FundSvcs Community

Hello all, We are considering changing the overall structure and functions of our organization's Gift Processing department, and I wanted to see if anyone would be willing to share with me what their GP/Adv Services org charts look like? A quick snap shot on current state: we have a team of six in Gift Processing. A director, an assistant director, and then four gift processors. They all share duties and responsibilities, and one of the four gift processors does both development gifts and membership processing. The other three processors enter development gifts and then handle things like matching gifts, honor/memorial/tribute notifications, etc. We are thinking of ways to grow our staff in terms of knowledge around various GP functions, but also growing/promoting them internally, so looking at different structures may help address these two items. Thank you in advance for sharing your knowledge! Kelly

Hi Kelly, I think there's a lot of room for customization here depending on what your business model looks like. Are you a high volume but low-dollar transaction-based shop? Are you a high-end, low-volume mostly-supporting-major-gifts shop? Based on what you described, it sounds like you have a fair amount of volume. Mercy Corps is built to support high volume and fairly automated data flows, with enough staffing to manage a delimited level of custom support for higher-end gifts. What we've learned over time works well is this: We have a Gift Processing Manager who is responsible for some data entry, most reconciliation, most escalated cases, workflow design, team management, special projects (implementing new payment gateways, etc), and ensuring that everything is on track. We then have a team of 4 gift processors. 2 positions are identical, and do much of the routine gift entry that needs review, as well as importing gifts that do not need review. We have a specialist assigned to staff major gifts and corporate and foundation gifts. They work in partnership with experts on both of those teams who usually know more details about inbound gifts. We do very limited biographical record support for Major Gifts & Corps & Founds. Then we have a hybrid position who is 1/2 time database support and 1/2 time gift processing. Everyone cross-trains on ALL positions in an ongoing year-round process, with a deep commitment to excellent documentation. We use an online documentation platform called Process St, which has been a game-changer for us. Both the Major Gift Specialist and the hybrid database/gift processing position are considered understudies to the Gift Processing Manager. We try to build succession planning into everything we do, since turnover is a (manageable) constant. Gift Processing then also receives some support from the Donor Services team, and occasionally from another admin type position. We have structured ourselves for replicability, flexibility, documentation and a bit of specialization. Good luck!