At one point, when I have asked this question a couple years ago, generally the forum answers (based on the existing set up) were for the various offices to provide me the data needed for RE for the event and I provide the info back at them in Excel (for them to learn Excel) and the office can work from that for their event. The largest event probably has about 200 couples attending – 400 or 500 people. Any input you have on this subject would be appreciated. Thanks!
I am assuming that these events are not new and you (the one RE person) has been doing the gift enty for events during this time frame? If that is the case, there would just be a few more steps to using the tribute module. Depending on how many events you have per year and what information needs to be handled you should look at whether it would be appropriate to high another person to assist you in that area.
I am close to you in the fact that I manage 5 hospitals, 28+ health clinics, hundreds of special funds and cover 10 counties. I do have a 1/2 time person that helps do low-level gift entry and silent auction gift entry. My personal opinion is that administration needs to realize that a non-profit is a business, and if you wouldn't hire someone without skills or the capacity to learn skills for your own personal business, there should be no way you would hire them to work in your non-profit. To me it's inexcusable that any employee anywhere not know the basics of the software the company uses.
Laurel - thanks for your quick response. Yes, I do the gift entry. Since you are in a similar situation - do you also have trouble receiving the gift info from the various locations? If another person is hired there would be a lot of added start up expenses (computer, software, etc.) and I work from my home and provide all that as a contract employee as well as the free IT. Based on that, my question now boils down to - in your opinion, do you think the Events Module would prove its worth to this non-profit with all this added expense for the few events they have each year?
Julie
It depends on how many events and how detailed they are. We have 4 Golf tournaments a Gala and at least 1 other big reserved seating event per year so it really has been helpful to us. You could use the benfits and Notes area of the gifts to track some of the things without the events module but you'll need to be diligent.
All of our sponsorships are named sponsorships or are hole specific and have different benfits that go along with them. Just keeping track of all that information makes it worth it to me to have the tribute module (and to be able to copy and paste descriptions into the benfits/notes area of a gift to print on receipts is priceless) Having it in the event module makes it easy to show our auditors as well when they ask about goods and services attached to donations/sponsorships.
The Event module can be tricky; there are lots of options that come with it. I wouldn't trust any employee to use it without solid RE/database background and training by someone who really understands the module. With that many locations, you're going to want to establish a consistent policy on how the module is utilized. And ideally, I'd want someone who manages/oversees the entire event process. As far as cost, if you do alot of events it'll probably pay for itself fairly quickly? You'll have implementation/training costs upfront, but be sure what you're annual maintenence will be going forward if you add it.
Thank you Tracie and Laurel for your valuable input.