FundSvcs Community

Hello All,

Members of our Annual Giving team would like to have the names of our online giving pages on Give Campus (we have the GC package with unlimited giving forms) correspond to 'appeals' of the same/similar name in Raiser's Edge. So, for instance, if we had a unique giving page for Women's Softball, then any gift that came in via that page would be attributed to an appeal of the same/similar name whether the appeal was on the person's record in RE or not. The presumption is that anyone giving via that page didn't accidentally get there. In other words, these gifts can/should be considered 'solicited' and aligned with the Women's Softball appeal. This model would apply to pages that are open for a short time (e.g. crowdfunding) and also to pages that are left open all year long, and solicitations may or may not be managed directly by us. In the case of Women's Softball, for example, the page may stay open year-round, and coaches and/or students might appeal to family members on/around games and tournaments throughout their season.

Our Gift Administrator is uneasy with this approach because she doesn't believe we can be sure of how someone arrived at the unique giving page, and she doesn't agree with labeling gifts that might not have been solicited by Advancement staff as 'solicited' in our system.

While not a traditional interpretation of an 'appeal', I am inclined to support what our Annual Giving staff are suggesting. I believe the assigned appeal will be accurate more than 95% of the time, and it will give us a better view on the ROI for our online fundraising efforts.

Have others made decisions to tie online giving (Give Campus or otherwise) results to RE appeals in this way? Or, have you made the decision to flex the definition of appeal to suit your modern business needs in some other way? What red flags I am not considering?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Erin

------------------------------
Erin Genovese
Bradley University
egenovese@bradley.edu
------------------------------

Hi Erin,

At Knox we use the same philosophy as your Annual Giving team.  We have at least one appeal code in RE for each GC giving form, sometimes multiple, but always one.  Your gift team is correct that you can't be 100% that the Softball team outreach drove the gift, but it's not any less accurate than the 3-year-old reply device someone stuck in their drawer and is returned this fiscal year.  

Good Luck!

------------------------------
Sandra Gray
Knox College
sggray@KNOX.EDU

Original Message:
Sent: 03-14-2025 04:25 PM
From: Erin Genovese
Subject: GiveCampus Pages & RE Appeals

Hello All,

Members of our Annual Giving team would like to have the names of our online giving pages on Give Campus (we have the GC package with unlimited giving forms) correspond to 'appeals' of the same/similar name in Raiser's Edge. So, for instance, if we had a unique giving page for Women's Softball, then any gift that came in via that page would be attributed to an appeal of the same/similar name whether the appeal was on the person's record in RE or not. The presumption is that anyone giving via that page didn't accidentally get there. In other words, these gifts can/should be considered 'solicited' and aligned with the Women's Softball appeal. This model would apply to pages that are open for a short time (e.g. crowdfunding) and also to pages that are left open all year long, and solicitations may or may not be managed directly by us. In the case of Women's Softball, for example, the page may stay open year-round, and coaches and/or students might appeal to family members on/around games and tournaments throughout their season.

Our Gift Administrator is uneasy with this approach because she doesn't believe we can be sure of how someone arrived at the unique giving page, and she doesn't agree with labeling gifts that might not have been solicited by Advancement staff as 'solicited' in our system.

While not a traditional interpretation of an 'appeal', I am inclined to support what our Annual Giving staff are suggesting. I believe the assigned appeal will be accurate more than 95% of the time, and it will give us a better view on the ROI for our online fundraising efforts.

Have others made decisions to tie online giving (Give Campus or otherwise) results to RE appeals in this way? Or, have you made the decision to flex the definition of appeal to suit your modern business needs in some other way? What red flags I am not considering?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Erin

------------------------------
Erin Genovese
Bradley University
egenovese@bradley.edu
------------------------------

Hello All,

Members of our Annual Giving team would like to have the names of our online giving pages on Give Campus (we have the GC package with unlimited giving forms) correspond to 'appeals' of the same/similar name in Raiser's Edge. So, for instance, if we had a unique giving page for Women's Softball, then any gift that came in via that page would be attributed to an appeal of the same/similar name whether the appeal was on the person's record in RE or not. The presumption is that anyone giving via that page didn't accidentally get there. In other words, these gifts can/should be considered 'solicited' and aligned with the Women's Softball appeal. This model would apply to pages that are open for a short time (e.g. crowdfunding) and also to pages that are left open all year long, and solicitations may or may not be managed directly by us. In the case of Women's Softball, for example, the page may stay open year-round, and coaches and/or students might appeal to family members on/around games and tournaments throughout their season.

Our Gift Administrator is uneasy with this approach because she doesn't believe we can be sure of how someone arrived at the unique giving page, and she doesn't agree with labeling gifts that might not have been solicited by Advancement staff as 'solicited' in our system.

While not a traditional interpretation of an 'appeal', I am inclined to support what our Annual Giving staff are suggesting. I believe the assigned appeal will be accurate more than 95% of the time, and it will give us a better view on the ROI for our online fundraising efforts.

Have others made decisions to tie online giving (Give Campus or otherwise) results to RE appeals in this way? Or, have you made the decision to flex the definition of appeal to suit your modern business needs in some other way? What red flags I am not considering?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Erin

------------------------------
Erin Genovese
Bradley University
egenovese@bradley.edu
------------------------------

I am not sure what would be gained by this information.  As the online gift is already assigned the appeal when the gift is processed, adding it to a record would add a lot of overhead to the gift processing team when some of this information can be gathered by gift reporting.  It really comes down how you are looking at your appeals structure. At my organization, we try to limit appeals to things that were controlled by Advancement, and don't tie any online only appeals to records.  With online appeals, you don't really have a way of determining how many people were solicited so your numbers would be skewed towards those who made a gift.  You'll never know who was told about the online pages and chose not to donate.  The only people with the appeal on their record are those who made a donation.  If you feel it would be important, then the question is if it is worth the added time and effort to add that information.  

I think the difference between this and @Sandra Gray's example is that even with a 3 year old reply device, you have a record that the appeal was sent.  And the subsequent ones after that.  

------------------------------
Dariel Dixon
Chautauqua Institution
ddixon@chq.org

Original Message:
Sent: 03-14-2025 04:25 PM
From: Erin Genovese
Subject: GiveCampus Pages & RE Appeals

Hello All,

Members of our Annual Giving team would like to have the names of our online giving pages on Give Campus (we have the GC package with unlimited giving forms) correspond to 'appeals' of the same/similar name in Raiser's Edge. So, for instance, if we had a unique giving page for Women's Softball, then any gift that came in via that page would be attributed to an appeal of the same/similar name whether the appeal was on the person's record in RE or not. The presumption is that anyone giving via that page didn't accidentally get there. In other words, these gifts can/should be considered 'solicited' and aligned with the Women's Softball appeal. This model would apply to pages that are open for a short time (e.g. crowdfunding) and also to pages that are left open all year long, and solicitations may or may not be managed directly by us. In the case of Women's Softball, for example, the page may stay open year-round, and coaches and/or students might appeal to family members on/around games and tournaments throughout their season.

Our Gift Administrator is uneasy with this approach because she doesn't believe we can be sure of how someone arrived at the unique giving page, and she doesn't agree with labeling gifts that might not have been solicited by Advancement staff as 'solicited' in our system.

While not a traditional interpretation of an 'appeal', I am inclined to support what our Annual Giving staff are suggesting. I believe the assigned appeal will be accurate more than 95% of the time, and it will give us a better view on the ROI for our online fundraising efforts.

Have others made decisions to tie online giving (Give Campus or otherwise) results to RE appeals in this way? Or, have you made the decision to flex the definition of appeal to suit your modern business needs in some other way? What red flags I am not considering?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Erin

------------------------------
Erin Genovese
Bradley University
egenovese@bradley.edu
------------------------------

Dariel,

It's like you were in the room with us for this conversation. We discussed the very things you have mentioned, and we kept talking ourselves into and out of both scenarios. We would first convince ourselves that our current process was the most pure version of how one should track appeals (and that the pure way is the best way), and then we would convince ourselves that by switching to a new model, we would better capture the results of all marketing/promotion/solicitation around our appeals. In other words, even if we don't show on Jane Doe's record that she received an appeal, she likely learned of any given appeal because of the work we are doing to get the word out. And this, to us, feels like a more modern approach to honoring all of the channels we use to prompt/inspire/appeal-to donors to give.

All that said, I do appreciate the approach of accepting that one can't be certain why a donor chose to give on one of our giving pages.

Many thanks for weighing in. You've reinforced that we were contemplating the right things, and it will help us with our decision-making.

Erin 

I am not sure what would be gained by this information.  As the online gift is already assigned the appeal when the gift is processed, adding it to a record would add a lot of overhead to the gift processing team when some of this information can be gathered by gift reporting.  It really comes down how you are looking at your appeals structure. At my organization, we try to limit appeals to things that were controlled by Advancement, and don't tie any online only appeals to records.  With online appeals, you don't really have a way of determining how many people were solicited so your numbers would be skewed towards those who made a gift.  You'll never know who was told about the online pages and chose not to donate.  The only people with the appeal on their record are those who made a donation.  If you feel it would be important, then the question is if it is worth the added time and effort to add that information.  

I think the difference between this and @Sandra Gray's example is that even with a 3 year old reply device, you have a record that the appeal was sent.  And the subsequent ones after that.  

------------------------------
Dariel Dixon
Chautauqua Institution
ddixon@chq.org

Original Message:
Sent: 03-14-2025 04:25 PM
From: Erin Genovese
Subject: GiveCampus Pages & RE Appeals

Hello All,

Members of our Annual Giving team would like to have the names of our online giving pages on Give Campus (we have the GC package with unlimited giving forms) correspond to 'appeals' of the same/similar name in Raiser's Edge. So, for instance, if we had a unique giving page for Women's Softball, then any gift that came in via that page would be attributed to an appeal of the same/similar name whether the appeal was on the person's record in RE or not. The presumption is that anyone giving via that page didn't accidentally get there. In other words, these gifts can/should be considered 'solicited' and aligned with the Women's Softball appeal. This model would apply to pages that are open for a short time (e.g. crowdfunding) and also to pages that are left open all year long, and solicitations may or may not be managed directly by us. In the case of Women's Softball, for example, the page may stay open year-round, and coaches and/or students might appeal to family members on/around games and tournaments throughout their season.

Our Gift Administrator is uneasy with this approach because she doesn't believe we can be sure of how someone arrived at the unique giving page, and she doesn't agree with labeling gifts that might not have been solicited by Advancement staff as 'solicited' in our system.

While not a traditional interpretation of an 'appeal', I am inclined to support what our Annual Giving staff are suggesting. I believe the assigned appeal will be accurate more than 95% of the time, and it will give us a better view on the ROI for our online fundraising efforts.

Have others made decisions to tie online giving (Give Campus or otherwise) results to RE appeals in this way? Or, have you made the decision to flex the definition of appeal to suit your modern business needs in some other way? What red flags I am not considering?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Erin

------------------------------
Erin Genovese
Bradley University
egenovese@bradley.edu
------------------------------

Hi Erin,

At Emory we do use separate appeals for each of our giving platform pages/campaigns. It's a nice way to have the Annual Giving team slice their data, and helps our processing team who are keying the gifts if there are ever questions about the exact source/motivation for the gift. FWIW, this was a recent enhancement in the last several months - prior to that all funds coming through our group fundraising pages had the same appeal.

Cheers,

Emily

Dariel,

It's like you were in the room with us for this conversation. We discussed the very things you have mentioned, and we kept talking ourselves into and out of both scenarios. We would first convince ourselves that our current process was the most pure version of how one should track appeals (and that the pure way is the best way), and then we would convince ourselves that by switching to a new model, we would better capture the results of all marketing/promotion/solicitation around our appeals. In other words, even if we don't show on Jane Doe's record that she received an appeal, she likely learned of any given appeal because of the work we are doing to get the word out. And this, to us, feels like a more modern approach to honoring all of the channels we use to prompt/inspire/appeal-to donors to give.

All that said, I do appreciate the approach of accepting that one can't be certain why a donor chose to give on one of our giving pages.

Many thanks for weighing in. You've reinforced that we were contemplating the right things, and it will help us with our decision-making.

Erin 

I am not sure what would be gained by this information.  As the online gift is already assigned the appeal when the gift is processed, adding it to a record would add a lot of overhead to the gift processing team when some of this information can be gathered by gift reporting.  It really comes down how you are looking at your appeals structure. At my organization, we try to limit appeals to things that were controlled by Advancement, and don't tie any online only appeals to records.  With online appeals, you don't really have a way of determining how many people were solicited so your numbers would be skewed towards those who made a gift.  You'll never know who was told about the online pages and chose not to donate.  The only people with the appeal on their record are those who made a donation.  If you feel it would be important, then the question is if it is worth the added time and effort to add that information.  

I think the difference between this and @Sandra Gray's example is that even with a 3 year old reply device, you have a record that the appeal was sent.  And the subsequent ones after that.  

------------------------------
Dariel Dixon
Chautauqua Institution
ddixon@chq.org

Original Message:
Sent: 03-14-2025 04:25 PM
From: Erin Genovese
Subject: GiveCampus Pages & RE Appeals

Hello All,

Members of our Annual Giving team would like to have the names of our online giving pages on Give Campus (we have the GC package with unlimited giving forms) correspond to 'appeals' of the same/similar name in Raiser's Edge. So, for instance, if we had a unique giving page for Women's Softball, then any gift that came in via that page would be attributed to an appeal of the same/similar name whether the appeal was on the person's record in RE or not. The presumption is that anyone giving via that page didn't accidentally get there. In other words, these gifts can/should be considered 'solicited' and aligned with the Women's Softball appeal. This model would apply to pages that are open for a short time (e.g. crowdfunding) and also to pages that are left open all year long, and solicitations may or may not be managed directly by us. In the case of Women's Softball, for example, the page may stay open year-round, and coaches and/or students might appeal to family members on/around games and tournaments throughout their season.

Our Gift Administrator is uneasy with this approach because she doesn't believe we can be sure of how someone arrived at the unique giving page, and she doesn't agree with labeling gifts that might not have been solicited by Advancement staff as 'solicited' in our system.

While not a traditional interpretation of an 'appeal', I am inclined to support what our Annual Giving staff are suggesting. I believe the assigned appeal will be accurate more than 95% of the time, and it will give us a better view on the ROI for our online fundraising efforts.

Have others made decisions to tie online giving (Give Campus or otherwise) results to RE appeals in this way? Or, have you made the decision to flex the definition of appeal to suit your modern business needs in some other way? What red flags I am not considering?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

Erin

------------------------------
Erin Genovese
Bradley University
egenovese@bradley.edu
------------------------------