Fundraising Projects in Ticketsolve: Your Essential Setup Guide

Fundraising Projects provide a dedicated way to manage and track your fundraising activity directly within Ticketsolve.

When you open the Projects area, you'll see the option to create a Fundraising Project. This template includes a set of tools designed specifically for fundraising, allowing you to set clear goals, monitor secured donations, and manage relationships with donors and sponsors through a custom pipeline. From initial contact to confirmed support, you can track every stage of the journey in one central place.

• Set and track your fundraising goal at the project level.
• Pre-built stages to help you on your way to managing your fundraising project. You can also add your own to fit your unique needs.
• Add specific fundraising goals to individual donor or sponsor prospect cards.
• Record secured donations directly on individual cards and watch your overall progress update automatically.
• Monitor everything in real-time with a handy visual tracker.
• Track every interaction to build meaningful, long-term relationships with high-level donors and corporate sponsors.

How to create a Fundraising Project

If you're familiar with using Projects already, the basic functionality for a Fundraising Project is the same. There are, however, a few differences and additions to walk you through - let's explore them!

Add a Fundraising Project

1. In the Projects area, click Add Project.

2. You'll see the option to create two types of projects:

• General Project (to-do lists, RSVP lists, etc.)
• Fundraising Project (specific to managing and tracking fundraising efforts).

3. Click the Fundraising Project option.

3. Add the following details to the pop-up:

• Project name 
• Project description
• Assign a user 
• End date
• Most importantly, give your project a fundraising goal

4. Click Add New to save your new project.

 Ticketsolve Tip

Fundraising Projects are set as private by default, so make sure you assign all users who need to access it. You can also later switch the Project to public so it's visible to all users.

Project stages

When you first create your Fundraising Project, you'll see that some pre-made fundraising pipeline stages have already been created for you. These are:

• Potential - identify who your high-level donors and sponsors could be.
• Engaged - make initial contact with your prospects.
• Interested - the prospect has engaged and would like to know more.
• Intent - you send them a proposal of what you would like from them.
• Follow-up - follow up on your proposal.
• Donation secured - the prospect has agreed to donate X funds.
• Donation lost - the prospect has decided not to donate.

You can customise these stages to meet your pipeline requirements.

• To add a stage, scroll right to the end of the board and select + Add Stage.
• To rename, move or delete a stage, click the 3 dots icon to open the stage options.

Adding and managing cards

As this is a fundraising project, we'd recommend creating a card per prospective donor or sponsor - this can be a person or an organisation. 

1. Find the stage that you want to add your card to and click + Add Card.

2. This will open a pop-up where you can add all the details relating to this card:

• Card name - this depends on what the card relates to. If it is an individual, name the card after their name, or if it’s an organisation, name it after the organisation.
• Description - add any useful information about the prospect, like their donation history and why you have identified them.
• You can add tags and emojis to cards so that you can start grouping and segmenting them - for example, you might want to add an emoji tag to differentiate between existing high-level donors and new prospects.
• Select the user that will be responsible for managing this prospect through the pipeline.
• Attach to - here you can attach the card to customer or organisation records with your Ticketsolve database.
• Importantly, set a fundraising goal - this is the amount you're hoping to receive from this individual prospect.

Moving cards through the pipeline

Once you’ve added your cards, you can track their progress through different stages of the fundraising process. You can easily move your cards through the pipeline stages (e.g., identification, follow-up, secured, or lost) by dragging and dropping the card from stage to stage.

Amending cards

To edit a card, click on it to open up the Card Details window to add more assignees, tags, comments, and updates to keep everything organised.

Tracking fundraising progress

At the top of each stage in your project, you will see an overall progress metric. For each stage, you will see:

• The number of cards within each stage.
• The total funding goal for that stage (the sum of the cards' Fundraising Goal values).
• The total funding received for that stage (the sum of the card's Funds Received values).

You can also see the progress of your fundraising project overall by the tracker in the top right-hand corner.

Recording funds received

Once a donation is secured:

1. Move the card to the Donation Secured stage.

2. Add the actual donation amount received into the Funds Received field on the card.

This funding data will then feed into the overall project progress visual tracker, showing how close you are to your target goal.

As you move cards through the pipeline, your fundraising progress will be updated accordingly. It's important to track funding goals and funds received to ensure your progress is accurate. It's also helpful to guide future fundraising efforts - for example, if you set a goal of £5000 from a corporate sponsor, but only received £3000, this can help inform your plan of action for your next fundraising campaign.

Handling lost donations

If a prospect decides not to donate:

• Move the card to the Donations Lost stage.
• Don't delete the card; keeping the data allows you to revisit these donors in the future.

Want to know more?

• Project Management & Fundraising Made Simple: Introducing Projects, My Stuff & Inbox
• Managing Projects and Pipelines in Ticketsolve
• Using Projects in Ticketsolve: Practical Examples and Tips
• A Guide to Pipeline Management