Dollars raised is a critical metric for any gift officer, and legal amount often does not reflect the full amount of a major donor’s gift. For example, many major donors use donor advised funds, particularly for their largest gifts. Those who own companies also often make their gifts through those companies, which again means their largest gifts cannot be legally credited to them.
For us, a key advantage of FPM is the directors' ability to see their progress toward their goals on demand, instead of waiting for the monthly reports that we generate. Our dollars raised metric correlates to the cash credit amount on assigns, and is one of the most critical metrics by which our directors are measured. Using Legal Credit instead of Credit Amount prevents the directors from being able to see an accurate picture of their progress on their top priority goal.
Our directors expect to receive full credit for gifts from their donors, regardless of the method by which the donor gives them. When they look at a number that is only reflecting legal credit, they conclude that gifts are missing, leading them to mistrust the data entry, the processes that send the data to FPM, and/or FPM itself. Then they are frustrated that they don’t have the data they need, and the data team is frustrated that they are questioning us on something we did correctly and/or because they will not use FPM.
Using Legal Credit makes it impossible to drill down into the detail behind the dollar amounts, since the current FY cash giving column uses the Credit Amount (as we would expect). Therefore, when a director questions the amount reflected in the viewport, any exploration of the perceived discrepancy will require looking at every donor’s individual profile and examining their transactions individually.
We rely on the Credit Amount to ensure directors get appropriate credit for gifts no matter how strange the situation, and have built systems and processes to help us maintain ensure Credit Amounts are properly maintained. Using Legal Credit instead of Credit Amount for this viewport negates those efforts.
