We are setting up our individual giving program, and not sure the best route to track our individual portfolios. Should we add them as a campaign or a custom field on the household accounts, (and list the fundraiser there)? What does everyone use?
#Nonprofit
Hey Zachary,
Neither Campaign nor a plain custom field is the standard NPSP approach, most orgs actually assign portfolios through Contact/Account Ownership.
Standard NPSP pattern: assign each Individual (Contact or Household Account) directly to a gift officer using the Owner field, that's the native "who owns this relationship" mechanism NPSP is built around, then build a list view or report filtered by Owner = [Gift Officer] to see each person's portfolio at a glance. This avoids cluttering records with a redundant custom field just to store who owns them.
On top of ownership, most orgs layer in NPSP Levels (a numeric field like Total Gifts driving a Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum-style tier) to help prioritize within each officer's portfolio, and Engagement Plans to automate the cultivation/solicitation task cadence per donor.
Campaigns aren't typically used for portfolio tracking itself, they're better suited for specific asks/appeals tied to a fundraising effort, not for representing an ongoing "this person belongs to this gift officer" relationship.
If you're on newer Nonprofit Cloud (not just NPSP), there's now a dedicated Fundraising Portfolios feature purpose-built for this exact use case, worth checking if your org has access to it before building a custom solution.
Reference:
https://trailhead.salesforce.com/content/learn/modules/moves-management-with-nonprofit-success-pack/identify-target-prospects
