A Tour of the Gifts Record Tab in Raiser’s Edge™
With that in mind, navigating the “Gifts” tab as a whole is a great way to maximize the gift tracking possibilities available within Raiser’s Edge. It is important to be able to comfortably navigate the “Gifts” tab and all of the tabs contained within it because the proper management and entry here is reflected in the daily giving management of your database.
When opening the “Gifts” tab on a constituent record you are presented with an “at-a-glance” view of the constituent’s giving history. Columns available in the view can be added or removed with the options under the right-click menu on this screen. Other options available under the right-click menu will allow users to print, export, and even color code the gift grid!
Opening a gift record will place us on the “Gift” tab of the gift record. This is where specific information about the gift is entered including amount, campaign, fund, appeal information, payment method, gift type, and acknowledgement status. These are just a few of the available fields.
A few of the fields seen on the “Miscellaneous” tab are the Gift ID, Gift Code, and Constituency code. We can also create a gift notepad within the “Miscellaneous” tab view that is specific to the gift we created.
The “Soft Credit” tab will provide us a view of any constituent record that shares the credit for a gift given by another donor. The amount of the soft credit can be viewed by the amount or by the percentage.
The “Matching Gifts” tab is where a company that matches employee gifts can be housed and reflect the matching gift amounts for that constituent and their employer.
The “Tribute” tab is available for users that have the tribute module in RE. This tab is used to manage gifts that are given for the purpose of honor/memorial tributes. If the tribute module is not unlocked in your RE database, this tab will not appear.
The “Attributes” tab on a gift record allows the user to create a label or designation for the purpose of tracking or grouping that specific gift in the future using a value that is otherwise not accounted for with its own designated field within the build and design of RE.
The “Installments/Payments” tab is important for pledge management and will appear when a gift type of “Pledge” is selected during the gift entry process. When a gift type of “Recurring Gift” is selected this tab is replaced with a “Transactions” tab which serves the same function as the “Installments/Payments” tab. In addition, when selecting the gift type of “Recurring Gift”, a tab labeled “Amendments” becomes available. This tab is used to make changes to values such as the campaign, fund, and appeal structure being used for the recurring gift and to make changes to the amount of the gift as well. Hopefully, they will be giving more when you need to use this tab.
The final commonly used tab of a gift record is the “Split Gift” tab. With this, you can view any particulars about a gift that is being split among different campaigns, funds, appeals, or packages. The amounts here can be viewed by amount or percentage as well.
Knowing more about the tabs that are available on the “Gifts” tab of a constituent record helps make managing gift entry easier in practice and theory. Fundamental steps and understanding of the basic tabs and fields of a gift record and gift entry should be the driving force in your quest to keep your gift data under control!
