Lesson 5.2 – Creating and Managing Campaigns

Now that you understand the four-tiered Gift Pyramid, it is time to start building it. The first actionable step in structuring your development efforts—after establishing your overarching accounting Funds—is creating your Campaigns.

Campaigns represent the broad initiatives or umbrella categories for your fundraising activities. While a large organization might run a multi-year “Capital Campaign” alongside an “Annual Campaign,” many nonprofits only need one or two campaigns to effectively group their activities for the year.

In this lesson, we will cover how to create a new campaign, define its financial goals, and manage its status over time.

1. Accessing Campaign Management

All levels of the Gift Pyramid are built and managed within the Lists area of the system. Remember the structural rule: you cannot create a Campaign until you have at least one Fund established in your system.

Steps to Access Campaigns:

1. Select Lists from the horizontal Main Menu.
2. Look at the vertical sub-menu on the left, and under the CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT section, click on Campaigns.
3. The Main Work Space will display a list of all your active campaigns.

2. Creating a New Campaign

When adding a new campaign, you are establishing the overarching goals and timelines for a broad group of fundraising activities.

Steps to Create a Campaign:

1. From the Campaigns list, click the New + icon.
2. Name: Type the name of the campaign (e.g., “General Campaign” or “2024 Capital Campaign”).
3. Fund: You must link the campaign to an overarching Fund. Select the appropriate Fund from the drop-down menu.
4. From Date / To Date: Enter the beginning and ending dates for the campaign. If the campaign is an ongoing, open-ended initiative, you can leave the To Date blank.
5. Goal Amount: Type the financial target for the campaign. FastFund uses this goal amount in various Campaign Summary reports to help you measure your effectiveness and track variances between your goal and actual funds raised.
6. Notes: Enter a brief description or internal notes regarding the campaign’s purpose.
7. Click the blue SAVE button.

Best Practice Tip: If your development office does not actively organize its fundraising efforts into specific, distinct campaigns, it is highly recommended to simply set up a single, overarching “General Campaign.” You can then link all of your individual appeals and events to this one master campaign.

3. Editing and Deleting Campaigns

As your fundraising initiatives evolve, you may need to update a campaign’s financial goal or extend its end date.

• Editing: To modify an existing campaign, simply click on the Campaign Name in your list. The edit window will open, allowing you to update the dates, goals, or notes. Click Save to lock in your changes.
• Deleting: If you create a campaign by mistake, you can open it and click the red Delete button. However, FastFund enforces strict internal controls: the system will completely prevent you from deleting a campaign if any financial transactions have been posted to it.

4. Inactivating a Campaign

Because you cannot delete campaigns that contain historical financial data, your Campaign list could become cluttered over the years with old, completed initiatives. To keep your data entry screens clean, you should use the Inactive function.

If a campaign has successfully concluded (for example, the “2020 Building Fund”), open the campaign record, check the Inactive box, and click Save.

Once marked as inactive, the campaign will no longer appear in drop-down menus during transaction entry, preventing users from accidentally posting new donations to an old initiative. However, the campaign and all of its historical data will remain fully accessible in your reports and database queries.