I was wanting to find out if any other institutions have decided to not make Campaign and Appeal required and what the implications of this has been? 

*Little background* We don't always have money that comes in tied to these and we were wondering if it would be better to make up "dummy" groups or leave them blank.  Our fear is that with dummy groups information might get grouped that shouldn't. But we would love to hear from you

You should have saved this for Monday.. I about had a heart attack reading this.

I think you're likely doing yourself a diservice by not utilizing this functionality - even on the lowest level of breaking out Campaigns as just Capital Campaign, Endowment, Annual Fund (Unrestricted), Scholarship, etc. for each gift. There are fewer Campaigns as opposed to Funds and Appeals making them ideal filters for reporting purposes - these save you time and frustration. I further breakdown my Campaigns into Goods & Services, Planned Gifts at Face Value and Auction Items - the latter 2 that never get included in actual financial reporting.

Appeal is extremely important - how else will you know the reasons behind donations you receive? How will you make decisions on what solicitations work and what don't going forward? How do you assess your programs at all without capturing this information? In my opinion there is not a single gift that enters your office for 'no reason' There has been some discussion on what to use for gifts that come in without a specific reply device so you can do a search on that for some good ideas.

Ok - I'll try to start breathing again now... ;)

I still don't quite get why you would not use a valid campaign name instead of making one up? 

All our funds are defaulted to a specific campaign.  They are general in description: capital, endowment, annual fund, equipment, etc.

At this time we do not have appeals associated with every gift but are using this more as we increase development activity and fund raising.