to the webinar? I'm not sure what happened to it but it is not there.

Thanks!

Austen Brown

Hi @Jillian Kramer - Some of the links were lost when community changed sites. Here's the link you're looking for: https://prengersolutions.com/webinar/the-best-way-to-set-up-campaigns-appeals-funds-and-package-codes-in-raisers-edge/