Introduction to Campaigns and Campaign Structures

Campaigns are a tool in Spektrix that projects, tracks and organizes the way revenue is brought into your organization.

This article will introduce you to Campaigns and the tools and key terms you should know when using Campaigns in Spektrix. We’ll also take a look at Campaign Structures, which can help you organize, set targets and assign accountability for your fundraising initiatives.

TIP: Campaigns in Spektrix are a functionality only available with the Opportunities Interface.

Before reading this article, make sure you are familiar with:

• Introduction to Funds and Donations
• Setting Up Funds and Donations
• Introduction to the Opportunities Interface

Donations, Funds, Campaigns and Opportunities

When a Donation is received by your organization, the Donation is designated to a Fund, which indicates what the Donation is used for. All Donations processed in Spektrix must be linked to a Fund. You can set up multiple Funds to designate multiple Donations to different areas of your organization.

Alongside Funds in Spektrix, you can add an additional layer of information on the Donation by using Campaigns. While Funds determine where the Donation is allocated, Campaigns indicate how the Donation is generated.

Campaigns work well with Opportunities, which link prospective donors to specific Campaigns and can help in pipeline management, target setting and managing projections.

What is a Campaign?

Campaigns in Spektrix encompass all of your strands of fundraising activity and enable you to set and report on clear targets. Campaigns are used to track success, plan and forecast, and report to stakeholders.

Typically, a fundraising campaign corresponds to a period of time over which an organization is raising money for a specific purpose, usually with a corresponding target amount.

Campaigns in Spektrix enable you to group specific fundraising activities together (such as individual giving, trusts and corporate giving) to track against particular targets and breakdown how income and revenue streams come into the organization.

All Campaigns in Spektrix have:

• Financial Targets
• Start and end dates
• Hierarchical structure

Campaigns are managed in the Opportunities Interface, and the structure you use will influence other elements of fundraising in Spektrix, such as Funds and Opportunities.

Example

Let’s take a look at an example of how you can use Campaigns in Spektrix.

Your organization may wish to prioritize Donations for various initiatives. You may apply for different grants, run a public donation drive via a mass email appeal as well as reach out to major donor project sponsors.

In Spektrix, your organization would set up a Campaign to track all fundraising activity with an overall target. You can add further structure by using Sub-campaigns to set more granular targets for donations from grants, individual donations, major donor donations, or corporate donations.

Campaigns can help your organization plan and track the success of these fundraising initiatives.

Campaign Structures

Campaign Structures are the hierarchical structures that enable:

• Organizing your fundraising activity for planning and reporting
• Breaking down activity to set more specific targets
• Giving accountability to individual team members for particular strands

Campaign structures are often based on financial years, with increasing targets year to year. Structuring campaigns by financial year may be useful for working across your organization and works well with many Standard Reports in Spektrix.

TIP: There may be Campaigns that are better suited outside the financial year structure, for example a multi-year Capital Campaign.

A Campaign structure can have multiple layers that can further distinguish how Donations are generated. In Spektrix, a Campaign structure can be up to three layers deep:

TIP: The Campaigns and its nested Sub-campaigns and Sub-sub-campaigns typically follow the same start and end dates.

In our previous example, the organization may structure a Campaign as follows:

• They may designate the Financial Year at the Campaign level with a target of $50,000. The start and end dates match the organization’s financial year.
• There may be two Sub-campaigns: Trusts and Foundations with a target of $20,000 and Individuals with a target of $30,000. The targets of these Sub-campaigns should equal the Campaign target and follow the same start and end dates.
• Within the Individuals Sub-campaign, there may be two Sub-sub-campaigns: Major Donors with a target of $25,000 and one-time gifts with a target of $5,000. The targets of these Sub-sub-campaigns should equal the Sub-campaign target and follow the same start and end dates.

REMINDER: Campaigns indicate how revenue is generated, while Funds indicate where the revenue will go. In this example, the Campaigns only distinguish how the revenue is received, for example Major Donors. However, the Fund that Donations go towards can differ between Donor to Donor, who may vary with restrictions on their Donations. A Fund is selected for a Donation at the time of processing.

Planning your Campaign Structure

TIP: If you’d like to discuss planning your organization’s Campaign structure, consider our free Consultancy Services.

Planning your Campaign Structure can look like the following, starting with:

1. Planning Campaigns
2. Planning Sub-campaigns
3. Planning Sub-sub-campaigns

Planning Campaigns

In this example, the Campaigns are planned in advance.

Each Campaign represents a financial year with a few Campaigns that don’t fit the core financial year structure. For example, you may create a FY 2025-26 Campaign for the financial year 2025-2026, receiving Donations within that timeframe. You may also create a Capital Campaign, which has a longer duration, and you may create a Campaign for Legacies because the income is inherently without a schedule.

Planning Sub-Campaigns

Sub-campaigns generally represent broad streams of fundraising income.

In our example, we assume that all financial years have the same underlying Sub-campaign structure, for example, all financial year Campaigns will have Corporate, Individual and Trusts and Foundations Sub-campaigns. However, there may be exceptions.

Other Campaigns, for example the Capital Rebuild Campaign, may have different Sub-campaigns, such as ACE, Corporate and Trusts and Foundations.

Planning Sub-Sub-Campaigns

Sub-sub-campaigns generally represent more specific streams of fundraising income.

In our example, we assume that similar Sub-campaigns have the same underlying Sub-sub-campaign structure. For example, a Corporate Sub-campaign will have Corporate Membership and Corporate Sponsorship Sub-sub-campaigns while an Individual Sub-campaign will have an Individual Membership and EOY Sub-sub-campaigns. However, there may be exceptions.

Fund and Opportunities Considerations

There are two ways that a Donation is linked to a Campaign, through:

• The default Campaign of the Fund it is donated to
• The Opportunity that is linked to the Donation

When setting up a Fund in Spektrix, you can select a default Campaign which can help you track Donations and Memberships made to this Fund and report on them against your Campaign targets.

For example, if you have a public-facing Fund on your website, you can link the Fund to a Campaign such as Individual one-time gifts. All Donations made via your website through this Fund will track against the Campaign’s target.

You can also override the Donation or Membership’s default Campaign with an Opportunity. Every Opportunity is linked to a Campaign and when a Customer has any Order linked to an Opportunity, the Campaign in the Opportunity overrides the Fund’s default Campaign.

Reporting on Campaigns

You can track the progress of your Campaigns with two Standard Reports, the Campaign Summary Report and Campaign Detail Report.

TIP: A Campaign Report Type is also available for Custom Reports. Campaign reports show a row for every item related to each campaign.

• Campaign Summary Report

• The Campaign Summary Report is designed to give you a clear idea of the current status of all your Campaigns.

  

• Campaign Detail Report

• The Campaign Detail Report shows you a breakdown of all of the Donations, Memberships, Pledges and Legacies and Opportunities in your selected Campaigns split out into the Opportunity Stages.

  

On-Demand Training - Campaigns

In this section of our Spektrix Training: On Demand video on Fundraising and Opportunities, we cover Campaigns.

This chapter is a guided walkthrough of:

• Campaigns, sub campaigns, and sub-sub campaigns
• Donation goal forecasting through targets
• Campaigns as a way to track money flow

VIDEO TIP: With our Spektrix Training: On Demand videos- you can stop, restart or move to specific chapters. Click the CC option to turn on captions. Click in the Settings menu cog icon to control speed, captions and quality.

Further Reading

You now have the information you need to understand Campaigns and Campaign structures. Learn to set up your Campaigns and Campaign structures with Setting Up and Editing Campaigns.