Premiums Management in FundRaiser

by Larry Weaver

Radio station KLDW (fictional) is a public non-profit doing a fund drive, and offering to give away the following:

• a coffee mug to anyone who gives $50.00 or more
• a tee shirt for $75.00 or more
• a music cd for $100.00 or more
• all three for $250.00 or more

In keeping with a typical premiums scenario, the value of these items reflect approximately 10% of the gift amount: $5 coffee mug, $7.50 t-shirt, $10 music CD. These are considered the "value to donor" amounts, although it would be expected that the station would not pay that much for these items.

To manage premiums in FundRaiser Select and Professional, you use the Premiums module (optional in Select and standard in Professional). The first step in all this is to enter the premiums that you will be giving away. That is done through the Windows | Premiums window, where you will maintain a list of premiums. Simply click on the "Add" button to add a new premium, and it will open up four tabbed pages under the "Premium Edit" tab. On the Main page, you’ll enter the Premium ID, as well as Names of the items for use in letters and listings separately. You may also enter a supplier if you like, even a location where you are storing the premium (back room, shelf 10, aisle C, for example). The Value to Donor field is usually the fair market value of the item, which is normally not tax deductible, and the Last Cost is what you most recently paid your supplier for this premium.

You’ll also need to go to the Edit-Quantities page and put in the amount of the premium you have on hand. Keep in mind that you MUST have a quantity on hand before you can print labels for a premium. If you are not interested in inventory control, you may simply put in 999999 to insure that you’ll be able to print labels. If you have any notes you want to keep pertinent to this item, you may do so on the Notes page. And the Gift Listing page is used by FundRaiser to indicate which gifts have been associated with this premium, so it will be updated automatically when needed.

Next, once you’ve entered all your premiums into the list, you can start adding gifts and selecting premiums to be given for those gifts. To do that, simply enter the gift as you normally would, but use the Premiums button at the lower left of the Edit 2 page to start the process of adding the premium(s) to the gift.

Notice that when you click on the Premiums button, the window that opens has the steps you need to take emphasized by bold red lettering and those steps are numbered. Step 1 is to put a check mark in the "selected" column of any premium you want to include for the gift. Note that you may select multiple premiums and modify the quantity selected if needed. Step 2 is to choose the "Status" of the premium. There are 5 different possibilities:

Yes, Print Label – this indicates that the donation has been received and that a label should be printed for this premium

Item taken – No Label Needed – this indicates that the donation has been received and that the item(s) were picked up, so no label needs to be printed

Label Printed Already – the label does not need to be printed, as it has already been done. This is the status you will see on gifts AFTER you have printed labels through FundRaiser, usually.

Reserved, payment not yet received – Many organizations will take promises to pay and reserve shipping of the premium until payment is received, so that the information can be recorded and be ready to go.

Reserved, waiting to be picked up – Used when a person has made the payment, and has indicated that they will pick up the item, rather than having it shipped.

Once you have selected the appropriate status, click Save Selections, and another screen will be presented so that you can review your choices. This is useful if you need to change the status of one premium that is different from the others. Once everything is correct, click on Exit to complete the gift entry.

That’s all there is to recording the premium type of gift. The final thing that gets done is printing out shipping labels for those that have the status of Yes, Print Label.

This is done through the Print menu. Use it to go to the Premium Reports section and to Shipping Labels. In this screen you will have the opportunity to gather together all the premiums for which you need labels. There is a checkbox that allows you to "combine multiple premiums on one label", and is very handy if you plan to package multiple premiums given for a single gift in the same shipping container. If you package and ship them separately, you’ll probably want to uncheck that choice.

Click on the Gather Premiums button, and you will be presented with a list of people for whom labels will be printed. Some may have no check mark in the "Print" column, if there are insufficient quantities of the product, but you may "force" FundRaiser to print for them by manually checking that column.

Once you have approved the list, then you’ll be presented with the Label Templates window (familiar to you from Mass Mailings, etc.) to choose the correct label templates, and to complete the process.

Larry Weaver leads online training for FundRaiser Select and Pro. In his free time Larry enjoys music, motorcycles and being a grandfather.

Resources

WBJC-FM
http://www.fundraisersoftware.com/solutions/premiums.html

Overview of the Premiums Module
http://www.fundraisersoftware.com/products/premiums.html

Premiums: Please and Thank You! by Sasha Daucus
http://www.fundraisersoftware.com/content/view/137/

FundRaiser Software offers non-profit organizations intuitive donor management software that is easy to learn and easy to use. Three programs, ranging from simple to sophisticated, let you choose the features you need now, while guaranteeing a built-in growth path for the future. Software flexibility, budget options, and superb technical support make FundRaiser Software uniquely adaptable to the needs of non-profit organizations - whatever their mission.