[jetula]

For the past little while I have been posting some perhaps, ridiculous questions about how to do this and that. And, you have all been very kind and patient with me and needless to say very helpful. For that, I thank you all. Anyway, enough of me kissing up, here is my question and scenario of the week.

For those of you who have assisted me in the most recent past, you know that my database is in a bit of a confusing state, but I have been making the appropriate changes to reverse all that. Anyway, time for the story… The other day our site director took a look at the way our information is stored and realized that another one of are troubles are due to our campaign entries. There are just too many campaign names being used for the same thing. A great example is our Seafood Gala we have every year. The list is very similar to this; SF2001, Seafood 01, seafood 2002, SF Gala 2003 and so on and on and on. I think the point was made. My question is, can one of you direct me on how I can incorporate or merge these campaigns into one single and complete campaign as in “Sea Food Gala”, and then, if someone would like information on a particular gala all they have to do is query and search by date, Right? Please correct me if I am wrong.

[Don Sabo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jetula

For the past little while I have been posting some perhaps, ridiculous questions about how to do this and that. And, you have all been very kind and patient with me and needless to say very helpful. For that, I thank you all. Anyway, enough of me kissing up, here is my question and scenario of the week.

For those of you who have assisted me in the most recent past, you know that my database is in a bit of a confusing state, but I have been making the appropriate changes to reverse all that. Anyway, time for the story… The other day our site director took a look at the way our information is stored and realized that another one of are troubles are due to our campaign entries. There are just too many campaign names being used for the same thing. A great example is our Seafood Gala we have every year. The list is very similar to this; SF2001, Seafood 01, seafood 2002, SF Gala 2003 and so on and on and on. I think the point was made. My question is, can one of you direct me on how I can incorporate or merge these campaigns into one single and complete campaign as in “Sea Food Gala”, and then, if someone would like information on a particular gala all they have to do is query and search by date, Right? Please correct me if I am wrong.

I am not going to correct you for being wrong. Most of our Campaigns have the year in them, as well as our Appeals. The fund name stayed the same. It is much easier to report on the Campaign when all the gifts were given to a specific campaign with a year. It does clutter up your list of Campaigns up a bit, but this way works for us. Most of our campaigns did not run from Jan thru Dec. The correct answer is what best works for your orginzation, is what you should do.

[jetula]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Don Sabo

I am not going to correct you for being wrong. Most of our Campaigns have the year in them, as well as our Appeals. The fund name stayed the same. It is much easier to report on the Campaign when all the gifts were given to a specific campaign with a year. It does clutter up your list of Campaigns up a bit, but this way works for us. Most of our campaigns did not run from Jan thru Dec. The correct answer is what best works for your orginzation, is what you should do.

Understood, and thank you, and is seems that merging these campaigns into one single and complete campaign is what I need to achieve to finish the clean up our data. Any assistance, information, knowledge or direction in accomplishing this merger would be greatly appreciated by me.

[jetula]

It seems that I am at a stand still with this question, perhaps what I ask is not possilbe?

[wolfganghario]

You can definitely do this as I did it about a year ago. The problem is I've now forgotten exactly what I did...
It was either using the global change feature in Admin, or it was something really simple such as going into the campaign and manually changing the name (though this might not work if you're trying to change something to a campaign ID that already exists. I would definitely look into the Globally Change Records option.

Hope this helps
Lee

[Lori Nowak]

Rather than merging the campaigns...why not do global changes to make them
the same?





Solution Number: BB77805
Applicable Product(s): Raiser's Edge 7, Raiser's Edge Enterprise

Solution Title:**How to globally add, replace, or delete the campaign on
gifts


Note: Before you proceed with the following instructions, we recommend you
back up the database.

1. Create a gift query of the gifts to change.
2. In Administration, click Globally Change Records.
3. Highlight Gift in the Gift Category and click New Change.
4. Click Include and select the query created in step 1.
5. In the Show field, select Gifts and double-click Campaign ID.
6. Select the appropriate operator and mark the Overwrite existing
value checkbox:
Add a different campaign.
Replace the campaign with a different campaign.
Delete the campaign from the gift campaign.
7. Click OK.
8. Click Change Now.






Lori Nowak
FACS Niagara & FACS Foundation
905-937-7731 Ext. 3313






Blackbaud User
Society
<driver@blackbus. To
org> Lori Nowak
cc
02/05/08 09:38 AM
Subject
[Miscellaneous-t-3046] RE: Merging
Please respond to Campaigns
miscellaneous@bla
ckbus.org








It seems that I am at a stand still with this question, perhaps what I ask
is not possilbe?



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Phone: 905-937-7731
Web: http://www.facsniagara.on.ca
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION

[Melissa Siobhan]

You can not merge campaigns but you can make a campaign that you want and globally change them to be the one that you want.

I know it may be frustrating around here but often you ask one question and get unsolicited advice but I think that Don had a very valid point that I hope you have considered. Doing things to your database simply because an administrator told you that is what you need to do can someday come to bite you in the butt down the road. I know, been there done that!

Having only one campaign means you lose out on the ability to use the goal feature and report on % to goal using canned reports in RE. Is this acceptable to you and your administrator?

What are you using for appeals for these events? We have only one campaign per year for all events (EVENTSFY08) and it has a grand goal and we use appeal to report on each individual event and use appeal goal for those reports.

I also suggest you set a policy on naming conventions for campaigns, funds and appeals so that you will never get things like SF2001, Seafood 01, seafood 2002, SF Gala 2003, etc.

Just a few things to consider.

[n1ugu]

Can you not Globally change the records under Administration? Select Gift, New Change. Then select under Gifts, Campaign ID. Operation: Replace, Replace select old campaign, With select new campaign.
Maybe I'm missing something in your question.

[jas.]

Quote:

Originally Posted by n1ugu

Can you not Globally change the records under Administration? Select Gift, New Change. Then select under Gifts, Campaign ID. Operation: Replace, Replace select old campaign, With select new campaign.
Maybe I'm missing something in your question.

what you may be missing is that if you post to GL or another accounting program, you can't globally change campaigns after posting. robert didn't say whether that's his situation or not, but that could be it.

I don't like it, because the way our accounting is set up, campaign doesn't affect finance's numbers -- they're based on fund code only. But I still couldn't make a couple of global changes that the powers that be decided they wanted to make retroactively, and I had to hand-adjust a couple hundred gifts. ugh.

[Michael Sherman]

In my opinion either the Fund or Campaign code needs to be dated.

We have a month long youth festival called Sarasota Music Festival. We often get grants for the festival that get paid off months after the festival ends and after we are getting donations for the next festival. I have found it impossible to pull comparisions based on gift date which is why we are now dating our Campaigns.


I agree with Melissa that the codes should be uniform like: SMF06, SMF07, SMF08. So if you want to go this route, changing the campaign name for uniformity is simply done in Records/Campaigns.

The beauty/curse of RE is that it can work in so many different ways for all the different organizations that use it.

[jetula]

Each person’s advice and thoughts on my campaign merging question is greatly appreciated. If I may quote what Melissa wrote, "Doing things to your database simply because an administrator told you that is what you need to do can someday come to bite you in the butt down the road."
With that said, I surely must weigh the pro's and con's before I decide on which procedure to carry out and what it may do to effectiveness to our database in the future and the possible repercussions of the choice made..


Thank you all for your direction