To get the most out of Spektrix for fundraising, it is helpful to understand the basic building blocks of the Opportunities Interface, how they relate to each other and to your everyday processes and reporting requirements. This guide is meant to help you understand these core concepts and develop a Campaign structure.
Guides on how to practically implement these decisions in the Spektrix system and how to set-up and manage Opportunities and Activities in detail are forthcoming.
This guide is designed to explain the concepts of Campaigns, Funds, Opportunities and Targets in the Spektrix system. It also advises on our recommended set-up for using these tools to achieve the best results when setting targets and tracking and reporting against them.
In the next section you will find basic definitions for these and related terms. From there, we will continue to explain the concepts, their relationships to each other, considerations for set-up and recommended set-up in more detail.
When in doubt, we recommend a consultation with your Project Manager or Support and Training Consultant before setting-up or altering your Campaign or Fund structure to ensure you are maximising your use of the Spektrix system and setting yourself up to get the reports you need.
Defining Key Terms
Campaign: a Campaign typically projects, tracks and organises the way revenue is brought into the organisation. Often campaigns track by financial year and income stream for example: FY17-18->Individual->Membership.
Campaign structure: Campaign structure allows individual team members, development directors, boards and executives to track success against targets. The Campaign structure is comprised of Campaigns, Sub-Campaigns and Sub-sub-Campaigns in a hierarchical structure and links to Opportunities and Funds. Campaign reporting is typically most useful for reporting against targets to leadership and boards, and for individual team members tracking their own Campaigns. Sub-Campaign (Individual in the example above) and Sub-sub-Campaign (Membership in the example above) offer further granularity.
Fund: a Fund typically tracks to ‘where the money will be spent’. Examples of Fund names include ‘Education’ or ‘General Operating’. Gift restrictions are often managed by Funds. Fund reporting is typically most useful for the finance team.
Fund structure: Funds can link to accounting codes and be set up with custom attributes. They can link by default to particular Campaigns or be chosen on a per-donation basis.
Opportunity: an Opportunity is a prospective donation linked to an individual or organisation. Creating and tracking opportunities aids in moves management, workflow management, target setting and managing projections.
Target: targets are revenue goals. These can be created for both Campaigns (and Sub-Campaigns and Sub-sub-Campaigns) and Opportunities. Utilising targets at the Opportunity level and comparing them in aggregate with Campaign targets will help create and track projections for revenue and cash flow.
Step 1: Campaigns and Campaign Structure
Getting Started: Concepts Overview
Best described as 'where the revenue is coming from', Campaign structure helps you measure and meet your fundraising targets. Campaign structure often reflects information reported out to boards, development boards and/or the executive team against revenue targets. It is also a useful tool for development team members to track progress against their own revenue targets.
Using Campaigns in conjunction with Opportunities allows for sophisticated pipeline tracking so you know when you are on track and when you may need to shift plans or re-forecast. It can even help with cash flow analysis.
Campaigns can be linked to Funds for restriction tracking, either on a gift-by-gift basis or by setting a default Fund for a Campaign.
Setting it up: Questions and Considerations
We’ve provided a recommended Campaign structure below. Spektrix is a very flexible system and you don’t have to follow these recommendations. However, doing so will allow for efficient reporting and ensure you are tracking fiscal year restrictions to gifts made or pledged outside the year they need to be accounted for.
The recommended Campaign structure will allow team members to understand and be accountable to their own targets while also helping management and boards with a bird’s-eye-view of your annual and/or capital Campaign progress.
Questions to ask when setting Campaign structure:
- Do we work to annual targets?
- Are we asked to project against annual targets?
- To what level of granularity does any member of the team need to be responsible?
- To what level of granularity does the Development Director/CEO need to be responsible?
- Do I have a legacy or capital Campaign whose targets are not annual/will we in the future?
- Will my Campaign structure help me track and communicate all of the above?
Recommended Sample Campaign Structure
In this recommended structure you will see that we establish a set-up which works on a fiscal year basis with increasing levels of granularity. Capital Campaigns and Legacy Campaigns do not typically work on a fiscal year basis as outlined here. 
Step 2: Targets
Getting Started: Concepts Overview
Campaign Targets
Campaign targets are typically set at the creation of the Campaign and often represent annual revenue goals set at the department, executive or even board level. Targets can be set at the Campaign, Sub-Campaigns and Sub-sub-Campaign level. Setting up Campaign targets will all enable you to track progress against your annual revenue goals.
Opportunities and Targets
The Spektrix system makes it possible to identify potential donors by searching for frequent attenders, wealthy postcodes, lapsed donors or other indicators of interest and ability to give. Once you've identified prospects, you can assign them 'Opportunities' in the system to organise the work you need to do to cultivate a contribution.
Opportunities allow for a moves management strategy for cultivating, soliciting, and stewarding major donors and are best used for prospects you plan to cultivate one-to-one. For large numbers of lower-level prospects they may be too much work to manage effectively.
While every Opportunity is assigned to a Campaign this is only a best guess, you can alter the Opportunity if your plans or your donor’s preferences change, right up until the donation is processed.
Creating target amounts for each Opportunity and using the likelihood of success metric in the system sets you up to be able to forecast against Campaign targets. Building Opportunities for your prospects and assigning targets to those Opportunities can also help you understand the number of prospects you need to meet your targets in each Campaign and the amounts you need to ask for.
A more detailed guide to the mechanics of using Opportunities for workflow-management and financial forecasting is forthcoming.
Setting it up: Questions and Considerations
Creating Opportunities for your prospects and assigning targets to those Opportunities will help you understand the number of prospects you need to meet your targets in each Campaign and the total you will need to solicit. You will find a sample target and Opportunity plan below.
Questions to ask when setting up Opportunities and targets:
- How many Opportunities can your team reasonably manage one-on-one?
- Who in the team will ‘own’ what Opportunities?
- How will you and your team set target amounts and likelihoods of success for Opportunities?
- How will you and your team identify donor prospects?
- Will you set Campaign targets based on Opportunities or Opportunities based on Campaign targets?
Sample target and Opportunity planning
Step 3: Funds
Getting Started: Concepts Overview
A Fund is best described as 'where the revenue is going'. This often corresponds to financial restrictions. Fund structure is often used to report the information accounting departments need for financial reporting of restrictions and transactions such as Fund name or General Ledger code and likely maps to a balance sheet. For this reason, it is usually important to consult with your finance team when setting up your Funds in Spektrix.
The Fund for an Opportunity is only chosen at the moment the gift is received so it need not be decided or tracked beforehand. Funds need not be automatically tracked to particular Campaigns so a gift through the Major Gift Campaign, for example, might feed into a General Fund, an Education Fund or a Playwrights Fund.
Exceptions to the rule
Customer-facing Funds (like annual funds collected on the web, at the box office and/or over the phone) which are likely comprised of many, small and uncultivated gifts are exceptions to the rule. Since they must have customer friendly names, they do not always answer the question: ‘where is this revenue going?’ in their name alone. Instead, we recommend achieving necessary restrictions with Fund Codes or Fund Attributes.
If you wish to track the outcomes of these types of Funds in your Campaign reporting, consider linking a Fund to a Campaign so that you will be able to report on it in Campaign reports.
A more detailed guide to the mechanics of setting up Funds, Fund Codes, Fund Attributes and default Campaigns in the Spektrix system is forthcoming.
Setting it up: Questions and Considerations
Questions to ask when setting up Funds:
- What information does my finance team need about our donations?
- Do we need to track restrictions (either FY or expenditure)?
- Would it help my finance team to add their accounting codes to our Funds?
For public facing Funds (web or ticket add-on):
- Is the name and messaging right for an external audience?
- Do I want this Fund to default to a Campaign to aid in income tracking against targets?
- Am I using this Fund for a restricted purpose? If so, is the restriction clear to accounting?
Putting it all Together
A successful Campaign and Fund structure which utilises targets and Opportunities will help you manage your work processes, your budgeting and projections. While it might seem complex, at its base, it is very simple:
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Create a Campaign.
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Identify a prospect.
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Assign that prospect an Opportunity against a Campaign with a target and likelihood of success.
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Track your progress against target for both the Opportunity and the Campaign.
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Get the gift!
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Process the gift into the appropriate Fund (with appropriate restrictions).
Of course, every organisation will have its own Campaign and Fund names and set up targets and Opportunities in the way that works best for them. However, if you take the approach suggested in the sample below then the Opportunities Interface building blocks will work together to deliver the best reporting and workflow management functionality for you.
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If you have any further questions about setting up Campaigns and Funds, please don't hesitate to get in touch with the Spektrix Support team.