I am looking for standard gift processing times.  For example, how many gifts should the gift processor be able to process in one hour.  Should there be an allowance for errors?  If the gifts are tribute and memorial gifts, how much longer should those gifts take?

Has anyone written an assessment of a gift processor's work?  If so, do you have a template or example of how you did this?

 Thanks.

 Frances Anamosa

 

Hi, my name is Angela and I am actually wondering the same thing as you. If you have recieved any information in regards to these standards of the gift processor, can you please email them to me at a_oglesby710@yahoo.com

Thanks and have a great day!
Angela Oglesby

I'm curious as to what is driving this question.  I won't benchmark gift entry since I believe it puts too much pressure on staff to "just get it done" and quality is more imporatnt than quantity.  I try to look at the bigger picture of meeting our gift entry and acknowledgement turn around time as well as getting other work done.  If someone seems to be lagging or missing deadlines, I can work with that person to find and fix the problem.  That said, I'm curious to see what others out there are doing (or not) around benchmarking.  Best,

Leslie

I think this is a totally subjective question and I would bet almost every organization is different depending on the scope of their operations.

Example: Some organizations only have 1 fund and only take 'annual' contributions with one reply device and only take cash or checks. The time it would take them to process a gift would be extremely different then the time it would take at another organization that has hundreds of funds, offers goods and services, allows stock gifts, receives memorial gifts, receives Gifts-in Kind, receives Grants, or receives planned gifts. The time it takes to process each gift would depend on the complexity of the gift, whether or not the Constituent record already exists or has to be created or updated in some way. This would also depend on whether your staff is part time or full time, volunteer or paid and therefore has some level of skill in data entry. It will pretty much always take part time and volunteer staff longer to process gifts than someone who is full time and paid.

If you have someone on staff that is the lead in this area, you can have them time each gift type and then do an average time, adding a few seconds for each variable such as entry done by part time staff, etc. These values might be more helpful to you than information from another organization.

I agree with the responses.  If you are trying to determine how much staff is needed for your donation entry or if you have a staff member you feel is working too slow or with too many errors you have to make your own organization expectations.  Since I have done the entry in the past I have a good idea of expectations.  If you don't have a lead data entry person to use as a comparison you may need to do some entry yourself to see what fair expectations for numbers entered in an hour and how many errors can be expected..

 

Sandy

I have a great spreadsheet that might provide some insight on gift processing times. This spreadsheet is from a nonprofit client of ours that was processing a large amount of gifts that came in from their lockbox provider. They are a large nonprofit that have experienced staff that used Raiser's Edge, but found themselves on average a week behind in gift processing due to the volume and time it took the staff to process. The spreadsheet outlines the time it took them to perform each task involved in the gift processing from their lockbox provider. They moved forward with a flexible importing tool we provide for the Raiser's Edge, Import-O-Matic. The spreadsheet outlines the time it took staff before using our tool to process gifts and the amount of time and money they are saving by using our tool. The details should help you with your gift processing time question. See the attachment for their details on gift processing, frequency, and time... this is only for 1 avenue (direct mail responses from their lockbox provider). Let me know if you want more information or have questions on the spreadsheet pamb@OmaticSoftware.com or www.omaticsoftware.com Pam