Categorization of Campaigns, Funds, and Appeals

Stephanie Pagan

I'm interested to hear how people have been utilizing these categorical systems to further refine tracking and reporting. Looking for ideas. Best Practices.

Ryan Carr

@Stephanie Pagan
I think a lot of people seem to forget about Fund Type and Category, and try to use Campaign to track those breakdowns. We had an issue at my school where Campaign was being misused and had to be retroactively cleaned. I'd be happy to discuss this all further - it's a never-ending topic!

Karen Diener

@Stephanie Pagan:

I'm interested to hear how people have been utilizing these categorical systems to further refine tracking and reporting. Looking for ideas. Best Practices.

I've seen a lot of variation because of how everyone sets up their gift coding structure, so am not sure there is a best practice aside from being consistent with using them and making sure everyone understands how to apply them. But here are a few examples that may help you think through what is best for your organization:

Campaigns: When these are annualized (Annual Giving FY25, Annual Giving FY26….) organizations have used the category of “Annual Giving”. Some organizations use categories to help with 990 reporting. They may want to track giving with different campaign codes for their own internal tracking - such as “Direct Marketing” (responses to solicitations) and “Annual Fund” (donations without a reply device) - but they add a category that would equate to item f in the image below.

Funds: Categorize by capital vs. endowed funds vs. operational funds.

Appeals: If you send four solicitations per year, this would generally equate to four different appeal codes. If they all have the same category of “solicitation”, it is easy to query and see how much came in during the year from these four different appeal codes. You may do the same for events, newsletters, or any other types of fundraisers you have.

I hope that is helpful!

Stephanie Pagan

@Karen Diener:
Thank you very much!

@Stephanie Pagan:

I'm interested to hear how people have been utilizing these categorical systems to further refine tracking and reporting. Looking for ideas. Best Practices.

I've seen a lot of variation because of how everyone sets up their gift coding structure, so am not sure there is a best practice aside from being consistent with using them and making sure everyone understands how to apply them. But here are a few examples that may help you think through what is best for your organization:

Campaigns: When these are annualized (Annual Giving FY25, Annual Giving FY26….) organizations have used the category of “Annual Giving”. Some organizations use categories to help with 990 reporting. They may want to track giving with different campaign codes for their own internal tracking - such as “Direct Marketing” (responses to solicitations) and “Annual Fund” (donations without a reply device) - but they add a category that would equate to item f in the image below.

Funds: Categorize by capital vs. endowed funds vs. operational funds.

Appeals: If you send four solicitations per year, this would generally equate to four different appeal codes. If they all have the same category of “solicitation”, it is easy to query and see how much came in during the year from these four different appeal codes. You may do the same for events, newsletters, or any other types of fundraisers you have.

I hope that is helpful!