The difference is probably that our events have not historically been fund-raisers. Tickets for concerts, musical productions, sporting events, Homecoming parties, etc. do not have a charitable portion. That's often the difference between a university and other charities. Our fund-raising office is only responsible for processing and receipting charitable (as defined by the IRS) contributions. Ticket money for the events mentioned above bypass our office and go straight to the Business Office. BBNC will, for the first time, allow these event tickets to be paid for online. We hope that having a separate IATS account for event registration AND running event reports will be enough to reconcile that account balance if we delete the event fee transaction in the Plug-In. We do not want what someone paid for online football tickets to show up on their "Gift Tab" in Raiser's Edge. In our world, a person's "Gift Tab" really means charitable contributions. The University's Business Office handles tuition, fees, and non-charitable transactions on a separate system.

For what it's worth, we've gone live with the online giving page but haven't promoted it yet. The Development online giving page points to our IATS account, and the event registration page will point to Alumni's IATS account. We've had 2 unsolicited gifts come through our page. (Alumni doesn't launch event registration until July.) Our plan right now is to open the Donation Plug-In, link or create new records, etc. for each transaction and create a batch. We will print a Batch Validation Report to document each transaction. Our gift processor will enter the online charitable donations manually and will not commit the batch. The event registrations will remain in the batch until Alumni's monthly bank statements are reconciled. Alumni will get the data they need from Event Reporting (my assumption here -- they are working on this). But we will have the batch validation reports and the batch itself as back-up documentation. If this works like we think it will, we anticipate in the future being able to delete the non-charitable event registations in batch, leaving only the charitable contributions. Then we can commit the batch to RE. Stay tuned.....

I believe that in the future the term GIFT on Raiser's Edge will change for this reason. It can currently hold "non-gift" transactions but it makes people uncomfortable to do so because of the title. I keep hearing the term revenue and that also makes me squirm because some payments are not revenue (pledge payments for example)

I also think that the gift tab needs more flexibility to only show only transactions that you want users to see. Wouldn't it be nice to have it filter out by gift subtype (as a security oprion, no less!!!)

I honestly think that even not having that feature now - I think it is best to put the transactions on the Gifts tab and link them to the event and use the receipt amount to show how much was tax deductible even if$0. You can add receipt amount to the gift screen as a column and train users to look at receipt amount rather than gift amount.

In any report you do not need to rely on filters to exclude non-gifts - you should use a gift query which queries on gifts with a receipt amount of $1 or more. And as Nora says many reports allow you to include receipt amount.

For events that are not even for your department I would use a campaign to be able to very easily exclude them from reports.

I hope you are not ignoreing the fact that the information that they purchased a ticket to something University related is data for you. It can aid in your cultivation of them. If they have never been a donor it can give you new prospects to cultivate for gifts. I would go ahead and add them to RE if it were me. It sounds like you are not even entertaining the idea and I am not sure if that has been your directive from your team but you might want it re-evaluated. Any new prospects and data on existing prospects can't hurt - only help your program - why make a dividing line? - they are University constituents that you know something about - use it.

Hi Shirley,

I am curious to know if your process worked. Any updates? I would like to explore the option of also not entering event fees in RE and getting those processed separately from donations. Can you share if your plan worked and please share how you are currently processing these.

Thanks,
Melody

Melody Mulkey, Systems Manager for Advancement Services | Institutional Advancement | Lewis & Clark College | 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, MSC 88, Portland OR 97219 | 503.768.7925 | This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

We have set up in RE security a group called Event Funds. Under Group Priviledges we have checked Gift Security by Fund. Click on the Options Tab and then you can select the fund codes you have for the event monies and select cannot view and cannot edit. (I have a unique campaign, appeal and fund codes for all event monies)Then add the people who don't need to see these monies on the gift tab. Some of our staff needs to see for reconciling, etc and for printing reports for the business office (as we are not integrated). The Development Officers don't want to see them but Alumni and the NetCommunity processors do. The only thing to keep in mind that anytime you add a new event fund code, you have to add to this security group. Also you must remember that if you have rights to view these selected event codes, those dollars will appear in any gift reports you run unless you exclude them each and every time. (Excluding them in a query will slow down your processing time.)

You can choose whether or not to link the Event Registration to a Gift. If you do not link it, it will not show up on the Gift tab.