Blackbaud Fundraising Designs - Comments

Vanessa comments on End of year receipting

Vanessa — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:21:12 +0000

We send thank yous for every gift we receive within 48 hours. Then, at the end of January, we send out a receipt itemizing all gifts received in the previous year. I use the Annual Statement report to do this. We print it on the back of a letter. The Annual Statement serves our purpses for this except that it:
Does not total gift amount, only receipt amount
Does not allow for enough text to be added in a header or footer
Is not "friendly" or personal

We include the letter to explain the statement and add the friendly aspect (ie thank you)

Vanessa comments on Million Dollar Donor

Vanessa — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:14:14 +0000

I like it too! I assume those are the same as constituent codes?

Vanessa comments on Constituent Groups & Households

Vanessa — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:11:15 +0000

1. We enter Fred and Wilma as one household record with Fred on the Bio 1 tab and Wilma as the spouse. We enter Fred and Wilma Flinstone on our Addressee tab.
2. We enter Elvis as a new individual record.
3. This is tricky for us but rare so we have the 3 or so cases like this in our heads. We keep so much volunteer info on Marge's record and dont want Homer to come up on our volunteer mailings or with volunteer hours when its just Marge. So, honestly, as long as the gifts stay small, we probably would just add Homer as a spouse to Marge's record but not change the addressee. If the gifts keep coming or they move up in amount, we would creat a separate household record for both of them and keep Marges just for volunteer record keeping.

Vanessa comments on Tributes

Vanessa — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:59:57 +0000

1. We only have rare occasions where a pledge payment becomes a tribute (and just note that) but otherwise event registrations, etc. stay true to what they are.
2. Not sure what you mean here either, but we have organizations that send us 30+ tributes a month on a monthly basis. Maybe it would be nice to be able to categorize them - they are all veterinary clinics.
3. We do 2 different types of tributes: people and animal, and its critical they are different acknowledgement letters. Typically, people receive a letter for each tribute but if it is a tribute that is bringing in lots of gifts, we absolutely do a consolidated letter. But, the consolidated letter doesnt consolidate the total $ given, it lists each gift individually.

Vanessa comments on Robert C. Hernandez or Hernandez, Robert C.?

Vanessa — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:48:34 +0000

Last, First

Vanessa comments on Solicit codes: To rename or not to rename?

Vanessa — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:46:00 +0000

I actually like solicit codes and we use it as intended. Before I worked here, they used attrbutes and I moved everything to solicit codes which has worked much better. Id say the biggest "problem" is that its hidden on the tab. No one here even noticed it before I pointed it out. I dont know another name but wouldt call it exclusions or exceptions because we code for all our mailings here, not just to suppress people. I.e. "child" to decide what to mail, not just not to mail.

Vanessa comments on Relationships

Vanessa — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:33:53 +0000

Since we are an animal welfare agency, we also enter pet info with our contacts, both through data entry in batch and through imports. We use the relationship tab for this entry and enter them just like people but wish there was a different way.

Gina Gerhard comments on Constituent Groups & Households

Gina Gerhard — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:47:45 +0000

Am wondering how the address scenarios would work with this household structure.

Our biggest struggle right now is keeping proper address linking updated between family members.

Spouse 1 has a business address that is preferred and a home address; Spouse 2 only has the home address which is their preferred.

When the home address "goes bad" that address needs to be turned off on both records (currently the linking doesn't work well when you're "turning off" an address).

Etc.

These situations are basic to the lifecycle of records but cause a lot of problems. There needs to be more functionality in what is defined as linked and more options to define what we want linked/not linked.

Sankari comments on Solicit codes: To rename or not to rename?

Sankari — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 02:08:31 +0000

I agree with the previous respondent - "Solicit Codes" does not explain the true purpose of the exclusion. Many users confuse "solicit codes" and solicitor information fields. We explain this area as "Global Exclusions" for constituents.

I am very happy to read of the possibility of expiring solicit coes based on date ranges - this is one feature I've been hoping to see for a long time!

Thanks y'all!!!

Paul Morriss comments on Required Fields..when adding new records

Paul Morriss — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:06:09 +0000

What would simplify our data entry? Being able to tab (key) between tabs (on the screen).

For a constituent batch, it varies according to why we're loading them, but usually it's name, address and a mailing attribute.

We use records most frequently, because it's a sporadic thing - new donor, new staff member.

In the last 6 months out of 468 individuals we have entered spouse info for 101. (21.5%)