Campaigns in CommunitySuite allow you to build communication lists, manage events with online ticket registration, and coordinate fundraising initiatives. Campaigns support four distinct types—event, fundraising, historical, and marketing—each designed for specific organizational needs.
Who: Administrators, donor relations, and communications teams.
Use Campaigns when:
- Building targeted mailing lists for donor communications or annual appeals.
- Managing an event with ticket sales and guest registration.
- Coordinating a fundraising initiative without a ticketed event.
- Tracking event attendance, table assignments, or dietary preferences.
- Managing auction items and bid sheets for fundraising events.
- Creating online giving pages for specific campaigns or initiatives
Event Campaigns
Event campaigns serve as CommunitySuite's event management tool. Event campaigns provide capabilities for ticket sales, guest management, and attendance tracking. Use event campaigns to:
- Create free and paid tickets.
- Sell tickets both manually within the system and on the Giving Hub.
- Manage RSVP guest lists.
- Manage requests and groups such as food preferences and table assignments.
- Record event attendance.
Resources:
- Event Campaigns
- Campaign Groups and Requests
- Manually Sell a Ticket
- Campaign Guests
- Campaign Online Event Registration
- Refund a Campaign Ticket
Fundraising Campaigns
Fundraising campaigns support annual giving, cause-based initiatives, or general fundraising efforts without hosting an event, selling tickets, or tracking attendance. Use fundraising campaigns to:
- Manage a donation-only option to leverage campaign list building and online giving.
- Create a public or private online giving page for each fundraising campaign.
- Set an internal goal amount.
- Track online donations and link manually entered gifts to the campaign.
- Track income and expenses associated with the campaign.
- Generate reports including donations, vouchers, and income statements.
Resource:
Historical Campaigns
The historical type is used during the migration process to classify past campaigns that are no longer in use. This is used to keep a profile list intact, but it will not allow for any ticket, groups, or request information.
Marketing Campaigns
Campaigns is CommunitySuite's list building tool. Marketing campaigns are used to build lists for mail and email communications. Mailing labels that contain contain information for a mail merge can be generated and exported. If Mailchimp integration is utilized, an email list from a campaign to MailChimp can be pushed.
Contact information can be exported from many areas of CommunitySuite, but since campaigns is a communications tool, there are some built-in features that help ensure accuracy in the list.
- Deceased profiles cannot be added to a campaign.
- When a profile is marked Do Not Mail, Do Not Email, or Do Not Phone, the contact info that is marked Do Not will not be available on exports and will not sync to MailChimp.
- When a household and one or more members are added to the same campaign, you can easily remove duplicates so that you only mail to the household.
Resource:
Campaigns Settings and Initial Setup
There are four types of campaigns consisting of event, fundraising, historical, and marketing with each having unique functionality. Campaign categories are user-defined and are essentially an organizational structure for campaigns. If your foundation uses MailChimp, the MailChimp API Key and List Name are found in Campaigns Settings. Content for online tickets can be configured in Giving Hub Content on the Portal Options page. Event Ticket Receipt templates are available. The campaigns dashboard also provides a summarized view of campaign information.
Resources:
- Campaign Categories
- Example Templates
- Mailchimp Integration
- Sync a Campaign to Mailchimp
- Campaigns Setting
- Portal Options Content
- Campaigns Permissions
- Campaigns Dashboard
Communication and Reporting
After profiles have been added to a campaign, mailing labels and lists can be created; and mail and email information can be exported. Financial reports specific to campaigns are also available. Using custom reports, donation and invoice amounts can be added to a campaign profile report.
Resources:
Auctions
The auctions functionality in campaigns offers a streamlined way to generate bid sheets and process auction items.
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