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How to Create a Campaign Hierarchy: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/982201
At the heart of a successful fundraising or marketing season is a good plan. Take your plans from the pages of your notebook and put them into PatronManager in the form of a Campaign Hierarchy.
What's a Campaign Hierarchy?
If you're unfamiliar with what a Campaign is (sans the "hierarchy" part), we recommend checking out our introductory, All About Campaigns article before continuing.
Simply put, a Hierarchy allows you to set Campaigns up in a Parent / Child structure. As an example, let's imagine we're making a plan for our FY17 Development efforts.
We plan to have two Appeals for our donors and ticket buyers: a Fall Appeal, and a Giving Tuesday appeal. We'll also hold two special donor events: a Spring Gala and a Holiday event. Finally, we have ten board members, and each of them either need to give or solicit $5,000.
So - we've got three different types of development efforts (Appeals, Donor Events, and Board Giving), and specific appeals, events, or drives that each fall into one of those three categories. We'll make a Campaign to represent each of the following:
- The entire fiscal year
- The three development categories
- Each specific event or drive
Once we've set up the Campaigns in a Parent / Child hierarchy, we can view our total donations at each level, like this:
And view the entire hierarchy, like this:
Follow along below as we create this hierarchy in PatronManager!
How to create the hierarchy
Now that we know what the hierarchy is, and we have an idea about how we need to structure it for our organization, let's go create our Campaign Hierarchy!
1. Create the top-level Parent Campaign
Check out our How to Create a New Campaign for Fundraising article if you need help with the nitty-gritty of creating Campaigns.
All other Campaigns in the hierarchy will live under this Campaign, directly (as a child of this Campaign) or indirectly (as a "grandchild" Campaign).
- Start Date: Set the start date as the first date of your fiscal year.
- End Date: Set the end date as the last date of your fiscal year.
- Expected Revenue in Campaign: Leave this blank, as this will roll up from the child Campaigns underneath this parent campaign.
- Budgeted Cost in Campaign: Leave this blank, as this will roll up from the child Campaigns underneath this parent campaign. Apply this same concept to any other fields, such as Actual Cost in Campaign, Number of Contacts in Campaign, etc.
- Active: Make sure to mark this campaign as Active!
2. Create the middle level of the hierarchy
To fill out our hierarchy, we next need to create child Campaigns to represent our development categories. Just like the top-level Parent Campaign, this next level of the hierarchy will also have child Campaigns.
You can create up to five levels of parent / child Campaigns, so repeat this step as necessary to develop your hierarchy plan.
2.1. Input the proper values into the Campaign fields
- Name: Set the name as the overall category of this fundraising method - for example, Appeals and Drives, or Events and Galas.
- Start Date: Set the start date as the first date of your fiscal year.
- End Date: Set the end date as the last date of your fiscal year.
- Expected Revenue in Campaign, etc: Leave these fields blank, as this information will roll up from the child Campaigns underneath this parent campaign.
- Active: Make sure to mark this campaign as Active!
2.2. Set the Parent Campaign
Start typing the campaign name and select the proper parent campaign from the list.
2.3. Click "Save"
3. Create the lowest level of the hierarchy
Now it's time to create the Campaigns we'll actually attach incoming donations to - the grandchild Campaigns, representing specific events and drives.
- Campaign Name: This should be the specific donation drive or donor event.
- Type: Select the type of development effort this is - a mailer? An event? If you'd like to add more specific options, you can add custom options to the Type picklist field by following these instructions.
- Status: Select the status that applies to this effort.
- Start Date and End Date: Fill in the start and end date for this fundraising effort.
- Expected Revenue in Campaign and Budgeted Cost in Campaign: Track your initial predictions of what you'll spend and make in this Campaign.
- Actual Cost in Campaign: You can fill in this in with the actual price the mailhouse charges you later.
- Expected Response (%): This is exactly what it sounds like - how many people do you think will send money back in after receiving your mailing? In a gala Campaign, this could mean how many invitees you expect to come.
- Num Sent in Campaign: This is used to track how many people you expect to send this piece of mail to or that you intend to invite to the event.
- Parent Campaign: This time, you'll enter the middle level of the hierarchy in this field.
- Description: Type a more detailed description of what this piece and/or event is, so you can track it for future reference.
- Active: Make sure you check this box!
- Click Save
When you track this information up front, you can check the accuracy of your predictions once the campaign is completed. This allows you to adjust your strategy next time!
4. Enable hierarchy fields and add them to your Campaign page layouts
If you don't see fields like "Expected Revenue in Hierarchy" and "Actual Cost in Hierarchy" on your Campaigns, you'll need to enable them first. Once you've made the fields visible, you'll add them to your Campaign page layout. Here are some articles that'll help you do just that:
5. Take a look at the finished hierarchy
From any Campaign in the hierarchy, you can click "View Hierarchy" or the Hierarchy icon to see your full development plan.
So which Campaign should I attach my donations to?
Great question! Use the Primary Campaign Source field on the donation record to attach the donation to a Campaign in the lowest level of your Campaign hierarchy - in other words, the most specific Campaign.
In the hierarchy above, let's say someone hands us a check for $500, and we know it's because they received the targeted mailing we sent out for our FY17 Fall Appeal. We'll enter the donation in PatronManager and fill the Primary Campaign Source field with "FY17 Fall Appeal." We don't want to attach it to the FY17 Appeals and Drives Campaign because we can be more specific than that - and our reporting will be better for it.