What is the question? What should we code or not code? And why? In FundRaiser we have the option to use a lot of different types of codes, and sometimes, in a well-meaning effort to document as many aspects of our donors as possible, we end up duplicating our efforts and making things more confusing by creating unnecessary codes. And what, exactly, ARE “unnecessary” codes??
Category codes that describe a donors’ giving habits may be unnecessary, for one. But what makes them unnecessary? We want to know if someone is a frequent giver, or a major donor, or a once per year donor, right? Yes, we do, but we can use the information already entered in gift records to pull out those lists of folks, by creating Groupings, or doing a Donation or Donor report, or even a Donor Level report, depending on what information we want to see.
Category codes used to indicate that a person attended a particular event can be good, in the case of an attendee who did not donate, but aren’t necessary for donors at that event, since the gift’s Motivation code is used to indicate the event, in most instances. And do we really need separate Motivation codes for each year we have a particular event? Do we need “walkathon 2011” and “walkathon 2012” and “walkathon xxxx”? Not necessarily. While having a separate code for each year will give you a quick year-to-year reference in the Codes Maintenance window, so you can see total participation and giving amounts together, it may be easier to manage fewer codes and just restrict reports to a date range that you want to examine. If you keep separate codes, you’ll want to “de-activate” codes that are not currently in use, just to prevent accidental assignment of outdated codes.
So the bottom line on when and what to code is really a matter of “can we get the information we want without coding” or “is that information available already”. While there is nothing wrong with redundancy, it can be more confusing and time consuming to maintain that redundancy. This is where planning and knowing where information is stored will serve to reduce time and effort in getting out the information you need at any given time. It will pay you to look at the codes you are currently using, or have used, by printing out the Code Listing report (Print menu), too. Take some time to explore the many fields of data in all tabbed pages on a record, and it can pay big time-saving dividends in the long run.