It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the coding of gifts in any donor management software. There’s motivation codes, which track what prompted your donor to give, and purpose codes, which track the way in which the gift will be used. Once you code a gift, other than running reports for the month (or year), what can do you do with them?
One of the best ways to use your codes is to take advantage of our analysis reports to compare how your various appeals perform. Using the matrix report in FundRaiser Select and Professional, you can compare a motivation code to other demographic or gift codes to determine how each appeal performed and receive some valuable information such as average gift amount. The Donation Summary report also provides analytical data around your gift codes.
Probably an important question to ask is what you want to know about each gift. When thinking about motivation codes, especially when it comes to a large event like a banquet or theater performance, you may have different pieces, such as sponsorships, tickets, auctions, or even general donation points, it might be important to know which aspect of the event did better or didn’t quite generate expected donations. Motivation codes (or our campaigns module available in FundRaiser Professional) help with this information.
Motivation codes also help you target your appeal letters. If you have someone, for example, who always responds to a certain letter or appeal, then perhaps you can structure a mailing to get them interested in other ways to connect with your organization. Looking to turn someone into a more frequent donor if they only respond to a single, annual campaign? Try using their motivation codes to target them with a specialized mailing.
There are many uses for motivation codes and these are but a few. I encourage you to see what looking deeper into your codes can do for you.
To learn more about how FundRaiser uses codes register for a tour or if you are already a FundRaiser user, contact FundRaiser Technical Support at Support@FundRaiserSoftware.com or 800-543-4131.
