Hi,

 We are sending out an appeal, asking our donors to donate to a cause called "Jenna's Fund," and I'd like to get some opinions about how we should track gifts that come in for this. While, it's called "Jenna's Fund," I don't think we should add it into Raiser's Edge as a fund because the money we receive from this appeal will be going toward research, which is a fund that's already set up.  Currently, we only use one campaign type, which is 09 Annual, but I'm wondering if in this case it might be better to set up Jenna's Fund as a brand new campaign, especially since people have already made pledges that will extend into the coming years.  We could also use the gift code function, or the appeal function.

I'd love to get some feedback....thanks so much!

 --Jackie Hirschorn

Hi Jackie,

Is this a one-time mailing, a one time period ask or are you planning to continue doing this indefinitely and calling it Jenna's Fund (And I hope you have language on your reply slips indicating the true restriction or fund this is for to satisfy audit requirements)

 My 2 cents

If it's a one time mailing I would suggest using Appeal - and is it necessary to use the term fund in the title since there is no real fund named Jenna's Fund with a separate accounting restriction setup indicating what it is for audit puropses? (Jenna's Fund sounds to me like you're collecting money to help her personally in some way - not to help your organization as a whole)

If it is truly a Campaign for Jenna or to raise funds in tribute to Jenna and you may send out more than one solicitation I would suggest using Campaign. I would also suggest you market it as a Campaign as opposed to a Fund

If you're going to raise funds indefinitely for research and refer to it as Jenna's Fund maybe you could rename the Research Fund something on the order of Jenna's Fund for Research and keep the same GL.

Things to think about: Is the reason you're doing this because your solicitation a story about Jenna and you hope people will contribute in memory of her or to help her personally financially some way? This may affect how you do your setup as well. Personal patient stories tend to be standard and if you're going to be using a different patient next time to raise money for the same fund it would be best in my opinion to go with appeal.

 It also depends on how you want to report on the money collected - does it need to be kept separate from money that comes in for 'Research' in other ways? Is there a restriction this Jenna thing is covering that your other fund(s) don't already cover?

Other folks may have other ideas - but this is how my thought process works :)

We use different Campaign types to track gifts. For instance, we still receive pledge payments to our 2002 Capital Campaign. Other than that one, we update the Campaigns every FY, ie, 2010 Annual Campaign, 2010 United Way Campaign, 2010 Corporate Campaign, etc. It helps when I run queries or reports to be able to filter using the different campaign types.

 Hope that helps.

Anna

Hi Laurel,

 Thanks so much for your detailed input on this. Our executive director came up with Jenna's Fund, so I will have to ask him exactly how he envisions this appeal. The solicitation, though is specifically for research, and I guess you could call Jenna's story a patient profile; she was diagnosed with melanoma when she was 14, and her story is very touching.

As far as I know, I don't think we will be using another patient profile for her fund, but we definitely need to get more details about the whole thing.

I really appreciate your feedback, and will share it when we meet about this issue next week.

--Jackie

Thank You!  I mainly want this solicitation to be easy to track, which is why I think the campaign idea might be good for us to use....