Full Circle View
You work with purposes and designations, campaigns, hierarchies, and most all of your fundraising efforts in Fundraising. This section offers a full circle view of Fundraising and includes a description for each main area, such as Configuration.
Before you can manage fundraising information, we recommend you use configuration options, such as fundraising purpose types and naming opportunity facilites. From Fundraising, you can access these options under Configuration.
You use configuration options to set up Fundraising for your users. Use these options to manage the various elements necessary to organize and maintain your fundraising efforts. For more information, see Fundraising Configuration.
Designations reflect the specific ways that donors give revenue. In some cases, you can create designations to receive funds on high-level or broad terms using a designation such as Capital Project. Other times, designations require a specific use of funds such as a Library Construction Fund or Stem Cell Research Program.
Designations have characteristics or "purposes" that describe the different ways designation funds can be used. You establish relationships between your purposes to reflect the way your organization handles designations. For example, you may want to break some purposes down into sub-purposes that support a larger cause. This hierarchy enables you to track totals for individual purposes in the context of the larger effort. You can specify goals for your purposes and track recipient, donor, and financial information.
At times, you may need to specify that a purpose should not directly receive revenue. For example, you may create a "Research" purpose, but you do not want the purpose to directly receive funds. In this case, you can create the purpose for roll up reporting for a hierarchy. For more information, see Fundraising.
Campaigns represent your organization’s planned efforts to raise money for specific programs or causes. You can set goals for each campaign and track the progress your organization makes toward each of these goals over time. For more information, see Fundraising Campaigns.
Naming opportunities enable you to raise funds and provide constituents the chance to have their names placed in a physical location or on a fundraising purpose. Smaller-value, higher-volume opportunities may include bricks in a courtyard or seats in an auditorium. Higher-value, lower-volume opportunities may include buildings or exhibits. With naming opportunities, you can track information about opportunities and the donors who receive recognition. For more information, see Naming Opportunities.
A donor challenge is a fundraising tool to help increase support for a specific cause. A major donor or corporate sponsor can pledge a large sum to challenge the organization to raise a specific amount from other donors. A donor challenge can have an internal sponsor rather than an external one. For example, the president’s office can challenge the organization to raise an amount that the department will match. The program includes two types of donor challenges: "Match per gift" and "Lump sum match." For more information, see Donor Challenges.
To measure and compare your organization’s fundraising gain and loss ratios year to year and against similar organizations, you can participate in the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) annual Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) survey. The survey collects consecutive annual data from many organizations throughout the United States. As a participant, your organization receives the annual report of compiled data from AFP, which you can use to help identify areas to improve and to help increase revenue. For more information, see Fundraising Effectiveness Project.
You can track the effectiveness of your fundraising activities, as well as the performance of individual fundraisers. A variety of reports are available to help you measure your organization’s progress toward meeting specific goals. For more information, see Fundraising Reports.