One of the first items your organization will need to decide when migrating to CharityEngine is your campaigns and initiative structure. This will shape how your organization uses CharityEngine and will allow you to optimize your fundraising.
In CharityEngine, the hierarchy is as follows: Campaigns (1) > Initiatives (Many). This means that everything rolls up into your campaigns and needs to be structed in a certain way. Initiatives are considered the activities in which you interact with your constituents, whether email, in person event, peer to peer event. When establishing a campaign you may have one or multiple initiatives associated with a campaign. For CharityEngine structure, each of your initiatives will require a campaign – and each campaign can have one or more initiatives.
With the proper structure, you can quickly and easily identify campaign performance...
Access: Reports & Analytics > Campaigns > Campaign Analytics
Campaign "CharityEngine Foundation - Campaign Demo" has leveraged 4 different initiatives (or ways in which the organization is reaching out to their constituents) - you can drill down to see the individual performance of the 4 initiatives.
What is a Campaign?
Campaigns are the overarching element when it comes to your fundraising efforts and sits at the top of the hierarchy. An example of a campaigns would be your Annual Giving Campaign or specific event your organization is hosting (ex. Fall 2022 Gala).
The campaign is the parent data element, and everything will roll up into the campaign, such as your initiatives and donations. Your organization can than view all of the data associated with the campaign by looking at the campaigns dashboard.
To access navigate to the Campaigns App > Create & Publish > Campaigns > locate the campaign and click through to expose
For more information about campaign dashboards, read this article
What is an Initiative?
The next data element in the structure is your initiatives. An initiative is any way you are communicating with your donors. This could be an email, a web form, a social media ad, or even an in person outreach.
It is CharityEngine’s best practice to associate all contact communication with an initiative and every initiative to a campaign. This allows for optimal reporting and provides a deeper understanding of your fundraising efforts.
Note: Every time an email is sent through CharityEngine, a new initiative will be created automatically. However you can create initiatives manually by navigating to the Campaigns App > Create & Publish > Initiatives > Create New.
From here you will be able to associate the initiative the campaign by using the Campaigns dropdown
Once the initiative has been created and attributed to the campaign, you will be able to attribute other items to the initiative, like a donation form or an event. All donations that come through these outlets, will then be attributed to the initiative and therefore the campaign.
Navigating to the Reports & Analytics App > Campaigns > Initiative Analytics you can also review the individual initiatives that are rolling up into a campaign.
What is a Creative?
Creatives are at the bottom of the hierarchy and is the actual item that is being sent out either through email, text, mail, or other methods. For example, when you are sending an email, you will first create the creative, then send the email, which in turn will automatically create an initiative.
For more information on creating creatives, read this article
