3. Data Entry 101

Good afternoon. Everyone. Nice to have you here in our webinar. Today’s presentation is Data Entry 101. My name is Arlene Lessee, and I’ll be your instructor for this webinar. If you just joined us, I’m going to suggest that you click on the Resources button you’ll Read More

Good afternoon. Everyone. Nice to have you here in our webinar. Today’s presentation is Data Entry 101. My name is Arlene Lessee, and I’ll be your instructor for this webinar. If you just joined us, I’m going to suggest that you click on the Resources button you’ll find there under the Documents tab, the PDF that you can download for this session. I’ve also put it in the chat, and you can click on that link to load that PDF and then save it and or print it for later.

I’m going to turn off my webcam now and continue with our presentation. I’m going to suggest that if you have an informal question or you didn’t understand something, and you want to just do it privately to me, you can put that in the chat. If you have a question about the material that I’m going over and others will benefit if not even have the same exact question, then I’m going to suggest that you put that in the Q, a, and I’ll share your question with everyone and also provide the answer to everybody. All right, so here we go. So this is our second in the foundation series webinars. What we’re going to do today is look at a snapshot of a constituent record. Notice the use of the word constituent, because we can have donors in our database, but we can have other entities who are not donors. We’re going to talk about key fields in DonorPerfect, specifically on the main screen, but then we’ll also talk about key fields on the gift screen, but in terms of those key fields, we’ll also see the difference between what the screen for an individual or couple would look like versus an organizational record. We’ll look into the details and the key fields on your donation page, which is called The Gift tab. We’ll also look at the pledge tab and the difference between the pledge and the gift tab, and last but not least, we’ll discuss some helpful resources for you. All right, so here we go. As we see at the bottom, this webinar has features. There may be features mentioned. You may see something in a menu. You may see fields that are in our webinars that are not identical to yours, or the fields have been moved and not in the same placement as they are in your system. And that really just shows that no two systems are like. Fields can be moved. Fields can be added. Other features could be added on if it’s not currently in your donor. Perfect package. All right, so this is if you want to call it a cross section or a snapshot of a constituent, and at the hub or the center of all constituents is what we’re showing here as the page where the demographics are recorded. At a very minimum, you’re going to be entering the last name or the organization name. But we hope there are other specifics, like perhaps a mailing address, an email address, one or more phone numbers, those types of info in terms of contacting your constituents are going to be on the main screen. And the bio screen is really a continuation or a part two of the main screen. So at a minimum, all of your constituents have at least something on the main screen. Now, while I’m going to say it’s optional, I would hope that the majority of your constituents will have information on the gifts and or the pledges tab, thereby making them donors. You may use the contact screen. The contact screen is where the past and future engagements, interactions, touches or communications are recorded. So the fact that a mailing went out, or an invitation for an event or a constant contact. E blast was sent out to a group that can be recorded on the contact screen. There is a page called other where other or non financial information is recorded, typically that would contain. Uh, either volunteer hours, if that’s something that you want to track, and DonorPerfect the terms that individuals have sat on boards or committees, or perhaps the minor children of your donors. That’s a just a sample of the kinds of info that can be on other info, the link screen is where you’re going to record any relationships that are known to you between your constituent, examples, being employer, employee, parent and child, or friends. Last but not least, the addresses screen will have either additional mailing addresses, or maybe it’s there for information and you have the work address, maybe seasonal homes that they own could be recorded there as well as additional emails that are not recorded on your main screen. So this is a cross section. Not every constituent is going to have information on these other pages, but we would hope that this is where the bulk of the information will be, in addition to the main screen. So speaking of that term, constituent who can go into DonorPerfect, well, at a very minimum, we hope that you’re going to use the software to record your donors, whether those are donors who have given monetary gifts or they’ve given what we call in kind gifts, and we’ll be visiting that in a little bit. But you also might want to record or track your prospects. Prospects are those entities. It could be people, it could be companies, it could be foundations, who are not yet donors, but who you hope will eventually be donors to your organization. Some of you might have your members, so the membership money that they have sent in to join your organization can be recorded in DonorPerfect. Maybe you use a fair number of volunteers, and while they give their time, they may not yet be donors, or may not ever be a donor, but we can track the fact that they are volunteers as well as the time that they have worked for you. Does anybody have any example of other entities that you’d like to put in the Q and A in terms of what major groups could go into DonorPerfect or are already in your DonorPerfect database? Do?

Okay, thanks, Joe, yes, board members, we would hope, would be in your DonorPerfect database. I’m also going to say I hope that they are also donors, yes, and maybe specifically even major donors, correct, correct. Okay. I’ve worked with organizations where they put their clients, the people who receive the services of their organization, where those clients or patients are listed in DonorPerfect. Any other examples do okay, companies, yes, as in, corporate sponsors, definitely. I would call that a subset of your donors. I love it. Um, to that, I would add, maybe funders, right foundations, who have, have or will provide grant funding, maybe also kind of a cross section of donors and prospects, but that would go there great, great, excellent and beautiful. I love that community members that have a relationship with your organization. Thank you. Patricia, maybe affiliate organizations that agencies, etc, that you work with closely, beautiful. So the point being, we want you to think of the entire world of constituents with whom your organization interacts, because they can all be in one central location that being DonorPerfect. All right, so for those of you, if a data transfer was done to bring the information from your previous database or it could. It have been Excel, it could be access. It could be other fundraising, what we call CRMs or databases. It would be transferred in, or maybe you have manually been entering information as you go, then to the extent that you want to look up that file and maybe change something, or just see the information and jot down what the phone number is for a donor. In any case, how you’re going to access your constituents or your donors files within DonorPerfect is going to start with the Quick Search. Now this quick search is going to be conveniently found wherever you are in DonorPerfect. It’s going to be at the top left corner. So using the Quick Search is exactly what it says, a very easy way to find somebody. I’m going to suggest that if it’s a uniquely spelled first or last name, just put in that uniquely spelled single name, and you’ll probably come up with just one result. If however you’re going to put in a name that might be common, whether it’s the first name or potentially the beginning of the last name, or potentially a street name. So for instance, if I put in J, O, H n, then what it will do is find that word in the first name, in the last name, in the street name in the city, in the optional line, which is also the contact person and in the spouse field. Okay, the point being that, yes, it’s going to look for that information in many fields. Don’t worry about remembering which fields, because this actually will question mark will explain what fields it’s going to search in DonorPerfect for what you’ve entered, but ideally, if you can put in John Sammons. So John space, salmons or salmons, comma space, John, so last comma, space, first in the Quick Search, then that’s great. Also as a tip, if you’re putting in let’s say Robert Simpson, and if he’s in your database as Bob Simpson or Robbie Simpson, let’s say some nickname, it won’t find it. So sometimes more information might not be as helpful, so your Quick Search, you might want to just narrow it down to the spelling that you are certain of. So if you know that the last name is Simpson and you’re not sure if it’s Rob Robbie, Bob, Bobby, etc, then maybe just put in Simpson in the Quick Search, or what you can do is fill in specifically in what we call this advanced search, the last name begins with Simpson. Maybe we don’t know about the first name, if it’s R or B, but we might want an hour down and say that the city is Minneapolis, so we can use one or more fields to narrow down our search, especially if, what if you type in Simpson and there are 30 different individuals in your database and or companies where The last name starts with or the organization name starts with Simpson. So feel free for the times where it either gives you a very long list, or it says when you hit enter no records found is to maybe change it up two or three different ways until you either find that entity or you’re certain that, okay, I thought they were in the database, but I guess they’re not. So if you type something here, it means that the particular field begins with what you’re entering. Now let’s say that I don’t know the name, but I know that they live on Wisteria road? Well, if I put Wisteria here in the address, it’s looking for, based on what we see here, anyone where their address begins with Wisteria. I’m not going to say it’s not possible, but most likely, there is a house number or number for that, that entity on Wisteria Lane or road.

So for a situation where you say somewhere in the address or somewhere in the email, for instance, is this set of letters. Dollars, uh huh, the percent symbol at the beginning of Wisteria says, I don’t know the number, but I know that they do live on a street named Wisteria. Great, that’ll help. Or I don’t know their email, but I know that it’s on the domain of up done line. So you could put percent symbol and then type up done, for instance, and then hit Search All right. So this is what you can use when the quick search either doesn’t find it or gives you way too many results. Instead of you paging through you can use this to narrow it down, all right. So I’ve mentioned individuals, I’ve also mentioned companies or other entities. So if you’re looking for the entity in that search and it’s not found, and you’ve tried two or three ways, and you were now convinced, no, they’re not in there. So I need to add that entity. What you’re going to do is either click on the add individual or add organization from the search screen, and I’ll be doing this shortly in DonorPerfect. You’ll see what I’m talking about. Okay, when you click add individual, that will create a record that looks like this. Specifically notice that the field title is there. The Field first name, last name and optional line. When you say add organization. Then over here, it will say org, prefix org, which stands for organization name, and it’ll say contact. Okay, notice that not only are the names of the fields, or at least the labels, as we call them, different, but you’re also telling a story. You’re telling a story that the relationship is with one person or a couple, if you’re tracking couples together and DonorPerfect, or, in this case, on the right side, the relationship is with the organization. Now, while it will pre fill an organization record to say company, you can change it by clicking on the drop down and change it into a foundation or an organization, which is short for nonprofit organization, or perhaps you deal with schools or someone mentioned maybe some partner or eight partner agencies that you work with, you might want to say that, well, yes, they’re nonprofits, but they really serve a particular role with our organization. So you might want to click on the plus sign and start typing or add, if it’s not already there, partner agency or agency or something, whatever label that you give them to say that, you know, I have a significant segment in my database that falls under this umbrella of partner agencies. Okay? Or some of you might have schools or hospitals that you work with. So you can add choices to a drop down, whether it’s in the donor type or other fields that you’ll see in DonorPerfect throughout your database. Again, the gift is coming from one or the couple here, in this case, the gift, any donations, are coming from the organization, but you have a primary contact at that organization. Okay? If, for instance, Holly is writing on a corporate check for the money from the ice cream Palace, that’s great. You’re going to set it up like this, but when Holly gives of her own personal checking account or personal credit card, you would want to create a completely separate record where the first name is Holly, the last name is bush, and maybe you send it to the work address, or maybe you send it to a home address, all right, but it’s very important to keep what we call the giving entities separate. Okay, here we see an example the use of the first name a last name. In this case, some of you may have donors where their partner has a different last name, or their spouse has a different last name, be it one word or a hyphenated last name. Notice, in this example, if we’re. Using the title of Mr. For one person, the spouse or partner here is also going to use the title. I like to do that to make it equivalent, but then you’re going to put that title first name and last name. So I’m suggesting that if you’re not using titles, that’s okay. Then just have Sam Jones. And here you don’t need a title, and it would be Sally Smith.

But then make sure that the salutation, which is what will follow the word dear in a letter or email, make sure that you have both of their names for other I’ll call it more traditional married couples, if the spouse shares the same last name, then the first name could be two words. It’s hard. I can’t really block this out, but pretend that you don’t see Mister. And the first name could be Sam and Sally and the last name of Jones. In that case, there would be no reason to be using optional line, all right, but showing you that in this scenario, what would happen is Mr. Sam Jones will appear here on the first line, and whatever’s in optional line goes right below it, as Ms Sally Smith, then whatever is in your salutation is here shown after the word dear when you use a mail merge template from DonorPerfect, the flip side Being an organization record. So if any of your companies or foundations start out with the word the we would recommend you put it there so that the organization name, in this case, starts with the letter i, so it will be found alphabetically in any reports or Excel spreadsheets amongst the letter i All right, the salutation is what it’s going to say after the word dear in your letters and contact, if you have a primary contact, you’re going to fill that in if you don’t Know a particular person at that company, foundation, etc, it’s okay to leave contact blank. And then we would recommend that your salutation here you’re going to write the word friends or friends of the XYZ organization that you represent. But usually friends is sufficient or dear friend in the singular. I’m sorry. All right, so this is kind of your best practices or protocol for entering data for either an individual record or for an organization record. Notice this check box up at the top. When you said, add organization, it will check the box here, and it will present to you the fields that say or prefix or name, etc. Okay, beautiful. All right, just a little bit more about the Main screen, and then I know you’re anxious to see what does a main screen, or what does DonorPerfect look like? Like? Let’s get in there. Okay, so some best practices in terms of these two key fields, donor type, generally speaking, at the top of the constituent contact section, is what I call the big picture. What kind of constituent are we dealing with? Is it an individual slash household? So we use individual whether it’s single or a household. Is it a company? Is it a foundation? Is it a non profit in parentheses, organization? It’s the big picture. It’s a large group identifier. I’m putting them into these five or possibly six buckets, and each and every entity in your database can only have one donor type. If I’m in your database, I will be an individual, but if a company that I own or a small business that I run, that would need to be a separate entity, and that donor type would be, let’s say, company. Okay, all right, so that’s your donor type. In addition, many of you will use the field called flag. The flag tells the story of what’s the relationship of this entity, this person, this couple, this business, to your organization. Now I would hope that they’re a donor, but because we. Can tell that story by looking to see if they have donations, then I don’t necessarily need a flag of donor, but a very common relationship or connection would be something I mentioned earlier, a board member. So you should be identifying your board members or current board members, specifically, versus your former board members by virtue of a flag. If you use volunteers often in your organization, then you could also have a flag for current volunteer or former volunteer.

If any of you are schools, you probably want to have a flag for parent. Or maybe when they the individuals graduate from your school, if you’re going to put them in your DonorPerfect database and communicate with them, then you might want a flag of alumni. So those are some general terms in terms of what you can use as flags. Now they are optional, but something else unique about flags is that someone can have many so again, if I’m in your database, my donor type is going to be individual, but I can have or be an alumna, but technically, we would just use the word alumni. I can also be a parent of a child who currently attends your school. So in that case, I’ve got two flags, maybe if I decide to volunteer, then I’m going to have a third flag as current volunteer. So hopefully that gives you some scenarios for where or how to use the flag field. But why are these fields useful? Well, to identify who’s who, why are they with our organization? What? What is their role? What is their importance? Obviously, beyond the story of saying that they’re a donor, well for targeted communications, to the extent that you’re either going to send mail or send a targeted e blast, you might want to hone in and send something to your alumni. You might want to send a different communication, if it’s parents, or you might want to exclude board members from a communication. So not only can we use flags to include a group, we can identify a group and exclude them from a targeted communication that creates what we call segmented report, segmented lists. And all of this we’re going to learn about in additional webinars, or as you go further along in getting to know DonorPerfect. All right, so I said that I was going to show you DonorPerfect, and here we go. So here I have my home page. What we’re suggesting is, when you first get DonorPerfect, you will see the welcome page like this. Now this is great because it has some tutorials that you can complete in sequence, but at some point later on, we’re going to suggest that you switch it at the top right to say homepage, because you or some of your colleagues might want to set these goals, some of you might be responsible for donor outreach, and that would appear here. Okay, so that just starts us out. That’s the home page. If I want to find someone, I’m going to go into the Quick Search. So regardless of where I am, I can be in another part of the software. And oh, if I have to look up somebody, your Quick Search and your menus will always stay up here at the top. So if I type in there, ah, look at that. I want to look at Justin and Sarah’s record. So when I click in the Quick Search, it will show me the 10 most recently viewed records that I have been in, and if the one that I want to go back to is here, great. Otherwise, let’s type Auckland. If I type Auckland, ah, I do have a Justin Auckland men. Notice that’s the beginning of his last name. If that’s not the donor that I’m looking for, then your choice is either to click on add individual if. If it’s Rebecca Auckland for instance, or click Add organization if it’s Auckland Enterprises for instance, or Auckland Foundation, etc. So that’s your two links that you should be using, all right. But to get back to Justin and Sarah, I’m going to click here where we are presented with many things. So just to point out, this is a donor who has already given 27 gifts. So we see up at the top a nice little summary of how active they’ve been in terms of donations. But I want to call your attention to the main screen here, or main tab where we have the constituent contact info here, we do have the field the title that’s for your Mr. Mr. And Mrs. Doctor, Reverend, etc. So that’s where you’re going to type in here if your organization wants to use those formal titles. If, in my case, we’re not using it or it’s on a case by case basis. Here in the first name, we see that we’ve got both names, Justin and Sarah, if they both use the same last name of Ackland, their address, city, state, zip. Self explanatory. We see the donor type. So when this was either created or imported or transferred in, the donor type was filled in as individual and Oh, notice that there’s something here that you might not yet have. So that’s education for us. We might want to have other educational entities, whether it’s elementary schools, middle schools, high schools or colleges. But as I mentioned, if there were something that you wanted to add, we would simply click on the plus sign. Maybe you have faith based organizations, or you want to use the word religious organization, you simply start typing and you would click the Save you Eve one second, I’m sorry, trying to find my mute. Okay, therefore we see how I’ve added religious organization to the drop down, and that’s the case with any fields that you see that have this plus sign to the right, but we’re going to put them back on individual Okay, your salutation is here in terms of what’s going to go After the word deer in a letter. Here we use the flag of major donor to describe them. It is something that is subjective. So that might have been put here manually, because someone says that if the lifetime giving is over a certain threshold, then that was added. But using Select flags, you can see all of the choices that we have in our DonorPerfect database for webinars. Okay, this is unlimited, and a donor can have one or more or possibly none. All right, so that is your main screen. And then I’m showing here in the narrative, if you find out any general tidbits that you want to share with your colleagues, you might want to put that here narrative, whether it’s professional or personal milestones or important facts that again, you want to communicate with your team, okay?

So that being the main screen, let’s talk about the money, donations, gifts, contributions, all of those words are synonymous and belong on the gift screen of DonorPerfect, as well as possibly the pledge screen. So understanding the terminology that DonorPerfect uses will help you tremendously, not only entering the data in the proper place, but finding the data in your reports. So let’s talk about words. The general ledger is the field where you’re going to record the income account, or the designation of where the money. Is going what I’m going to suggest is that these, whatever you’re using in that drop down, correspond, if not, match, the income accounts in the chart of accounts on your accounting software. A lot of words, okay, if, in many cases, QuickBooks or intact or MIP is used, whatever are the income accounts where the financial entry is made, then that is the same income account that you want to have represented as your general ledger. That’s and if you’re not sure what those choices need to be, then please reach out to one or more people in your finance department or your bookkeeper or accountant, and they’ll give you what needs to be in the general ledger. The campaign field is what I would call an umbrella over the solicitation. It is a fundraising strategy. Perhaps it’s a collection or set of solicitations that are organized for the same purpose. Now, one that is most common is capital campaign, but that’s not something that happens all the time. So a campaign could be annual campaign, up to you if you want to leave it blank, but those might be the two most common. But by no means is that the extent of the options the field that you’re going to use most likely the very most in DonorPerfect is going to be this one called solicitation. All right, the solicitation is the fundraising effort, the reason for the gift, the vehicle for the donation. In other words, why did the donor make the gift? Or what did they respond to and send that gift in? So was it, for instance, the gala of 2023 was it the spring appeal of 2024 noted? Notice if it’s something that happens every year, or at least, we intend to do it every year. You want to have the name of it and then the year in which it happens. So before long, Giving Tuesday is going to be here. Many of you will hopefully raise money on that Tuesday after Thanksgiving in the US. And that Giving Tuesday, if you usually do it every year, then we would suggest a solicitation. Would be giving Tuesday 2024 Okay, the next field we see listed is sub solicitation. That is a sub category within the solicitation, okay, but in terms of an example, a sub solicitation would be the revenue stream or component or segment within your events. So if you’re having a gala, that gala 2024, we suggest, is the solicitation, but money comes to you for different reasons. Therefore you would have as sub solicitations, sponsorships, tickets, additional donations may be journal ads, okay? So that way you’ll be able to analyze which component within the event brought in how much money, or brought in the most money. Okay? And occasionally, if you use a direct mail partner company, then you might want to track or they might be reflecting the segment within a large direct mail campaign. They might have the segment or package within that direct mail piece, and that might be a sub solicitation. Okay, and your very last field that we have listed here is a field called the thank you template. It’s also seen as t y slash receipt template, t y standing for Thank you. That is where you’re going to indicate which template or which message needs to get sent to the donor. We’ll see more on this in the receiving 101 webinar, but the thank you process begins by indicating in the drop down field which is. The appropriate template that you want to use for this specific gift. All right, so why is it important? Why am I expressing all of this to you? Well, you know the old adage about data in and eventually data out. Well, we don’t want garbage to go in and we don’t want garbage to come out. So if we put in a gift like the information that’s reflected here, then someone or yourself might want to produce a report to look at how much money went into each general ledger, or GL Code, is kind of the behind the scenes. That’s the name of the field. How much money went into each General Ledger in each month, in this two month time period, or maybe within a year. So that way we can report, and, more importantly, share this report or reconcile with our accounting team how much money is in their database, which is the accounting software. Okay, so that’s a recommendation, and to the extent that you or development director or executive director is interested in knowing, well, what are we doing that is raising more money, and what are we doing that’s maybe not as successful? Well, to do that kind of analysis, you need to record the solicitation. What was it that the donor responded to? Was it an annual appeal of 2023 was it the golf outing of 2024 then there is, in the financial reports, a solicitation report, whether it’s for one year, whether it’s for a five year time period, there’s a lot of columns here, so don’t worry, we’ll be looking at this later on in a financial report webinar. But here’s where we can see that particular option here, and then we can see how much money came in during that time period. We can even report on expenses associated with those efforts and calculate a net revenue if expenses are entered in, donor, perfect and much more. But again, that will be discussed in a financial report revenue. So putting data in will guarantee the ability to easily produce reports for analysis on how your organization is doing at fundraising. All right, I mentioned earlier about in kind gifts. So while the majority of the items on the gifts tab will be monetary. Some of you might also collect what we call in kind donations. Who knows what an in kind donation is? Could you put it in the chat or Q and A give me an example or a definition.
Great, Barb, yes, so the donation of computers would be an in kind gift, okay, so when in kind donation is quite literally just the donation of goods or services. It might be landscaping services, it might be legal services or accounting services, but anything that you can either get your hands on or it’s kind of intangible. These serve professional services that’s considered to be in kind, as opposed to monetary donations that ultimately find their way into your organization’s bank account. All right. So that being said, for monetary donations, the field on the gift screen called amount is used where you’re going to record the amount of that check. How much was the check written for, or how much was the credit card transaction? In most cases, the fair market value would be zero, except when it comes to purchase of tickets for a golf event or gala type of gift is the payment method. What was the tender used? The reference can be the check number, if you’d like to record it, and the gift memo is not necessarily used. You’re welcome to convey any notes that might have been written on the map. Note or sent in in terms of a note with the check. For instance, on the other hand, we have our in kind gift fields here, or uses the in kind donation should not have an amount filled in, leave it as zero. However, if your organization is on board with recording the estimated value of that item or value of the legal services, you would put it in the fair market value. But I’m suggesting that you may want to check that with not only your directors, but maybe your finance department to see if that’s something that is recommended to be done in your donor. Perfect system, okay, the type of gift you’re going to use in kind, the reference we’re saying just a short description, like, Is it food? Is it women’s clothing? Is it toys or something? And the gift memo might be, if you got something this specific, okay, is where you’d put the full description of what you got, 20 hours of legal services. Or this, how many bags of clothing, or something like that. The reason being that a thank you for in kind gifts. Would use whatever you type in the gift memo, thank you for your donation of six pairs of socks, two cans of peas and three women’s handbags, something like that. All right, so that’s where spelling is going to count, ideally, because it’s going to go into a letter, alrighty. Now let’s, in the interest of time, let me do one more slide on pledges, and that way I’m going to combine pledges and gifts when I go into DonorPerfect and illustrate them at the same time. Okay, so pledges have many of the same fields and pieces of information as gifts, but the difference with a pledge is there’s a handshake here that represents that there was an agreement, maybe verbal. Many times it is documented. There’s an agreement whereby the donor says that he, she or they will pay X dollars to your organization. Emphasis on the will pay. They might say, I will pay $500 based on quarterly payments of $100 each. Great in that scenario, that’s a fixed pledge, because the total is filled in as 500 in that example. And when that commitment is done, and all of the $500 has been paid, it’s done, it’s ended, it’s fulfilled. On the other hand, we also have what we call open ended pledges, also known as recurring indefinitely, or most commonly seen as monthly giving. These are the ones where the donor commits to generally via credit card, allowing their credit card to be charged X dollars, hopefully every month for hopefully an indefinite period of time. So that’s why we say it’s open ended. We don’t know how long, but we would hope that everyone as well and all the conditions are good, so that the credit card can be charged successfully forever and ever, so to speak. All right, so that’s kind of the background behind the two types of pledges. Doesn’t matter. One is, I’ll say, almost identical, but this potentially could be a one and done. All right, so let now, let’s go back into DonorPerfect. I’m going to stay in the Aucklands record. Notice the gifts tab here, the pledges tab, both of them have a purple.so anywhere, notice that I’m a fan of purple because of my cursor here, if there’s a dot, that means that there is one or more transactions on that particular screen. The only two tabs where there won’t be a dot will be your main and bio screens, because there should be, or will definitely be, only one profile. File per constituent. And keep in mind that bio is really page two of main okay, but in terms of these additional tabs, the constituents can have one, or they can have several or dozens of transactions on these screens. So let’s go and say, Oh yes, this couple has given one or more gifts. We also see that by up top in the summary and ah, this is something you want to be aware of. If we were intentionally making a change, I might say, Oh, thank you so much, DonorPerfect. Stay. On this page and hit the Save button. Okay, if you were just testing something out, then it’s okay to say, continue without saving. So I’m going to go to the gifts tab. This is what we call the gift grid that shows you up to 10 columns of the data that is on a gift. And this is customizable by using this modified columns on the right. But let’s edit a recent gift so we see the date that the gift came into our organization. We have the amount of the donation as 1200 we see, how did it come in, in the form of, in this case, check could be cash, credit card, etc. Here is in kind that I referred to, all right, the general ledger. Notice this red.to the left of it. That means that it is required, meaning I cannot save a gift unless I have something selected in this drop down. So this drop down refers to or matches the income accounts in our organization’s accounting software, plus something else here called C split details, which allows you to put in a check that goes to multiple general ledgers so that one comes From DonorPerfect. The rest of them is hopefully based on your organization.

Campaign, if you use it, we see annual campaign 24 etc. Solicitation is definitely something you’re going to be using to explain. Why did we get the $1,200 well, it was for the black tie and blue jeans. Gal of 2024 beautiful. Now, conveniently, I’m seeing just items from 2024 here. That makes it easy to manage some of you, if your record keeping goes back a few years, you might have, let’s say, 10 years of the black tie and blue jeans Gala. So if I click on add code, and I’m going to click on Manage codes, if your organization has not just one page, but several pages, and we’re going to see 2322 21 then I’m going to suggest something so if I toggle up here on the all switch, ah, notice that this annual appeal goes back in time, but we’ve made it what we call inactive By clicking on the green check to turn it into an X. What that will do is hide all of these past options so that we’re only using we’re picking from the current ones of 2024, or whatever case, the year may be okay, but anything this gala from 2015 No, it’s not likely that we’re still getting donations for the puppy love gala of 2015 but is somebody wondering, but Arlene, what if we want to report on the last five years of revenue from the annual appeal, I can guarantee you that in your reports, you can always report on any codes that are in valid or I’ll call them archived in my words, okay, so again, having This list being nice and whoops. In any field, basically, but especially in solicitation, you want to make sure that you’re only seeing the ones that are current or just recently in the past, and we have our sub solicitation, if it was for in this case, a gap. Law as an example, we see that this money was used to purchase tickets, or there could be sponsorship, or maybe it was an additional donation, etc. So these are the options that could appear in your sub solicitation. Last but not least is the TY or thank you receipt template so the donor received the gala ticket. Thank you, as opposed to we might want to also have a template for a gala sponsorship or a major donor or an in kind Thank you. This indicates what type of word and or email template that we will be creating or using to send to the donor. All right, in the last few minutes, I do want to show you here the pledges screen, several of the fields that we saw on the gift screen will be repeated here, so we see that here, but just a little different. We have a few fields. Date of pledge is when the donor made that promise. The start date is when the first payment will come in. The total is how much money over time they will be paying. In this case, if it’s zero, that means that it’s indefinite, but they’re not going to start it until September. And how much money will they be paying?
We see $25 and therefore we have the frequency, which is monthly, all right, and the other fields that we spoke of, all right, so that being your pledge screen. Now, what’s left? Well, number one, I’m so thrilled that you have come to this webinar to learn the best practices for data entry, but you’re probably going to have questions. So for those of you where your data transfer has been completed and your system has been activated, or DonorPerfect has been used in your organization for quite some time, well, you’re going to reach out to support, if you’d like, from the Help menu. You have the chat support. Some of you may have email and phone support, so you’ve been given the email address and phone number. All of you also have access to our knowledge base. That is where you can look up any topic or ask about pledge reminders, or ask about membership, whatever keywords you want to put into the knowledge base, everything and anything related to that topic will appear.

And we also have the tutorials that you can look at in terms of some video snippets, or what we call computer based tutorials where you are led through your DonorPerfect system and encouraged to click here or select that, or click enter, etc. Alright, so the knowledge base is a larger it’s part of this larger DonorPerfect community. This is what the knowledge base looks like. You can also discuss with fellow clients. You can also suggest something that will make DonorPerfect better for your organization. So this is the knowledge base and the suggest and vote to make DonorPerfect a better experience for everyone. So we would encourage your feedback so lots of ways to get help. So in summary, data entry protocols provide organizational consistency that is best done via the codes and those drop down fields. But also, I would recommend that you create maybe a little guide or handbook so that your colleagues and successors can follow the same data entry protocols that you’re using, there are key fields on the gift and pledge screen. Those are, for the most part, coded fields, and using those coded fields will impact and I’m going to see suggest improve the reporting out of DonorPerfect. It, and we have lots of resources in different formats that are available for you to get help. So you’re not all alone. You’ve got lots of us here at DonorPerfect who are available. When it comes to support, it’s unlimited support. So please feel free to reach out to us and ask questions as you learn to navigate through DonorPerfect.

So I want to thank you so much. If we have any questions, I’ll take a few minutes of questions. Otherwise, it’s been a pleasure having you in today’s webinar, if you’re going to continue through the foundation series, I’ll see you tomorrow as we look at importing a spreadsheet into DonorPerfect. So thank you so very much. It’s been my pleasure. This is Arlene Lessee signing off and best wishes continued success with your DonorPerfect software.