I need help with Events.  We have an event where a person fasts and is sponsored by individuals.  Rather than tell you what I have done, can you share with me the best practice in how to enter this.  In the end, I want to see each participating individual, with a list of their sponsors.  I've checked out the RE help, but for some reason, it isn't sinking in!  Thanks!

Hey Jody,

You can print an Event List to list your participants under the sponsor's name, or list participants and their sponsors (BB31505). Does that help?

Hi,

 We actually haven't done much of this but were advised by a Blackbaud consultant to do it in the following manner.

• Add the participant as a constituent
• Add a gift attribute (could call it "Sponsored constituent" that has a data type of "Constituent name" in your configuration.
• Add each person who gives a gift as a constituent.  When the gifts are entered, add a "Sponsored constituent" attribute using the ID of the participant they sponsored.  You can then query on all gifts with this attribute and total by the participant.

I copied the following from a posting in another area of the forum.  It's another method of tracking these within the Events module:

 Make the Category "Sporting Event" on the General tab of your event. Each registrant will have a "Sponsoring Pledges". That is done specifically for what you are trying to achieve. Registrant is the participant, and under that Sponsoring Pledges is the list of people sponsoring him. As to how to import sponsoring pledge, refer to your import guide. For sure, you will probably have to have the Participant Import ID of the registrant they sponsor.

You can see who sponsored people right in the event module - why the need to duplicate this on gifts?

We enter the participant as a solicitor on each gift he receives.  If John Smith gets 20 individuals to sponsor him in the upcoming walk-a-thon, he will be listed on each gift as the solicitor.  We run solicitor reports to know the total raised by participant to the event.  It amounts to very little additional work and we have been able to provide cumulative totals throughout the years to participants who participated to more than one event.  It does not require the use of the event module if you do not have it.

If you are not using the event module - using sponsors is actually a really great way to do it.

If you use the event module you can capture more details about the event so I would probably still prefer to enter the "faster" as a participant and the donors they get as sponsors.