Understand Fundraising Records
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe fundraising operations tools in Fundraising.
- Explain the key objects in Fundraising.
This module discusses features available in Fundraising, an integrated platform solution included in Nonprofit Cloud and Education Cloud.
This module doesn’t cover fundraising solutions available in managed packages. For information on managed package products for fundraising, visit the Fundraise with Nonprofit Success Pack trail.
If you’re unsure which solution your organization uses, check with your Salesforce admin.
Before You Start
Before you start this module, consider completing the following recommended content.
Become a Smooth Operator
Fundraising operations is a crucial part of any fundraising and development team. These team members perform the back-office work that keeps donors happy and an organization’s data current. Without an effective fundraising operations team—and the processes and technologies that support them—donors walk away frustrated and fundraisers can’t reach their goals.
Unfortunately, fundraising operations teams often face challenges with systems and processes. They don’t have a real-time unified view of gifts, sustainers, and funds. Their processes are complex and hard to navigate. Entering gifts is inefficient and leads to inaccuracies.
For example, the fundraising operations team at the nonprofit Hunger No More International (HNMI) experienced these challenges firsthand. Fortunately, the organization implemented Fundraising to manage all parts of its fundraising team, including operations. Fundraising brought the entire team together in Salesforce with purpose-built tools for each role. With Fundraising, HNMI can nurture authentic relationships, practice data-driven fundraising, and boost efficiency and productivity.
In this module, you learn about the Fundraising Operations app in Fundraising. You follow the team at HNMI as they use the app to define their gift designations, manage gift commitments, and track gift transactions.
Before we get into those processes, let’s first review some of the fundraising operations tools and objects included in Fundraising.
Discover Fundraising Operations Tools
Fundraising includes several tools to overcome common fundraising operations challenges. Here are a few.
Gift Entry
Gift processors must work quickly and accurately to record the details of each new donation. With Gift Entry, you can create and enter many gifts, then let the built-in automation do the work of connecting gifts to other records. HNMI uses gift entry for batches and single gifts to ensure donation data is accurate, even for manually entered gifts.
Donor Support Profile
The donor support profile provides a real-time, unified view of a donor’s gifts and interests. All the information to help a donor is on a single page, with a timeline and details about the supporter’s donations and relationships. HNMI, for example, uses the donor support profile to quickly understand a donor’s situation and make sure donors receive personalized support. Donors appreciate feeling like they’re understood, not just another number.
Donor Support Processes
Flows included with Fundraising simplify complex processes and provide guided support for common donor requests, like updating gift commitments. These flows increase efficiency and data accuracy, and provide donors with better service. At HNMI, the team launches these flows from the donor support profile to quickly help donors.
Fundraising Data Model
All of these tools use a data model designed for the complex agreements and relationships common to fundraising. With more than a dozen purpose-built objects to track gifts, you can attribute donations correctly and make sure you track every commitment and transaction. You learn about three of the key objects in the next section.
Understand Fundraising Objects
While many objects work together to track gifts in Fundraising, this badge focuses on three: Gift Designation, Gift Commitment, and Gift Transaction.
Gift Designation records represent funds designated for a specific purpose. For example, HNMI has gift designations for its general fund, its capital campaign, its four program areas, its grant-funded benefits, and more. You learn more about gift designations in the next unit.
Gift Commitment records represent the promise of a donation. That donation can be either a recurring or pledged gift. These records relate to payment schedules and designations, plus campaign and opportunity records to track the work that went into securing the commitment. HNMI, for example, uses gift commitments to track complex one-time gifts, major gift pledges, multi-payment grants, and recurring donations.
Gift Transaction records track payments made for one-time gifts and installments to fulfill a gift commitment. Gift transactions can be entered manually, but Fundraising automatically creates them through gift commitments and Gift Entry. For example, the team at HNMI uses gift transactions to track payments on multi-year grants, small one-time gifts, and everything in between.
Knowledge Check
Ready to review what you've learned? The knowledge check isn’t scored—it’s just an easy way to quiz yourself. To get started, drag the object in the left column next to the matching example data on the right. When you finish matching all the items, click Submit to check your work. To start over, click Reset.
Now that you understand the basics of the Fundraising Operations app, let’s get hands-on. In the next unit, you learn how to define and set up gift designations.