Defining your Campaigns

Defining your Campaigns

Each Campaign needs to be added through the Campaign Maintenance window. 

We recommend using the date of the event for the Date field on the campaign maintenance records.

Before adding the campaigns, let's fill out the Campaign Management Worksheet.  CPW PDF

The gala campaigns will all have the Campaign Type of GA. The Campaign Year will be the fiscal year the event will run. The Campaign Code will reflect which component the campaign is managing. 

In our example, the Campaign Description for each campaign begins '2015 Gala ' followed by the name of its function.

Below is a listing of all the 2015 Gala campaigns using Find By Description in the Campaign Find window:

This is possible because of the naming convention used for the Description field. Note the Campaign Code values.

Considerations: 

Will the price of a Ticket be split and include a benefit and a charitable amount?  

Benefit + Charitable = One Ticket

Will you enter the amount for a single ticket, a couple or a table?  

If you are using Donate Now for Tickets you can have several categories like a single ticket, a couples ticket, table tickets, and tickets with promo codes.

If you have Auction donations ...consider giving them an Item Number using the Unique Ticket Number field?  

Which campaigns will be charitable and which will be non-charitable? Are receipts required?

What will be printed on the receipt?

Have you composed your thank you messages?

What will the GL Breakout code be?

Do you want to send unique letters to each donor ... what are your Letter descriptions?

Fill out the Campaign in the Campaign Maintenance window completely so that they are ready for use when gifts, donations and tickets sales start coming in.

To confirm that you have set your campaigns up correctly we recommend you run the Campaign Listing report for your Gala Type and all its elements.

Setting up the Campaigns

Now that your planning has been completed, it is time to set up your campaigns.  All campaigns should be set up at the same time to ensure that nothing has been left out!

First Things First!

The special event will work as a series of campaigns tied together by a common campaign type. Think of it as a project with several interacting elements.

In our case, the type is GA for Gala.  Each element of the campaign will have a unique Campaign Code to identify how a person or company is interacting with the event.  Further to that, we have defined breakout codes or funds, letter descriptions, volunteer tasks and expenses that we will want to enter into @EASE.

Our first stop will be at the Lookup Tables to ensure that all the codes we require are available.  Those that are not, we will add.

Close all windows in @EASE and select File\System Maintenance\Lookup Tables and check to see what you need to create.

Question:  Why did we close all the open windows?

Response:  When a window like a Campaign Maintenance window is opened, all tables used by it are loaded into memory.  If you add or update information in the Lookup Tables while the window using those tables is open, none of the new or updated information is viewable ... until the window is closed and re-opened.

So please set up all your table requirements before you begin building your special event campaigns.

Creating a New Campaign Record

To begin setting up new campaigns open the Campaign Maintenance window and click on the New button. 

Enter all the fields as you have defined on your Campaign Worksheet.

We recommend that for special events you use the Fiscal Year in the Campaign Description.  This makes finding related records easier to locate. 

             ie Find in Field           Description      Value  2015 Gala*

            ... this displays all campaign records related to the 2015 Gala event.

Each element of a special event will have its own 

• unique Breakout Code or Fund, 
• Charitable status, 
• Letter value, 
• Donation Category and 
• Receipt Required.

For each campaign where receipts are printed you can specify what you want to be printed on the receipt.  The choices include Thank You messages and for Auction donations gifted by a private donor, the Gift in Kind information.

The Donation Category tells @EASE how the dollars entered through the Receipt window will be accumulated to the donor's Donor Summary record.

If you are issuing receipts, remember to enter the Thank You messages found under the Campaign Profile.  If you cannot see an active Profile button in the top right-hand corner of the Campaign Maintenance window, remember you must Save your new campaign or campaign changes in order to move to the Profile.

Campaign Profile

The Campaign Profile ... an area you can reach once the main Campaign window has been Saved ... contains a series of tabs.

The tabs included:

Expenses:      This is where you can record campaign expenses.  @EASE is not an accounting system but it can track what you think you will spend which can be updated to what you did spend.  It is a useful reference of event costs from one year to the next and through the Campaign Expense Report it shows the net value of the event.

Contributions:  This window shows you how many donations or purchases were received in different dollar ranges.  It has more relevance for campaigns like direct mail.

Thank You's:  The Thank You's tab lets you specify special ThankYou messages that are campaign-specific.  The message can be changed by dollar value.  This Thank You field is 165 characters long so it can be used to show the charitable portion and the benefit portion of a ticket sale which is a CRA requirement.

Example:  Thank you for attending the Gala.  Tickets were priced at $250.00 of which $150.00 was charitable and $100.00 was benefit.

Notes:  Notes is a free format and can be printed.  It's a great place to put quick reminders of things you may want to do or things you may want to change for next year. One idea is to record potential sponsors who declined. Dickens is another site for this information. Or for companies who may be interested in the following year, enter a Dickens note so they are not overlooked.

Events:  The Events window is where you build volunteer jobs with time and date schedules.  Please note, you do not assign the volunteers in the Events window, you simply define all the jobs that need to be done and assign a date and time range.  The Volunteer menu is used to assign volunteers to specific tasks.  To track committee hours, Volunteer Events is used. We refer to this area as bulk hours.

Donations:  This window shows you how much money has come into each campaign.  An element is defined by the Campaign Code.  The Donations tab is updated every time you run Update to Master.  If you have not run Update to Master for your special event, you can still get a dollar status report by going to Reports \ Campaign Reports \ Campaign Listing with Total Dollars ... and using the Receipt Date range to print the report. 

The Donations tab displays Corporate and Private dollars, Corporate and Private gifts in kind and Registration dollars as well as giving a complete total.

Dollars are shown by fiscal year, so depending on the date of your event, dollars received might run over as many as three fiscal years.

Notification:  The Notification tab is used for Memoriams and In Honour of campaigns where family members have requested gift notification.  It does not apply to Special Events.

Email:  This tab provides a subject and message where eReceipts will be emailed.