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This article pertains to Development 3.
Overview
There are three major record types in this iteration of the Development module. The Constituent record contains all information about households and organizations that may give to the school. The Fundraising Activity record details all the different ways the school is looking to raise money through soliciting gifts. The Opportunity record is — figuratively — where the rubber meets the road. Or — literally — how constituents interact with various fundraising activities.
An Opportunity is a snapshot of a Constituent's potential and actual participation with a specific Fundraising Activity. As an example, if you have an Annual Fund for the 2020-2021 school year and you want to include John Smith, the Opportunity is the record of John Smith's Annual Fund for the 2020-2021 school year. This functionality is designed to replace much of the information that presently exists in a Giving History record and expand its scope beyond only Annual Funds to encompass all types of fundraising activities.
Methods for Creating Opportunities
There are two main ways to create opportunities:
- create them per constituent and fundraising activity
- create them per primary development role.
Both methods are discussed below.
Note: Opportunities are not generated in this way for constituents with the Do Not Solicit flag marked as Yes.
Creating Opportunities by Constituent and Fundraising Activity
- Begin from the Create Opportunities by Constituent query on the Development: Configuration homepage
- Query on the Constituents you want to create Opportunities for, then run the Batch Update procedure from the Action menu
- Select the Create Opportunity field and then choose which fundraising activity to create the opportunities for
- Click the Update # records button
Creating Opportunities by Development Role
- Begin on the detail screen of the fundraising activity you want to create opportunities for
- Click into the Role Configuration tab and ensure the Development Roles you are looking for are selected
- Click on the Action Menu and select the Create Opportunities by Dev Role procedure and click to confirm
This method will only create opportunities for constituents where the selected options are the primary dev role.
Hierarchy and Segments
Opportunities can be associated with and comprised of other Opportunities and, in fact, the hierarchy of Opportunities is intended to directly mirror the hierarchy of the fundraising activities that pertain to each of them. As Opportunities are created, this hierarchy is automatically set by a trigger that runs behind the scenes.
Segments
In addition to the hierarchy of the fundraising activities, Opportunities can be grouped in arbitrary configured groups called a Segment. A Segment is designed to allow for development offices to create groups of Opportunities that work most effectively for their school's specific workflow. Something to note is that each Opportunity can only belong to one Segment, so, these Segments cannot overlap.
To create a new Segment:
- Start from the relevant fundraising activity record, click on the Segments tab, and click Add Record.
- Enter the name of the Segment in the Segment column of the input grid and click the Update button.
- Click on the link to continue the Segment configuration.
From the Segment record, the name can be altered, the sort key changed, and the Segment Type set. Segment Types are arbitrary and can be created from the Development: Configuration homepage by clicking into the Find Segment Type query and selecting "Add Record..." from the Organize menu. Any Opportunities assigned to this Segment appear in the built-in report in the lower half of the Segment record.
General Components
The Opportunity record itself is home to a lot of information, a lot of which is in an array of calculated fields that pull from the constituent and fundraising activity records. The fields that can be modified relate to the actual gift itself and are likely most important to the constituent's solicitation team. The different options available are briefly discussed in the following sections.
General Tab
| Section | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Constituent | contains basic information about the constituent while providing links to the constituent record, the associated person/organization record, their donor profile, and their spouses donor profile (if applicable) |
| Constituent Ratings | contains information about the constituent's primary dev rating and scores |
| Constituent Giving History | contains information pulled from the constituent's associated giving history record. Generally, this section contains information on the constituent's giving over time, first gift, and largest gift |
| Annual Fund Opportunity | contains information about related annual fund fundraising activity and opportunity records.When the associated fundraising activity's status is set as "Active", the System Status is automatically set as "Include in Reports". |
| Moves Management | contains information related to the last Action associated with this Opportunity. It also allows the creation of a new action through an Add Action link |
| Opportunity Targets & Giving | contains information about targets related to this specific opportunity. A calculated field detailing the Opportunity's Objective Allocations is present, as well as a link allowing you to create new Objectives |
| Giving to this Opportunity | contains information related to the giving associated with this particular Opportunity and breaks it down by gift type |
| Solicitation Team | contains information pulled from the Solicitation Team tab on this Opportunity. Additionally, you can add new solicitors by clicking the Manage Solicitors link |
| Notes | contains a modifiable Opportunity Notes field to where you can add notes specifically related to this Opportunity |
Allocations Tab
The Allocations Tab shows where the opportunity's money is allocated to various objectives. Assign Objectives on this tab and allocate goals for them with the Add Record button.
Solicitation Team Tab
The Solicitation Team tab contains both calculated and modifiable fields.
- Constituent Solicitors are pulled from the Constituent record
- Opportunity Solicitors are populated automatically from the constituent solicitors when the opportunity is created. These fields are updateable.
Add additional opportunity solicitors with the Add Record button. Alternatively, you can add a solicitor directly on the Solicitors tab of a gift record. When someone is removed as a solicitor, their status is automatically changed from "Active" to "Archived". Solicitors with the System column checked off cannot be deleted. This is to preserve historic data about who has been acting on the solicitation team.
Related Opportunities Tab
The Related Opportunities tab contains a report that displays all other opportunities that roll up to this particular opportunity. As opportunities are directly tied to fundraising activities and fundraising activities are hierarchal in nature, a related opportunity is one where the associated fundraising activity is related to another fundraising activity.
Gifts Tab
The gifts tab is a query that shows all gifts that are associated with this particular opportunity — set the objective to a gift immediately using the updateable "Development Objective" field.
Opportunity Activity Tabs
The Actions and Tasks tabs highlight information about the Actions and Tasks related to this particular Opportunity. Add new actions and tasks one at a time or with templates:
- One at a time: click the links ("Add Action..." and "Add Task") on each tab to create single actions or tasks
- With templates: Pick a template, set the start date, and click Update. The page reloads and the events from the templates display in the grid. Configure templates on the Development: Configuration homepage.
Constituent Activity Tabs
The Constituent Activity tabs provide detailed information that is likely relevent to people working on this specific opportunity.
Annual Fund-Specific Components
In addition to all information noted in the General Components section of this documentation, Opportunities created for Annual Fund fundraising activities have a few additional fields to make note of.
These are as follows:
- An entire new Giving History section of Calculated fields that can be reached by clicking on the More link
- Opportunity Dev Role (options include all configured development roles and None)
- First Time Donor (calculated field)
- LYBUNT (calculated field)
- SYBUNT (calculated field)
- Giving Category (allows you to search for a giving category to associate with this Opportunity)
- Giving Status (options include N/A, Refused, Soft Commitment, and Hard Commitment)