[burnseh]

We are embarking on the public phase portion of our Capital Campaign and will be sending a mailing selling bricks to approx. 100,000 names. On the back end we are discussing the best way to keep track of names and text for the bricks. Some of my colleagues want to set up an excel spreadsheet. I am against creating another "database." Has anyone had to keep track of this type of information and would anyone give me advice on how to proceed with doing this in RE.

[Melissa Siobhan]

Attributes, attributes, attributes. That is exactly what they are for. You can add a gift attribute to the gifts related to the "purchase" of bricks. Some people have multiple attributes (one for each line of the engraving. These are exportable when you need to send the list to the engraver so I agree - no external spreadsheets!!!

[burnseh]

Melissa,
That is what I keep saying. They say checks and balances...I say that is what the paper they send in is for....
Why create another database when we already have one!!!!
Thanks!

[Melissa Siobhan]

What checks and balances? An external spreadsheet is only a list? Are they suggesting you do both because that is the only way to have true checks and balances? Hello???

Single data entry into a system which links the gift to the engraving to the donor's complete historical record is what they should want. (It is sometimes difficult to tell people what they should want - I feel your pain.) The ability to double check work is by keeping the original data entry form and checking it before sending the list to the engraver - which I recommend.

[Elaine Tucker]

We did this when I was at the university; actually used actions & action attributes for this. The reason we (I) decided to go with actions is that the brick purchase is an ongoing project and at any given time you may have new orders coming in, pending bricks waitng for engraving at the brick company and brcks being returned to campus for installation. We had a 16 character limit for each line of engraving & 6 possible sections installation so we did the following:

Action: New Order Received
Action Date: 7-11-2007
action Attribute: Line 1 Joe
action Attribute: Line 2 - Yamaourkiskienyg
action Attribute: Line 3 - & Family
action Attribute: Section - 1

When this particular brick was sent to the company for engraving we could run a pre-engraving list and double check that all the names were entered into RE correctly. Once the order text was confirmed we sent a text file electonically to the company so they could engrave the bricks.
Changed the Action 1 from "Order Received" to "Sent for Engraving"

Once the brick was returned from the brick company we would then change the action from
"Sent for Engraving" to "Ready for installation"

Once the brick was installed in the appropriate section we changed the action from "Ready for intallation" to Installed and marked the action as completed.

I think this was before action tracks were set up, so it may be better suited in action tracks now.

Also we did this for every brick received, so that way if a person ordered a brick in October and then another one in December we could keep track of them.

Another thing we had to deal with were "gift bricks" where people could purchase a brick for someone else (parents to students, alum to another alum etc) and so in order to make sure that only 1 brick per alumnus was created we would enter the action of Gift Brick in the honoree's record. Many times an alum would order a brick, only to already have some one else have ordered it for them; in that case we would contact the original person who ordered it decide what action to take.

When alumni tribute bricks were ordered the honoree received a tribute notice that was personalized to the reason by the original buyer.

This happened during the last three years I was there and we only had 2 bricks (out of almost 800) that had problems.

Sorry to be so wordy --- hope that this helps a little.

PS, when ever we changed the action type/reason we also updated the date.