We have an upcoming pet walk that we have asked walkers to collect sponsoring donations for. Last year, we were unsure how to enter the money collected by each participant. We don't want to add the people who sponsor them to our database (we are anticipating 2,000 walkers), but we want to be sure the walkers (and their pets!) get credit for the donations. Last year, the gifts were entered on the walker's record with a note stating who the check was from. Then, the gift was linked as a donation to the walker's event registration. This has made it difficult to run a fast report of how much each donor actually gave, although we can get an accurate amount for recogintion purposes.

One idea we are considering is creating a dummy record, "2006 Mutt Strut;" placing all the sponsoring gifts on this record; and then soft crediting the actual walker. How does anyone else handle this? We don't know the pledges in advance so I've avoided the sponsoring pledge section of the event module.

Thank you,
Carrie L. Sorensen
Manager of Donor Records
Humane Society of Indianapolis
[Email Removed]

While I understand that it would be a lot of work I don't understand why you don't want to enter them into the database and treat them as prospective donors for future appeals. Melissa S. Graves Manager, Development Database & Direct Mail Planned Parenthood of Connecticut [Email Removed] 203-752-2804

We also have a walk with about 3000 walkers and lots of people sponsoring them. Our problem is that when the sponsor sheet comes to us Paul the Plumber or Uncle Joe doesn't cut it so we don't enter those sponsoring the walkers either (there are also internal reason being that as far as some people here are concerned the sponsors are supporting their friends and not so much the hospital - don't necessarily agree with the thinking but what am i gonna do). Anyway, Carrie if you want to send me your phone number (to the e-mail address below) I'll call you tomorrow because it would take me too much time and brain power today to try to explain it through an e-mail. Sandy Hart [Email Removed]

We have the same difficulty each year with our Bark in the Park event. When we recieve pledges in advance we add them to the donors record and soft credit the participant, so that we can get an accurate report of how much each participant has raised for event check-in. Pledges we recieve the day of the event (the walker brings a pile of checks/cash to registration) are entered into the walker's record with a note of who the check came from. We've also found that sponsors aren't good prospects for future appeals. Jim Schallom Development Coordinator Humane Society of Missouri [Email Removed]

We enter all the sponsors in the pledge form. Our cut-off for gift amount $20.00. We use the Reference field in the gift tab to store the name of the sponsored person. Anyone who gave below the cut-off amount and the ones who we cannot decipher the handwritting goes to an Anonymous record in RE. If Events staff wants a report on all donors who sponsored a walker or a runner, I use the appeal code assigned to the event, e.g., RUN2006-PLGIND (individual sponsor) or RUN2006-PLGCOR (corporate sponsor) to pull the list. Rose Benavidez Database Management Analyst Mount Sinai Hospital Foundation of Toronto [Email Removed]