Fundraiser Credit for Online Giving

Susan Fioribello

We recently ran Give/Get Reports for our Board for the first time in many years. As is typical, they told us we were “missing” gifts. Pretty much every single “missing” gift was made without mentioning who solicited the gift many online through our giving page.

My VP remembers a time when the donor was able to specify who the fundraiser was that solicited the gift and would like that to happen again. I suspect it was a different database.

So, the first question is: Should we be asking donors on our giving page to indicate who solicited the gift?

If yes, then what is the best method for doing this? I don't see a way to make a field on the donation form that will look up fundraiser names within our database.

I suspect the right way would be to create a Custom field that can be labeled and used for this purpose. However, that field would not allow the donor to search our list of fundraisers in our database. I could possibly build a table so the donors could scroll through a dropdown menu and find their fundraiser. This would mean that I need to ensure this table remains up to date at all times.

What is considered best practices regarding asking donors to identify their fundraiser.

Important point: This is not peer-to-peer fundraising, it is more along the lines of the Board acting as Major Gift officers on behalf of our organization.

Karen Diener

@Susan Fioribello:

I suspect the right way would be to create a Custom field that can be labeled and used for this purpose. However, that field would not allow the donor to search our list of fundraisers in our database. I could possibly build a table so the donors could scroll through a dropdown menu and find their fundraiser. This would mean that I need to ensure this table remains up to date at all times.

This is probably the best option. You could allow donors to type in a name, but then your data will be unstructured and harder to report.

Does your list of board members change frequently? Although it is annoying to have to keep the table updated, I suspect there are already other tasks you need to take care of when there are board member updates. It probably wouldn't take more than a minute to complete this step since it would be a single table to update.

Depending on how your give/get reporting is structured - I highly recommend making the board member the solicitor on the gift itself - you would need to add them to that field and not rely on the gift custom field for your reporting.

Susan Fioribello

@Karen Diener
Thanks for the reply. We do make the Board Member the solicitor but there is no option on the donation page to allow the donor to make the assignment. That is why I was thinking Custom field.

We could add instructions to the Comments field that donor could note the fundraiser, but I feel like there is too much room for confusion as that field is used for so many things.

It seems like a custom field is the only option clean option.

Alex Wong

@Susan Fioribello
I don't know if this is the route you want to take, but there is a more automated method of doing this but does involve you diving into power automate.

• manual setup
  • create a code table of names of board member
  • a gift attribute (custom field) that is tie to this code table
  • donation form that uses the custom field
  • a sharepoint list that translate name to system record id
  • if you already have some tag on constituent record that indicate they should be “selectable” (board member), then good
    • if not, create a tag (constituent attribute/custom field)
• automation
  • keep the custom field up to date
    • power automate the uses constituent list OR Query API to get a list of constituent that should be selectable
    • update the code table with new entries, inactive old one, or update existing (name change?)
    • update the sharepoint list that transalte name to system record id
  • optionally (depends on how you report), you can add fundraiser (solicitor), not easy though
    • automation that checks for gift created, that has the gift attribute but no fundraiser
    • delete the gift and recreate it with the fundraiser and copy all other details (unfortunately, the “edit gift” API endpoint does not allow for fundraiser to be added, only the create gift endpoint has the ability to add fundraiser