Frequently used terms
Important
Fundraising and Engagement is being retired. Support for Fundraising and Engagement will end at 11:59 PM Pacific Time on December 31, 2026. For more information, go to What’s new in Fundraising and Engagement.
This article provides a list of key terms used in Fundraising and Engagement. The first section has terms that are common throughout the solution. The remaining sections list terms according to the navigation pane section where they originate, for example, Gifts.
The Nonprofit Common Data Model defines the attributes, entities, and processes for Fundraising and Engagement. To become familiar with these terms, download the Common Data Model Reference Guide from GitHub.
Common Fundraising and Engagement terms
This solution uses some terms no matter what feature you're using. These terms refer to user-interface elements in a consistent way to help you become familiar with them, so you can stay oriented regardless of your current task.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Navigation bar | The horizontal bar across the top of the solution interface. |
| Navigation pane | The vertical panel along the left side of the solution interface. |
| Action pane | The horizontal bar just below the navigation bar. |
| Section | 1) A bold element in the navigation pane, for example Workplace. 2) A portion of a tab or form. Contains fields or tiles. |
| Entity | 1) A set of records about one thing, such as contacts. 2) An item listed in a section of the navigation pane that you can select to open a view of its records, such as Contacts. |
| View | A filtered set of records from one entity, such as Active Contacts. Appears just below the action pane. |
| Record | An instance of an entity, such as a contact record. A record usually has tabs that group related fields. |
| Tab | A portion of a record that you view by selecting the tab's name near the top of the record. Tabs often have sections that contain fields or tiles. |
| Field | 1) An attribute of an entity. 2) A box to enter or display the value of one attribute for a record. Some fields are read-only because they reflect data that's input somewhere else or is calculated from other field values. |
| Tile | A portion of a tab that displays one or more values about the tab's record. |
Relationships
Contacts and accounts are the foundation of Fundraising and Engagement. These records let you manage all information related to your contacts, organizations, households, and their gifts. Using these records you can connect contacts to organization accounts and to household accounts.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Contact record | Stores contact information and preferences for an individual constituent, and links to records for related gifts, receipts, interactions, and accounts (organizations and households). |
| Organization account record | Stores contact and giving details about a constituent organization, plus the companies, agencies, facilities, vendors, and departments that the organization works with. An Organization Account record links the organization to records for related gifts, receipts, interactions, and individual constituents. |
| Household account record | Provides a summary of gifts, interactions, and opportunities for one or more individual constituents who live together. |
Gifts
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Gift | Any transaction, donor commitment, or payment schedule that triggers gift processing and any related reporting. |
| Transaction | A record to track a donation received by your nonprofit organization. Transaction records track key information about gifts or items transferred from a constituent to your nonprofit organization. Transactions can apply to an outstanding donor commitment, fulfill an outstanding designation plan, or trigger the creation of a designation credit. Transactions can be a donation or a soft credit. |
| Donation | A payment or transfer of items to your nonprofit from a constituent. |
| Soft credit | A donation that a constituent influenced but didn't actually make, such as a matching gift. |
| Donor commitment | A record of a donor's agreement to make a gift to your organization. Gifts can be one-time, or split into several donations on a schedule. A donor commitment can be linked with the following entities: Account Campaign Contact Designation Payment Schedule |
| One-time pledge | Represents a donor’s commitment to make a one-time gift at a defined time in the future. |
| Sustaining pledge | Represents a donor’s commitment to make several payments on a defined schedule. |
| Payment Schedule | Sets out the cadence and conditions of payments for a sustaining pledge. A payment schedule can be linked with the following entities: Account Contact Designation Credit Designation Plan Donor Commitment Payment Asset Payment Method |
| Recurring donation | A commitment to give on an ongoing basis. Donors can commit to a recurring donation with a specific end date or no end date. A recurring payment schedule contains a payment method that connects it to a credit card or bank account. |
| Pledge schedule | Splits a sustaining pledge across several time periods, and groups the commitments under one payment schedule record. A pledge schedule shows the amount and cadence of the partial donations within the pledge, but doesn't contain a payment method. |
| Gift-in-kind | A donation made in the form of goods or services that have real value, instead of a gift of cash. |
| Acknowledgment | A communication to acknowledge a gift or event registration. Typically an acknowledgment has the form of a thank you letter. Acknowledgments can contain related financial information, but they don't come with a receipt record and can't help prove eligibility for tax benefits. |
| Receipt | A financial statement that records the amount a donor has paid, split into the amounts that are tax deductible and aren't tax deductible. The receipt is also a record type in the Fundraising and Engagement solution that is linked to donors, transactions, and event registrations. |
| Receipt stack | Uses a unique set of receipt numbers to easily differentiate how, where, or when a receipt is produced. A receipt stack is required to generate a receipt. |
Payment processors
The Fundraising and Engagement solution supports payment processing through Stripe, Moneris, and iATS payment gateways. Each payment gateway handles currencies differently.
Stripe payment processor supports all currencies.
Moneris payment processor supports only payments in CAD.
iATS payment processor supports multiple currencies, but assumes that the incoming payment is in the same currency the user specified during registration.
Note
If the user tries to use a different currency from the currency specified during registration, iATS silently interprets the charged amount in the originally registered currency. For more information, see the iATS documentation.
Prospecting
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Opportunity | Represents prospective, pending, and closed "deals" or gifts. This entity allows nonprofit organizations to track their efforts to build relationships with prospective donors. An opportunity commonly tracks assigned fundraisers, ask amounts, campaigns, designated funds given to, and similar details. Opportunity pipeline management helps development and gift officers forecast likely gifts by when they close. An opportunity can be linked with the following entities: Account, Campaign, Contact, Designation, Designation Plan, Donor Commitment, Lead, and Preference. |
Fundraising
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Campaign | Defines and manages outbound marketing and outreach activities for a fundraising initiative. Includes the prospective and actual recipients of campaign messaging, and the expected and actual results of those campaign activities. Campaigns allow you to understand what activities are producing revenue for your organization across renewal mailings, telemarketing, online donation forms, the activity of major gifts officers, and more. The campaign record also tracks the source of funds. A campaign can be linked with the following entities: Designation, Designation Plan, Lead, Opportunity, Parent Campaign, and Planned Giving. |
| Appeal | Represents a delivery method used in a campaign. Events, emails, and direct mail are all ways to ask for a donation. The success of these methods is tracked against an Appeal, which in turn is related to the parent campaign. |
| Package | Represents a specific instance of interaction between target donors and your organization as part of an appeal, such an email sent to a select group of contacts. |
| Designation | An earmark for allocating funds, including general ledger-relevant accounting codes. Designations let donors tell your organization how to spend their donations. The designation contains the setup information needed to track expected and received revenue to a financial system. It also indicates how the income should be spent. A designation indicates what specific process is required to book and reconcile the gift. A designation can be linked with the following entities: Campaign Designated Credit Designation Plan Donor Commitment Opportunity |
| Designation plan | Rules and commitments related to how designated revenue should be spent per the wishes of the donor. A designation plan is always related to a designation. An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system would be the recipient of these transactions either as rolled up values or the entire transaction if it required more detail. An example for a designation plan is a payout that is interpreted as accounts receivable, and therefore requires a vendor. The Designation Plan entity is a line item attached to a Pledge, Payment Schedule, or Campaign entity that indicates how associated payments should be designated. Sometimes, 100% of a donation is designated to a single fund. Ideally, it goes to an unrestricted fund that the nonprofit can use in any way that they wish. At other times, a donor has specified that the donation should be "split designated" among two or more funds. For example, a donor who gives $5,000 might specify that $1,000 goes to the unrestricted fund, $1,000 to the new building fund, and $3,000 to building water wells in the sub-Saharan Africa fund. |
| Designation credit | Indicates payment received. Designation credits can be listed independently from a designation plan, but are always associated to a designation, a parent gift, and a direct relationship to the donor. A designation plan can be fulfilled when designation credits are associated to it. Like the designation plan, the relationship to the designation is what dictates how the process should interact with the payment. |
| Adjustment (Designation) | The process of altering either an expected designation (a donor commitment) or applying a payment (a gift) to a designation. |