Within our major gift program, we have between 300-400 constituents for whom an annual ask amount is not simply a calculation involving previous giving. We've tried different methods for tracking this annual ask amount, such as proposals (arduous data entry keeping 700 of them up-to-date), attributes within an action (making for confusing looking reports), a comment tied to an appeal (is there any way to report out on this?), etc.

What are you doing in your shop, especially if you're both a) asking for significant gifts via the mail, and b) reporting these ask amounts to solicitors without access to RE?

Thanks in advance for any insight,
-Kat

We have recently been putting the ask amount as a package to the appeal. We put the ask range - so this may or may not work for you. For example:
$1-$50
$51-$100
$100-$500
$501-$999
$1000-$5000
Then you can run either a query to see what you asked or after they have given you can run an appeal report and include the packages to see what the response was between the different ask ranges.
$5000 +

Does anyone use the Target field on the Bio 2 tab for this. Does anyone use the Target field at all? What for? Melissa S. Graves
Director of Development Services
The Village for Families and Children
mgraves @ villageforchildren.org
www.villageforchildren.org

GET ON THE BUS! Check out what the Blackbaud User Society is talking about today at www.blackbus.org!

We use target for wealth indicator ratings (from 3rd party) We like that they're easily accessible on Bio 2 Shannon Moon [Email Removed] Associate Director - Advancement Services www.branksome.on.ca Branksome Hall School

I use the Target field. It requires updating each year and that is tedious but it is working pretty well. You can include that field in the letter merge easily. I would be interested if anyone has a better idea. Beth Palmer Director of Development Gaston Day School Gastonia, NC 704 864 7744 X224

We use the prospect proposal tab. There is a field for ask amount, though in truth it is hard to get consistency from gift officers. Anyone else tried this?

I think the original poster was trying to not use the proposal for every major donor. Maintaining proposals can become a full time job if you create too many. I think they want to use proposals for only donors of a very large size and I think she was looking for an alternative for the rest. Melissa S. Graves Director of Development Services The Village for Families and Children mgraves @ villageforchildren.org www.villageforchildren.org GET ON THE BUS! Check out what the Blackbaud User Society is talking about today at www.blackbus.org!

We use the Target field in Bio2 for our Annual Fund ask, and we merge the info into our solicitations. At the end of the year, we move that information to Prospect Ratings (for history), empty the Target fields, assign new targets for the next year. We use Prospect Proposal for major prospects (currently for our campaign). Kathleen The Bryn Mawr School [Email Removed]

For the ask amount, we use the solicitor amount field in the Relationship/Solicitor tab. This may or may not be the same as what's in the Target field.

Before this year's phonathon we wanted to add an "ask amount" to the phonathon forms. To accomplish this we created a query identifying the people who would have an ask amount assigned for annual giving (major donors), then exported that list to an excel spreadsheet. The export had name, ID, and what they gave in 05-06. We then added this year's ask amount to the spreadsheet, and imported them back into the system automatically assigning a proposal called AGF 06-07 with the given ask amount. This was easier than opening each individual record and assigning a proposal, etc.

We do like to keep the Proposal Tab limited to folks who are getting very large personal proposals - typically for a campaign or restricted fund - as opposed to annual renewal requests for unrestricted support. We record the later on the Appeals Tab & I import the Ask Amounts into the Appeal Comments field.
We do have a much smaller pool of individual donors than many orgs, though. So, having the ask amounts in the appeal comment area works fine for all our annual appeals.
René V. Rosengren
Donor Information Specialist
Public Radio International
[Email Removed]

The Target field in BIO2 is tied to a table in configuration. You enter the various ask amounts (or in our case a range) and can select the various amts or ranges from a drop down menu. We usually export all our parents to an excel worksheet, assign the amount or range and then import back into RE. This field is useful for printing out on phoneathon forms, appeal cards, etc. It is also useful for comparative reports to analyze the gift amount compared to the ask or target amt.Hope this helps. [Email Removed] Chadwick School, California

We also use the target field on Bio 2. We export a list (including Cons. ID and current target) to be evaluated by our administrative staff. The changes are made and then are imported from the Excel sheet. Since targets can be a miscellaneous field on phonathon forms, it is easy to pull targets on the form. [Email Removed] 931-968-0210 ext 3223

Hi Jocelyn,

 We're trying to use the target field in Bio2, but are having some trouble getting a list out that shows all prospects with associated target levels.  Is there a report that would work for this? All we want, is a list that shows prospects with ascending target levels (ie $100-$50,000 or whatever) When saved as a query, it doesn't seem to want to sort the query results in this manner. Any suggestions?

 Thanks for your help! (Or anyone's help for that matter...haha)

 We use actions to track all asks. In the attributes/notes section, we put the ask amount .