We have a number of different appeals set up, mostly for our Membership Fund.  They are used as a way to track the specific mailing or source of the gift.  Some of our appeals include: Renewals, Direct Mail, Year End gift, Lobby gifts, Online gifts, etc.  So, you can see, not all of our appeal codes relate to a specific mailing.  Right now, we've simply been adding the appeal to the gift record when it comes in.  We are not adding the appeal to the constituent record for the mailing itself.  In other words, we send out a membership renewal mailing once a month, but we don't add that appeal to the records themselves.  When the constituent sends back a renewal payment, we attach the appeal code to the gift.

Now our membership director would like to track when in a renewal cycle our members renew their membership.  We send 4 notices for each month.  My idea was to add each notice as a separate package to the appeal, and track the info that way.  But my question is, should I be adding these appeals to records when the mailings go out, or should I continue to do as I've been doing now and just add the appeal and package to the gift record when it comes in?

 Any suggestions?  Thanks.

Keith Tramantano, Assisant Manager of Development Operations, The Jewish Museum

Keith,

I have never been in a place with a membership program so I am not sure how if I would feel differently with different experience but I am a HUGE fan of recording mailings as they go out.  Being able to query later on who got what appeal on this date and how many responded (and calculating response rates) is a huge part of my analytical work for my program.  I would definitely add them as they go out.