The statistical reports are based on the "Gift" field, and according to Blackbaud they cannot be based on the "receipt" field. If the VSE reports are based on Tax Deductible funds raised, not total gifts, what do you do to obtain this information? RE stands alone at our school, so we can use "gift" for tax deductible amounts and "receipt" for total cash, and query to compensate for the information we do need to pull for other needs, but query does not seem to work for VSE purposes.According to Blackbaud this reversed use can work if we are consistant, but this must be a common situation. Any suggestions? Tom Froelich Division of Advancement

Hi Tom, Which specific statistical report are you talking about? I'm not sure I understand your question fully. The receipt value field CAN be used in the Annual Statements and in Acknowledgements/Receipts which are the only places I can think of that they should be used. Taxable receipt amounts refer to what the DONOR can claim for their taxes - those fields don't have anything to do with how your organization should be reporting its finances. Laurel Quaintance Friends of Bassett Manager,Fund Development Services Cooperstown, NY 13326 [Email Removed]

VSE report is Voluntary Support of Education and is a survey that dissects funds raised and spent by schools that are attributed to fundraising (as opposed to public funds). It's conducted by the Council for Aid to Education, and is "voluntary" but often necessary to qualify for grants or foundation support. The VSE survey contains questions about every aspect of funds collected and spent, by type and constituencies, and gives a VERY probative picture of the advancement efforts over time and between compared institutions. There are specific sections that ask for "benefit" type proceeds to be excluded, such as merchandise sales or certain event proceeds, but the statistical report builder in Raiser's Edge does not include the "Receipt" field, only the Gift field. So if we have an event, say a dinner, and part of the "gift" is toward the meal it must be excluded from portions of the VSE survey. We have built ten different VSE oriented statistical reports under the "Demographic and Statistical Reports" section of RE that are used to support our survey, but isolating the benefit across so many different types of tranactions is critical to being able to use the reports. So far these are our options: Reverse Gift and Receipt and use Query as a workaround on some other analytics. Get custom Crystal Reports made. Query (A lot) and export the data to another database for analysis, such as Access. If there are so many schools using RE, I'm wondering what is going on with the reports, or how they can carve out the non-donation portions. [i]--- Edited at 10/24/2007 5:46:51 PM by Tom Froelich[/i] [i]--- Edited at 10/24/2007 5:48:04 PM by Tom Froelich[/i]

I use the Campaign field for this reason to pull out any gifts that have goods and services attached to them. Example of my Campaigns: Annual Fund Annual Fund Tickets, Goods and Services This allows me at the highest level to pull these things out so I don't have to try and pull them out based on Appeal which would mean changing the filters on reports every time I run them. If you still have to report on the donative portion of your goods and service gifts you could handle this via split gifts and just change the campaign field on the donative portion. This makes it easy so the canned reports work properly. At least this is the workaround I have been using successfully. Laurel Quaintance Friends of Bassett Manager,Fund Development Services Cooperstown, NY 13326 [Email Removed]

Thank you, I'm going to look into that. I know we avoid split gifts, but I have to check on that. We did come up with a possible workaround. It involves running financial reports for our constituent codes and gift types, then running statistical reports to check totals. It means running several reports, but gives cleaner numbers, and it is a once a year survey. We may start running it quarterly just to get a system going. Since we can use the "receipt amount" field in financial reports, it gives us a solid handle on the tax deductible portions for our monthly reconciliations with accounting. Also, some of the issues I've seen elsewhere revolve around constituent codes. Fortunately (in this instance) we only use one code per constituent. Everything else is through attributes, which is contrary to some methods, but is queryable, and the constiuent heirarchy/ date range issues are avoided. Tom Froelich