FundSvcs Community

Good Afternoon!

I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to share a target error rate that they set for gift processors?  I'm referring to just avoidable type errors made during gift entry (typo, processed a pledge payment as an outright gift, etc.).

Thanks!

Jen

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Jennifer Schillaci
Sr. Director of Gift Administration
The University of Chicago
jschillaci@uchicago.edu
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When I worked in a former role as a gift entry specialist, leadership scored our errors based on how severe they were. The scale was:

1. We discovered our own error - the error never got reported
2. Our supervisor discovered the error - low severity
3. The director of our department discovered the error - medium severity
4. Someone in a different department discovered the error - high severity

I really liked this because it made me and our team more accountable for my own work. John is right, though - some "errors" don't actually belong to the data entry person. Our team had systems in place to pre-solve for this. As an example, all large checks were emailed to the events team or their gift steward for coding before entry. If there was no response within two business days, the check was input as an unrestricted general donation. If that was later changed, the error was not applied to the gift entry team.

A good starting point for you in defining what an error is would be to audit what frequent changes are made. Define who actually owns those, how to prevent them, then how to check for them.

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Erin Osenbaugh
The Dallas Foundation
eosenbaugh@dallasfoundation.org
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