Gift categories and custom gift fields

Introduction

Gift categories are similar to campaigns, funds, events, and appeals in that they offer a limited set of controlled values that can be assigned to a gift record. Gift categories allow for additional classification of gift records by gift type to help generate reports and ensure proper accounting.

Gift categories should map to your chart of accounts or products/services list in your accounting software, but they also provide a way to record and classify the kinds of contributions you are receiving within the designated gift type, such as sponsorships, grants, stocks, or donor-advised funds.

When you use a gift category to track data about your gifts, you can use that data to do the following:

Search on the field from either the Constituents or the Fundraising tab
Export the fields in either constituent or gift reports
View your fundraising data within Fundraising views

How to use gift categories

A gift category is a field designed to set a controlled value that can be applied to multiple gifts. The values are “controlled” because:

You have decided beforehand that you want to use them to categorize your gift record, and
You are maintaining the values and plan to re-use them for multiple gifts over time

A gift category should never be used for a value that might change from one record to the next, such as a date or an amount. Using gift categories in this way will not be effective or manageable over time. The purpose of setting a gift category is to code your gifts in a way that meets your reporting and accounting needs.

For example, a gift category named “Gifts: Recurring” can be used to classify donations that are given to your organization on a recurring basis. Using this coding method makes it simple to identify both your recurring donations and the donors who made them.

Add a new gift category

To add a new gift category, go to Settings > Menu items > Gift menu items. Under Gift categories, click the Add value button. Select the gift type for your category, type the new gift category name into the field that opens, and click the Save button.

Once a gift category has been created, you can code your gifts using your category, as shown below.

Search on a gift category

You can search using your gift categories from either the Constituents or the Fundraising tab.

On the Constituents tab, select Gift categories from the dropdown menu in the Advanced Search box, and then select the category you would like to search on. Clicking Search will return records for constituents who have a gift coded with the gift category you searched for.

On the Fundraising tab, select Categories from the dropdown menu in the Advanced Search box, and then select the specific category you would like to search on. This will return all gift records that are coded with that category.

Including gift categories in a report

To include a gift category in a constituent report, select “Gifts” or one of the gift fields in the Customize step of the report builder. Then choose the “Gift category” column within the customization options.

Gift fields in a constituent report can also be instructed to return only results for gifts that are coded to a designated gift category using the Customization Parameters section shown in the screenshot below. Customization parameters can be set for any gift field, including total giving fields.

In gift reports, you can add the gift category as its own column. To do so, create your gift report and then select the “Gift category” field from the General Giving Fields tab within the Customize step of the report builder:

You can also view your gift data broken out by gift category. To do this, go to the Fundraising tab and run your search. In the View menu shown below, select the “Giving by category” option. The results will display as search results, which can be exported as a CSV or PDF file.

Custom gift fields

While gift categories should be able to accommodate most requirements for classifying and coding gift records, there may be some instances where you need to create an additional field to track data about your gifts. A custom gift field can be used in these cases. Like gift categories, custom gift fields should never be used for values that might change from one record to the next, such as a date or an amount. Custom gift fields are additional single-select or multi-select gift categories that are maintained for the purpose of building searches and reporting on your data.

Add a custom gift field

To add a custom gift field, go to Settings > Menu items > Gift menu items, and click the Add custom gift field button at the top of the page:

Then select what type of field you want (single-select or multi-select) and add a name for the field:

Scroll down to your new custom field and use the Add values button to add the classifications that can be selected for your new custom gift field.

Once created, the custom gift field will be added to your gift records.

Searching and reporting using a custom gift field

Similar to gift categories, custom gift fields can be used to search on that field from the Constituents or Fundraising tab, export fields in either constituent or gift reports, and view your fundraising data within the Fundraising views when using the single-select option.

You can search on custom gift fields in the Constituents or Fundraising tabs by finding and selecting the custom gift field from the dropdown menu in the Advanced Search box at the top of the page.

Custom gift fields can be pulled into a constituent or gift report in a similar way as gift categories.

For a constituent report, you can select “Gifts” or one of the gift fields in the Customize step of the report builder and then select your custom gift field in the customization options.

Gift-related fields in a constituent report can also be limited to only return gift data that has been coded with a designated custom gift field by using the Customization Parameters settings, as shown below. This can be used for all gift fields, including total giving fields.

Custom gift fields can be included as their own column in gift reports. Create your gift report and then select your custom gift field from the General Giving Fields tab within the Customize step of the report builder.

You can also view your giving data by single-select custom gift field. To do this, run a search in the Fundraising tab and in the View menu select your custom gift field. The results will display as search results:

Pull a custom gift field into a mailing

When you create a custom gift field and add it as an attribute to a gift in your database, you will be able to pull that data into an acknowledgment mailing using an LGL Merge Field.

In the example below, a custom gift field was added to Settings > Menu Items > Gift menu items:

The same custom gift field is now also available in the Merge Field Reference Guide, which can be found on the Mailings page in your account: