Campaigns, Funds, and Appeals

With campaigns, funds, and appeals, you can account for how you bring in and use the money received through gifts, and track the effectiveness of your fundraising efforts.

Campaigns are your overall fundraising efforts or initiatives, such as an annual campaign toward operating expenses or a capital campaign toward a new building or an endowment. For detailed information, see Campaigns.

Funds represent the donor's intent for how you should use or earmark a gift, such as toward a specific cause or financial purpose. For detailed information, see Funds.

Appeals are the solicitations used to bring in gifts, such as direct mailings, online donation pages, phonathons, auctions, or events. For detailed information, see Appeals.

When you add a gift, you can select which appeal solicited the gift and which fund and campaign receive the money. You can use multiple funds and appeals to direct gifts toward a campaign. For example, a Building Campaign may use separate funds for the design, construction, and landscaping of the new building, and each fund may use unique appeals to ask for gifts.

Tip: Confused? Think of your fundraising effort as a freeway that your gifts travel along. The campaign is the end destination for all the traffic, funds segregate the traffic to manage its flow like carpool and truck lanes, and appeals are the on-ramps that invite and control the flow of traffic onto the path.