Working with auction software (e.g., Greater Giving) and LGL

In this article:

Overview

This article describes how to coordinate between your LGL database and your auction software and provides specific examples from Greater Giving on how to do this.

Illustration: How to coordinate between your LGL database and your auction software

Export constituent data from LGL for import to Greater Giving

For your new auction or special event, create a project in Greater Giving. Then import a list of invitees (or bidders) into it.

We recommend exporting about 15 fields from LGL for each record you import to Greater Giving.

Export one record per household to Greater Giving

If you have created multiple records per household in LGL, we recommend exporting only one record per household for import to Greater Giving. 

This is because Greater Giving uses the concept of "Household" to group individuals together. Every individual will automatically be part of a household (even if they are the only member of the household). 

LGL has a flatter structure in which all constituents are on the same level, and they can be connected laterally via "relationships". In this situation, the main constituent typically has a contact type of "primary" and the related constituents have contact types of "spouse/partner" or "dependent".

Given this apples to oranges comparison, it gets very complicated to export LGL relationships and to create households in Greater Giving. (We've tried!) So, our recommendation is instead to export just your "primary" contacts from LGL, not the secondary, related contacts.

Greater Giving will automatically create a household to house the individual record.

Mapping LGL constituent fields to Greater Giving (See "Resources" below to download the full spreadsheet.)

Export sales data from Greater Giving for import to LGL

When your auction or special event is over, you will likely want to import the results back into your LGL database. Before you move immediately to transferring all sales information, think about how you'll use this data for stewardship. It is probably helpful to track who donated items for your auction (in-kind gifts) and certainly important to capture who "raised the paddle" (donations), but the fact that someone paid $1,800 for a trip to Africa valued at $2,200 might not be an indication of their level of support for your organization. The point is, think carefully about what you're uploading into LGL, making sure tracking the data will benefit your stewardship goals.

Greater Giving has a number of pre-built exports for donor management systems. The one we recommend using is the Abila (formerly Sage) FR50 export.

Excerpt showing how the Abila (Sage) FR50 export maps to LGL (See the "Resources" section below for a link to download the full spreadsheet.)

Resources

This Excel file shows how fields match up between LGL and Greater Giving: 

Importing and Exporting between LGL and Greater Giving

Greater Giving has an article on how to coordinate your work in Greater Giving with donor management software: Data Exchange with Greater Giving Online.