Recording gifts by fund and campaign
How the Non-profit pack records donations and pledges against a fund and a campaign, what its home page counts, and how the ledger fits alongside.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Non-profit businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
A donor gives to your bursary fund in response to the year-end appeal. Six months later she asks how the bursaries are going. Can you tell her, quickly and accurately, what she gave, to which fund, through which campaign, and what that fund has achieved?
Most organisations can answer two of those questions. The amount is in the bank records. The fund may be in a spreadsheet. The campaign that prompted the gift is often lost entirely, which means nobody can say afterwards whether the year-end appeal worked.
The Non-profit & fundraising pack in Achekam's Industry CRM records every gift and pledge against both a fund and a campaign from the start. This article explains what that looks like and how it sits beside your books.
The four kinds of record
The pack uses the language of fundraising. Customers are called Supporters, and the pack keeps four kinds of record:
- Donors, the people and organisations who give;
- Donations and pledges, each recorded by fund and campaign;
- Volunteers, with their shifts;
- Grant applications, from first research to the funder's reports.
Each industry pack sets the words its screens use, its record types, pipelines, workflows, reminders and home-page counts. That is why a fundraiser opening the pack sees Supporters and Donations rather than Customers and Sales.
A fund and a campaign on every gift
The two labels answer different questions, and confusing them is the most common mistake in donation records.
| Label | The question it answers | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Fund | Where may this money be spent? | General fund, bursary fund, building fund |
| Campaign | What made the donor give? | Year-end appeal, fun run, radio interview |
A single campaign can raise money for several funds; a single fund receives money from many campaigns. Recording both on every gift lets you answer the two questions boards ask most: are restricted funds being kept for their purpose, and which fundraising efforts are worth repeating?
Pledges get the same treatment. A pledge to the building fund, made at a donor dinner, carries both labels before a cent arrives, so you can see promised support for each fund as well as received support.
A few rules keep the labels useful:
- Agree the list of funds with your finance team and accountant, so each fund in the pack corresponds to how money is actually restricted.
- Name campaigns specifically and with a date, such as "Year-end appeal 2026", not just "Appeal".
- Record the donor's own words about where the gift should go. If a gift's purpose is unclear, ask before you assign it.
- Never move a gift between funds without the donor's agreement if they asked for a specific purpose.
The Association of Fundraising Professionals' Donor Bill of Rights sets out the rights donors can expect, including information on how their gifts are used. Recording the fund on every gift is what makes that information possible to give.
Home-page counts that nobody types in
The pack's home page shows counts, and each one comes from records, tasks or the ledger. None is typed in by hand. The sources include open records, records in a stage, pipeline value, overdue tasks, tasks due today, key dates in the next 7 days, items won this month and revenue this month.
For a fundraising team, the honesty of those numbers is the point. A count of pledges awaiting confirmation, or of follow-up tasks overdue, cannot be nudged upwards before a board meeting. If the numbers look poor, they show where attention is needed, and everyone sees the same figures.
One industry pack per workspace
When a business switches the Industry CRM on, it picks one of twenty industries. There is one pack per workspace, and a record keeps the pack it was made under.
For a non-profit that also runs a social enterprise, such as a training centre or a charity shop, choose the pack that fits the organisation's main work. If you later switch to another industry, every record is kept. Donors, gifts and their funds and campaigns stay where they are, so an early choice is not a trap.
The ledger alongside the pack
The pack's donation records tell the fundraising story. Your books tell the financial one, and they are still kept in Achekam's ledger.
Each organisation has its own double-entry ledger with a standard chart of accounts, and accounts can be added, renamed or switched off. If your funds must be shown separately in the accounts, give each one its own income accounts; keeping restricted funds apart in your chart of accounts explains how to lay them out.
Money reaches the ledger through the bank. Bank lines are matched by suggestion and a person accepts each match, and a line not yet in the books becomes a suggested journal that a person approves. When the gift record says "bursary fund" and the bank line is posted to the bursary fund's income account, the two tell the same story.
Agree a monthly check between fundraising and finance: the total of confirmed gifts for each fund in the pack should agree with that fund's income in the ledger for the same month. Where they differ, find out why while the month is fresh.
Starting well
Before switching the pack on, write down your funds and the campaigns you expect to run this year, and decide who may create a new fund. The welcome each new donor receives is set out in welcoming and thanking a new donor, and the step where a gift is confirmed in the bank in who confirms that a gift reached the bank.
Then take your last ten gifts and try labelling each with a fund and a campaign. Any you cannot label are the gaps to fix first.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
