Development 3.0 Overview

Overview

Development 3.0 is a new iteration of the Development module which redefines many key features in the Veracross Development world; most notably by adopting a comprehensive campaign structure, overhauling giving history, improving moves management, and redefining records. This article aims to serve as a jumping-off point to explore various articles surrounding this exciting new functionality and will continually be updated as additional features are released, articles are suggested, and workflows are refined.

Important Concepts and Terminology

The Constituent Record

The constituent record is a new type of development-based record that combines data from people, households, organizations, and gifts to provide an overview of the constituent’s connectedness with the school. The constituent record serves as an internal, standardized donor profile and represents the most comprehensive overview of the constituent’s interactions with the advancement department. There are two separate constituent record options — one for households and one for organizations.

Some data points that can be easily accessed on the constituent record are:

• contact information and background
• the constituent’s relationship history with the school
• solicitation, proposal, and fundraising activity history
• communications and interactions between the constituent and the school
• past gifts, in honor of/in memory of (IHO/IMO) information, and any uploaded donor screening information

To learn more about household constituent records, please read our documentation here. 
To learn more about organization constituent records, please read our documentation here.

Rating, Scoring and Screenings

Rating and Scoring are built-in methods to track a constituent’s likelihood and capacity to give at a granular level, while also tracking and reporting on changes to these values over time. This method is split into three seperate sections:

• The primary dev rating is a drop-down that allows users to set a rating on two seperate axes (usually capacity and likelihood) in a single field. The axes are alphabetic and numeric, ranging from A-D and 1-5, respectively.
  Example: A school, through research and the screening process, determines that a particular constituent has a capacity rating of 2 and a likelihood rating of C. Their primary dev rating would be 2C.
• Setting up configured ratings allows the school to build out custom rating systems in case the primary dev rating is not a rating method that works with their particular workflow. Configured ratings can also be set up to mirror the rating systems of third party screening companies.  
• Scoring fields exist to track more specific assessments, therefore allowing the school to report with additional flexibility. These assessments are:
  • Connectedness
  • Engagement
  • Loyalty
  • Giving Inclination
  • Overall Capacity

Screenings are a method to collect data from a variety of sources on a particular constituent record. Information that is gathered through the screening process often will go on to determine the Rating and Scoring values determined above. Screening data is almost always collected through third-party software, such as Wealth Engine or DonorSearch.

To learn more about Rating, Scoring and the Screening process, please read our documentation here.

Fundraising Activities

The fundraising activity record is the main record used to record and track any form of operation or exercise that works toward an overarching financial goal. This covers a wide range of actions, which includes but is not limited to, the following:

• The Comprehensive Campaign, which is defined as the period of time during which money is raised through a combination of individual initiatives
• Annual Fund campaigns, which are specific campaigns designed to raise money for the following year’s operating budget
• General Campaigns, which are campaigns targeted toward areas outside of gathering money for operating budgets
• Group Appeals, which are outreach measures designed to reach a specific group of constituents

To read more about Fundraising Activities, please read our documentation here.

Objectives

Objectives are a way to record goals that contribute toward a fundraising activity. They track target amount, start/end dates for each particular element of the objective, opportunities for constituents, and gifts. These are configured on their own and show up in a report on the corresponding fundraising activity detail screen.

To read more about Objectives, please read our documentation here.

Opportunities

Opportunities are records that track the entire process and progress of soliciting a specific constituent and represents the relationship between a constituent and a fundraising activity. Opportunities are designed to be the next iteration of giving history records. Opportunity records include:

• links to relevent fundraising activities
• targets
• actions
• tasks
• allocations
• information on the Solicitation team
• gifts that are associated with the opportunity
• individualized calendars

To read more about Opportunities, please read our documentation here.

Moves Management

Moves management, sometimes called prospect management, is controlled almost entirely from the “My Opportunities” homepage and can be split between actions and tasks. Actions and tasks may be added from a variety of locations, such as constituent records, opportunities, objectives, and fundraising activities.

An action is an external contituent-related event that is typically used with the goal of making progress on an objective related to that constituent. It is similar to an individual event, with a few notable differences: the ability to schedule follow-up tasks directly from the record, the ability to track the communication channel, and the ability to modify and track the Type.

A task is an internal constituent-related activity that is typically used for tracking follow-up responsibilities after an Action record has been completed.

To read more about Moves Management, please read our documentation here.

Homepages

The functionality surrounding Development 3.0 can be accessed by one of four Development homepages. Each homepage is designed to be accessed by a different person in the development department.

The Comprehensive Campaign homepage is primarily designed to be used by the Advancement Director. This homepage provides a dashboad-level view of the active comprehensive campaign, with graphs, relevent queries and useful reports.

The Annual Fund homepage is primarily designed to be used by the Annual Fund Director and, in many ways, is similar to the Comprehensive campaign homepage, with the obvious difference being that it focuses on the active Annual Fund instead of the active Comprehensive camapign.

The My Opportunities homepage is primarily designed with Major Gift Officers in mind and assists them while interacting with major donors one-on-one and allows the officers to easily document each interaction and set up follow-up tasks.

The Configuration homepage is primarily designed with the Advancement Database Administrator in mind. This is where the structure of the development system is set up; from drop-down menus to detail screens to campaigns themselves.

For more information on homepages, please read our documentation here.

Additional Related Articles

As time passes, more features are released, workflows are refined, and articles are suggested, links to new articles surrounding these topics will be linked here.

Development 3.0 Webinars - a series of webinars recorded in the summer of 2019 which go over broad concepts related to Development 3.0.

Associating General Campaigns with Comprehensive Campaigns - details the workflow for different methods of associating general campaigns with comprehensive campaigns.

Import Types

There are a number of import types associated with Development 3.0. Documentation about each of these import types is listed below:

• Opportunity Import Type