Alex Yaroslavsky
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15 votesAlex Yaroslavsky
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An error occurred while saving the comment An error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
This would be helpful to us, for sure.
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32 votesAlex Yaroslavsky
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An error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
Having categories would allow me to make the form that is consistent with our donation levels/tiers. We have Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, Friend and Other (we wouldn't want to display "Other" but categorize anything without a category as "Other").
Just as importantly, this functionality would allow me to extract the categories as part of an Excel extract and summarize the data accordingly as a Pivot table. I could easily see that I had Gold donations in the sum of $1,000; Silver in the sum of $500, etc.
I would like to build the Pivot once, and hand it off to a junior person whom I can train to refresh the data. Without the categories as part of WA, I have to create them manually in Excel and re-create them each time I extract the data. This makes it time consuming for me to re-run the report I want and practically impossible to have someone else refresh it with new data once I set it up (because that person would have to re-classify all the donations anew each time).
An error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
I would like to be to assign specific donation ranges to categories and include them in the donations export. For example $100.00 - $249.99: Bronze, $250.00 - $499.99: Silver, etc. I would also like to export these categories with the donation file so I can count and summarize by these categories.
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6 votesAlex Yaroslavsky
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An error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
I am talking about all search combo boxes that say "Filter" - Contacts, Event Attendees, Donations, etc. Does that help?
Alex Yaroslavsky
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32 votesAlex Yaroslavsky
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An error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
No, that's a different wish. But also applies to donations. -AY
An error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
I absolutely second that - I was recently very surprised that while an event registration allows for manual payment, the donation section doesn't.
For effective fundraising, it is critical for us to be able to capture the information of a person who intends to mail a check, even if s/he didn't get around to it. This info would allow us to follow up and gently remind the person.
Currently, our only option is to put up an address on our web page and hope that they remember to mail the check. If they are a potential donor, but never get around to becoming an actual donor, we would never know.
-Alex
An error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
OK, sure.
In my view, all donations should be initially treated as pledges. Some are fulfilled immediately (via credit card, etc.) and some remain as pledges. The processing of [cash] donations should be the same as that of event registrations or membership dues: self-service or by an admin.
In self-service cases, the donor would obviously have to create a contact record. Then, when the same person logs in, they would be able to see any unfulfilled pledges just like a member would see unpaid fees.
In terms of reporting, the same Finances interface can be used to track aging pledges. In fact, I would bring together Membership dues, Event revenue and Donations under Finances for a complete reporting picture.
The only way in which Donations differ from other sources of funding is that some donations are "in kind" (as opposed to cash). For example, someone may offer their space for an event, or donate food, etc. These transactions would have to be processed by an admin.
Also, some donations are anonymous, so the donor would not be known. These, too, would only be handled by admins and would not require a contact to be associated with the donation.
It would probably be important to give the option to enter a cash value of the donation and to choose whether to include that transaction as part of a report. In some cases, it would make sense to list the item on a report, but not the cash value. In other cases, it may be necessary to hide the entire transaction or to report the entire transaction with the amount.
Hope this helps.
AlexAn error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
I would like to be able to record pending (pledged, but not yet paid) donations.
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3 votesAlex Yaroslavsky
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An error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
I am talking about both.
I would want the fields as search criteria (to identify people who have contributed money to our organization in whatever form), but in responding to your previous question realized that it would be great to see a report like this for an individual person (or persons).
An error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
All good questions.
For my specific purposes, I would be interested in the amount actually paid. However, I could see others carrying about invoiced amounts. When it doubt, I would offer a choice.
As to your second question, it would be much more useful if I could see the amounts broken down by area. So the result might look like
1/1/10 - 1/1/11 Membership Events Donations Other Total
Invoiced $xxxx $xxxx $xxxxx $xxxx $xxxx
Received $xxxx $xxxx $xxxxx $xxxx $xxxx
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Total $xxxx $xxxx $xxxxx $xxxx $xxxx
Each of these could be a criteria which I could select from the Criteria form.
Does this help?
Alex Yaroslavsky
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6 votesAlex Yaroslavsky
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An error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
That sounds like a great feature!
An error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
It wasn't a report, but an export.
All the records were exported, without a YEAR column, just a date that is formatted in a way that's not easy to read (14 Dec 2009). In a separate wish I suggested that every export come with a YEAR, MONTH and possibly WEEK and DAY expressed as numbers, making them easy to filter and create Pivots in Excel.
An error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
We ran into some confusion because a donation from 2009 was counted as this years (as it was the last donation that particular person made). Had the donations been grouped by year, it would have been more clear when it was made.
An error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
I meant grouping (and therefore separating) donations by year in the Donations and Contacts/Donations views.
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366 votes
We're considering to take Donations during registrations/applications into development right now, but during analysis of the feature we ran into an issue where we would love to hear your feedback.
Essense of question: how would you like donations during applications or registration to be processed for offline payments (when your member/prospect decided to get an invoice and pay later)?
Some more details:
We can implement donations during event registrations/membership renewals for online payments - not a problem.
But when we're talking about offline payments, straighforward solution seems to be a bit expensive - we don't have invoices for donations or pledges yet.
So right now we're considering going on with straighforward online payments solution (donation will be added to payment transaction) and for offline payments - just include an invoice memo to buyer to add $XXX to his payment as donation for event/membership he has selected.
This way administrators would…
Alex Yaroslavsky
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An error occurred while saving the comment Alex Yaroslavsky
commented
I would like my event registrants to be able to make donations at the time of registration (while their credit cards are out). This should be done in a single registration step and not require the person to go to a separate donation page.
I would also like the ability to re-categorize current (or past) payments as donations. The reason for this request is that, as a workaround, we have added an optional "donations" category where people have the ability to pay extra as a donation. The trouble is that now our donations report is not accurate.
Alex Yaroslavsky
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Thanks for that! I've also added a custom drop-down field under Customize member database fields called Current Board Title Sort where I listed our positions in the order I want to see them on our functional page. Then I assigned a drop-down value to each officer and director so that the page displays properly. Check it out: http://www.acrgny.org/Default.aspx?pageId=464189
-Alex