Let’s suppose your organization’s fiscal year runs from January to December. We’ll further suppose that your organization runs an annual campaign each year; we’ll call this campaign the 09 Annual Campaign. The 09 Annual Campaign is made up of two solicitations: the 09 Spring Mailing and the 09 Fall Mailing. All set?

Now, let’s suppose that it’s January 3 and two donations arrive on your desk.
Donation A is a check dated December 31 and is in response to the 09 Fall Mailing.
Donation B is a check dated January 1 and is in response to the 09 Fall Mailing.

How should these gifts be coded?
BOTH gifts should be applied to the 09 Fall Mailing (and, consequently, the 09 Annual Campaign). The GIFT DATE for each should be the date on the check. While the tendency is to want to create an “overflow” or “after year end” solicitation, the truth is, there is no need.

The Result
Donation A is properly contained in tax year 2009 and Donation B is properly contained in tax year 2010. BOTH gifts are in response to the 09 Fall Mailing and the 09 Annual Campaign.

How should you report on these?
When the E.D. asks for a report of all donations to the 09 Annual Campaign (or the 09 Fall Mailing solicitation), you can simply use the criteria 09 Annual Campaign (or 09 Fall Mailing solicitation).

When he/she asks for a report of donations to the 09 Annual Campaign (or the 09 Fall Mailing solicitation) for the fiscal year (or another set of dates), you will use the DATE of the gift, along with the campaign and/or solicitation to report.

YES, these numbers will be different, but now you know why and can explain to him or her why this is the case. Part of your responsibility, too, is asking the right questions of the person who is asking you for reports.

If you’re still skeptical about not needing to recode the solicitation, the following situation might help you to understand a bit better. Suppose your organization has undertaken a capital or major gifts campaign. A donor has agreed to make a gift to the 09 Major Gifts campaign. She will pay this donation over five years. Each time a gift comes in, it will be coded to the 09 Major Gifts Ask and the 09 Major Gifts Campaign. This will be true for every pledge payment made over the course of those five years. You wouldn’t recode the gifts to come from a different solicitation each year in this scenario; why would you do it to any other gift?

While we were determined that we would not let the fire distract us from our mission of giving back to our community by helping nonprofits, we were forced to embark on a journey of rebuilding the company.

It is with a grateful heart that we acknowledge the help and support given to us by our customers, vendors, business associates, the Yarmouth Chamber of Commerce, our former landlord and his staff as well as our many personal friends and family. There are too many people to acknowledge individually here, but you know who you are. Everyone from Art and Rob who made certain that we had a chance to retrieve what we could, to the friend who delivered homemade cookies or gave one of us a “hug”, to the associate who offered us space to conduct business while we rebuilt, or the vendor who replaced our business cards and letter head at no cost, to the Yarmouth Chamber of Commerce staff member who made certain that we knew of available donations…your thoughtfulness will not be forgotten.

You will all be happy to know that Soft Trac has turned the “lemons” into “lemonade”. Our new office space at 361 Route One in Falmouth provides us with more space to conduct our business. An open house is planned for mid July.

• The SQL Server 2005 Express Edition has a 4 GB database limit. MSDE has a 2 GB
  database limit.
• SQL Server 2005 Express Edition comes with a graphical interface allowing users to
  perform some basic admin tasks. MSDE does not come with a graphical interface.
• Once a Sage MIP Fund Accounting database has been opened with SQL Server 2005, it can no longer be opened with SQL Server 2000. This is not an issue unless you need for Soft Trac to repair your database or other task offsite. Since all of our production machines have been upgraded, special provisions would need to be taken to perform the work. This would add unnecessary cost to the project.
• Mainstream support for MSDE ends two years after the release of SQL Server 2005, in
  accordance with standard Microsoft lifecycle policies.

For more information about upgrading your Sage MIP Fund Accounting software and SQL Server 2005 Express, visit Sage tech support online at http://www.sagesoftwareonline.com. Don’t have a login and password, contact Soft Trac to find out how to one can be obtained.

If your organization is running the Full version of SQL, Microsoft has released a white paper
outlining reasons for upgrading to SQL Server 2005. You can download the paper at
www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/whitepapers/why-upgrade.mspx

Reports in FR 50 fall into three main categories and several smaller ones. The main categories are constituent, financial and analytical reports.

Constituent reports give you information about individuals or organizations in your database. They’re typically used for creating mailing lists or donor profiles. People often use these to pull transaction information for constituents, as well. While this is okay, it’s important to note that a constituent will appear in the list for the report as many times as he or she meets the criteria being used to pull it. So, if Johnny gave three $50 gifts between June of last year and today, he’ll show up three times in the list (assuming you haven’t created a query in which he would only meet the test condition once).

Financial reports are designed to give you information about specific transactions. Here, you can pull a list of donors by their level, such as “Gold”, “Silver”, or “Platinum” for your annual report. You can also pull a gift acknowledgement report that will allow you to quickly and easily thank your constituents. Find out who gave last year but hasn’t participated this year with the LYBUNT report. There’s also the super-handy gift/pledge/payment log, handy for everything from checking on lists of donors to reconciling the month-end info with accounting.

Analytical reports give you a sense of the “big picture”. How is the fall solicitation
doing this year as compared to last? How many of our alumni from the class of 2000 participated in the annual campaign this year? These are the kinds of reports that get Executive Directors out of bed in the morning. (They live for this stuff).

I receive more questions about reports than anything else. I have a few pieces of advice to offer around them. The easiest and best thing you can do to help yourself understand reports better is to go to Help>Product Guides>Reports guide and download a copy of the reports guide to keep handy. This will give you a chance to look to see if the format of the report is close to what you need. Second, remember that even the reports guide is only a guide, your reports will look different based on the options you choose to include. Last, but certainly not least, be CLEAR about what you actually need in the report you are trying to run. Spell it out clearly for yourself, and ask questions of the people who requested the report. There’s a big difference between asking for a list of last year’s donors and a list of donors from the last fiscal year. Both you and the requestor need to be aware of that.

Happy reporting!

Sage recommends that you at least run this utility when the database gets to around 1.5GB. Run all data integrity checks and make a backup of the database before using the compress
feature. After compressing the database run data integrity checks again. Check in with your IT folks to see what size the MIP database is and to see if your MIP database might need to be compressed. We recommend your database administrator run this utility at a scheduled time.

Where do you find out if an organization makes matching gifts? HEP Development Services, Inc. offers a Gifts Plus, an electronic file of matching gift companies. You can locate HEP Development services on the web at hepdevelopment.com. I also located a free matching gift company lookup screen operated by HEP at matching gifts.com/demo.cfm.

To create matching gifts automatically in FR 50, you’ll need to create a resume card for your constituent and a record for the company the constituent works for. On the company’s card, you’ll check the box on the basic card that says they’re a match company and enter the ratio for their matching gifts. On the employee’s resume card, be sure to have the job at the matching gift company as the “current” job. When you enter a gift on this constituent’s card, the system will automatically remind you that the constituent works for a matching gift company and give you the option of creating the matching pledge at the same time you enter the gift. When you receive the gift from the company to match your constituent’s gift, you’ll simply enter the pledge payment on the company’s record. Voila!

Happy matchmaking.

Or you can wait for your IT folks to install version 10x.