One of the more challenging things to tackle in Virtuous CRM+ is your Campaign structure. The reason for this is actually pretty simple: we built Campaigns to be flexible enough to fit many different types of organizations. Why is that a problem? Well, it means we can't say that there is a "right" way to build Campaigns. Instead, we can give you some guidelines to help make sense of your data and how it should fit into the Campaign structure.
This method of Campaign planning is helpful because it is really easy to adjust as you're having discussions about what will work best for your organization. If you wait until you build it in your database and already have Gifts attributed to it, it will be a lot harder to rework the structure.
Table of Contents
Step 2: List Additional Sources of Income
Step 3: Group Your Communications
Getting Started
Before we can even begin talking about building Campaigns, it's really important that you understand the structure of Campaigns AND projects in Virtuous CRM+ and how that is indicated in the CRM. This infographic is a great, simple, breakdown of that structure. Or for a more in-depth dive, head over to the academy to go through the Campaigns and Projects course.
Three definitions to focus on prior to diving into this work (this article has more in-depth definitions with examples if needed):
- Campaign: Campaigns in Virtuous CRM+ allow you to track your outbound marketing and fundraising efforts, connect these efforts to Gifts received, and track their effectiveness. Campaigns are essentially a group of Communications. For example, an End of Year Campaign includes 5 emails, 2 direct mail pieces, and a QR code in the lobby.
- Campaign Communication: A Communication is the opportunity to give. These are essentially all of your appeals, including email, direct mail, social posts, events, etc. A single Campaign in Virtuous CRM+ may have one or more Campaign Communications associated with it. These may all be different messaging, delivered through different channels, that are all part of one single Campaign effort.
- Segment: Segments are the audience receiving the Communication and may be the most visible aspect of the Campaign hierarchy. Just as each Campaign may have one or more Campaign Communications, each Communication may in turn have one or more Segments.
Step 1: List All Your Appeals
To begin the process of building a Campaign, start by setting aside the term "Campaign" and focusing solely on the Communications. The word Campaign can be confusing for some because everyone comes at that word differently depending on their background. Your first step should be to list all the Communications you send out that offer a chance for a response, such as attending an event or making a donation online from an email. It's often helpful to write these out on sticky notes.
Remember to include passive opportunities as well. Even if a Communication isn't a direct appeal, you must include it if it provides an opportunity to donate. For example, a newsletter's primary goal isn't to ask for money, but if it includes a link or option to donate, it counts
Step 2: List Additional Sources of Income
Now, start thinking through all of the ways money comes into your organization. Do you apply for Grants? Do you have a Recurring Giver program? How about Planned Giving? Do your board members fundraise? Do you receive unsolicited Gifts or white mail? All of these should be included in your Campaign structure.
Step 3: Group Your Communications
All of your Communications (don't forget your events too!) should now be listed. At this point, work with your team and decide which of those Communications belong together. Group these appeals in the ways that you most often want to evaluate your fundraising efforts. These will become your Campaigns. Each Campaign should represent the cumulative fundraising efforts, while each Communication represents the individual effort.
For example, if you have an event and you send out 3 emails, 2 flyers and have the event itself, all of those Communications might be grouped together within a Campaign to report on the efficacy of the event as a fundraiser. Or, rather, if you typically report on all your fundraising by quarter or fiscal year rather than by content, then perhaps your Communications need to be grouped by the timeframe.
Before grouping Communications, it may be helpful to review the three Campaign-related Standard Reports to help make decisions:
- Campaign Summary Report: shows Campaigns broken down by specific Communication
- Campaign Giving Report: shows the Communications broken down by Segments.
- Gifts by Channel: shows breakdowns of giving by the Communication channel. This Report is helpful if you need to see giving across direct mail pieces, for example.
Step 4: View The Big Picture
You may find that you have some Communications that don't really fit into a single "group" or Campaign. Or you may need to report on how your Major Donor Segment responds across different targeted Campaigns. Use the following recommendations to help group additional Communications and report on each initiative.
Annual Campaigns
For sources of fundraising that isn’t associated with an initiative-specific or time-specific Campaign, for example, Grants, Planned Gifts, or evergreen items, these Communications may fit best into an Annual Campaign. The Annual Campaign serves as a “catch-all” so that all Gifts are accounted for and may include other fundraising like recurring givers or unsolicited giving.
Using Naming Conventions
Frequently, organizations need to look at their data in multiple ways. For example, you may need to view an initiative within a larger Campaign, like Giving Tuesday within the broader End of Year Campaign. One way to approach reporting on different Communications and Segments across Campaigns is to use naming conventions. Custom Reports and Queries can pull in Communications and Segments across various Campaigns based on these naming conventions.
For example, adding EOY to the name of all Communications across the Giving Tuesday Campaign and the Year-End Campaign allows you to pull in Gifts from both Campaigns into a single report. Or, alternatively, create a single End of Year Campaign but use GT in the name of all Giving Tuesday Communications to pull those out for separate reporting.
Or, if there is a specific audience you want to report on across Campaigns and Communications, for example active donors, add Active Donors to all Segment Names to pull all Gifts associated with that audience across any Segment.
Ultimately, you have options for grouping your appeals and how you report on each initiative. Using naming conventions across Communications and Segments gives you even more freedom in your reporting.
Things to Consider:
- Best practice is that you always know where a Gift is coming from (and where it's going). You can only know where it's coming from if you're tracking it–that's where Campaigns come in!
- You can use custom URLs to help minimize the work on gift entry tracking gifts point of origin. (Here is an article discussing how you can do that)
- Below Communications, in the Campaign structure, you have Segments. Sometimes, with things like newsletters, organizations want to list each newsletter as a separate Communication; other times the newsletter is the Communication and the months are the Segments. Similar things happen with grants- most of the time, organizations list grants as a Communication in an annual Campaign and then list the types of grants (federal, state, corporate, etc.) as Segments.
- Campaigns are designed to be finite. Since the purpose of Campaigns is to track your fundraising efforts, it becomes difficult to evaluate how your fundraising efforts are performing from year to year if you are putting everything into the same Campaign. This design is intentional to help you to start looking at how you're raising funds and the efficacy of those efforts.
- Additionally, using naming conventions when naming your Campaigns will help you easily find or query on the Campaign as needed. We recommend always using the year and a descriptive title.
- For example: Your Campaign name might be 2028 End of Year. Now, if you wanted to find a list of anyone who has given to the End of Year Campaign in the last 5 years, you could query Campaign name contains End of Year and the Gift dates