In the first blog about commemorative donations, I talked about how to use notes to document elements of the gifts such as inscriptions or even the specific reason for the gift. If your organization uses FundRaiser Professional, you have two additional tools at your disposal: Period and Miscellaneous codes.
These additional codes can be found on the “Edit Other” tab of your gift entry, right next to the information where you would note any non-tax deductible portions of the gift. FundRaiser doesn’t provide any sample codes for these two items, because they’re designed to be customized to meet the organization’s individual needs.
Some examples I’ve seen of of how period and/or misc. codes are used:
- Noting mailer codes or mailing cycles for organizations which use a lot of direct mail
- Listing advertising sales amounts for inclusion on an invoice/thank you letter
- Selecting which sponsorship package benefits a sponsor has chosen
The goal of the period and misc. codes is to ensure that your organization has ample ways to code a gift so that the information is meaningful to you and able to be utilized within a report. Both of these codes appear on our donation reports as well as in other places where gift details are listed.
For the example from the earlier blog about commemorative bricks being sold, the misc. code is an excellent place to code “Inscription Received” or “Inscription Needed”. The period code could be used instead of a note to indicate that the donation was for a brick, if the purpose or motivation code didn’t contain that information.
Period and misc. codes are two very flexible parts of FundRaiser Professional and when you’re working with special gifts, they’re an excellent way to ensure you’ve recorded all the information you need. If you have any questions about these codes, please feel free to reach out to our support team.
Have questions about using FundRaiser for special fundraising campaigns? Contact our support team and we can help. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.m or 800-543-4131.
