Reporting for Fundraising

Transcription

1 Strategies for Supporting Fundraising Reporting for Fundraising Functions The Value of User Defined Functions in Your Data Warehouse. SupportingAdvancement.Com SupportingAdvancement.Com. All rights reserved. Permission to use this information granted, provided that the SupportingAdvancement.Com copyright notice and permission appears in all copies and use of information is for informational and non-commercial or personal use only and that no modification of the information is made.

2 What s On! Functions... 3 Creating Pyramids... 3 Date Descriptions... 6 Not So Obvious... 7 Summary... 9 SupportingAdvancement.Com 2

3 Functions Functions provide a mechanism for extending the functionality of a database. Examples of system functions already provided by your database vendor typically include functions such as SUM, AVG and others. When building out your data warehouse you should investigate the use of user defined functions as a way to leverage your programming for repetitive tasks. For example: many reports and analyses split amounts, counts and similar information into different levels. These are often known as campaign payments giving pyramids, donor pyramids and similar. A function that takes an amount and returns a pyramid description can be used for many purposes: pledge reports sorted by outstanding amount, proposal ask amounts within ask level, and lifetime giving totals are just a few examples. Have a look at the following sample code and usage. Note: examples are all based on SQL Server and other databases will have different syntax. The more important idea is to think about where you can be creative and create your own functions that will make you and your programmers more effective. Note that we re not considering efficiency of code in the examples. There may be other ways to program that would allow the functions to run a little bit faster. However, most of our databases are small enough that differences in run times are more than offset by programming efficiency. Creating Pyramids The pyramid function receives an amount and initializes the description as unknown, checks the amount within amount ranges and returns the description. The first two characters are used to sort the description from highest range to lowest range. (XX Pyramid Description) The advantage of having the sort characters - you don't have to think about how these will need to sort in any subsequent program. For reporting purposes you can use these descriptions to sort the report, but for display purposes you can use a SUBSTRING starting in position X to correctly display these fields for consumption by end users. You could add the correct description fields to your tables as additional columns using a similar function. In this example and the ones following, sort characters are included the organization is currently going through a report prototyping exercise and the sort characters are currently being left in so the user community can explicitly see the sort order in prototype reports. For information used for internal purposes, these characters can often be left in. It saves having a number of extra columns in tables that make it harder for users to use ad hoc reporting tools. For example, one column would be named as pyramid_sort and could be just 2 characters, 01, 02, 03 The next column would be pyramid_desc and would be SupportingAdvancement.Com 3

4 The pyramid description can be used additionally for counts such as distinct donors or number of gifts. In some cases, count levels might need to be changed and a different function created. A similar pyramid description could be used for groups of age demographics or elements that you want to group within ranges of amounts. Usage of the pyramid function in a SQL script is as follows: SupportingAdvancement.Com 4

5 In this case we are selecting from the vendor supplied gift table and using the function to return the level of the gift based on our organization s definitions of giving levels. This can be illustrated in the following report which is a standard summary of giving by program within gift ranges. Here's another example using the same pyramid function for counts. SupportingAdvancement.Com 5

6 Date Descriptions Another function is one that takes a date and formats the description for fiscal or calendar years so the descriptions can be used for grouping, sorting and dynamic report headers. This function receives a datetime value and returns a description based on the fiscal quarter the month falls into. It utilizes the same concepts as the pyramid function in that we are sorting using the first two characters so that we don't have to do this in any subsequent reports. Functions like these have the advantage - in that if we change the way we need to describe a quarter, we only have to do it in this function and any reporting that utilizes these descriptions will change when the function is changed. We only have to maintain code in one place. Here's how this and similar fiscal date description functions month would be called in a SQL script: This is part of the script that creates the gift table and we re using the gift received date to create all the descriptions that are going to be used in our reporting. SupportingAdvancement.Com 6

7 Side note the date_recd_char field is created as YYYYMMDD and this will be used on reports instead of the date time field. This saves having to convert this field down the road and reports for display purposes. For this particular organization the character date format is how dates will be displayed on reports. You could also set this standard date format in other ways depending on what your reporting standards are. Example of a report using the fiscal date descriptions from the gift table: Other date functions could be used for calendar date descriptions in the same fashion as fiscal year if your fiscal and calendar years are different. Other uses for these date functions could be in tables such as proposals where we might want to look at proposals within specific date ranges within a fiscal year. There are likely many more creative examples where you could utilize these types of functions in your organizations. Not So Obvious The following example is one that is not so obvious and requires a different approach to utilizing a function for a specific business need. Another common task in reporting is to split items such as gift amounts into fiscal columns based on date ranges. The following function allows us to have the logic for what constitutes a fiscal SupportingAdvancement.Com 7

8 year date range encapsulated within a function. When we change this at our year end - all of our reports and columns will reflect the new fiscal year. The function receives a character date YYYYMMDD and then if the date is within the date range the function returns a 1. Usage in a script: This is using the gift date and there are number of similar functions that split the gift split amount into the correct fiscal buckets. If we send the character date to the function, and it falls within the range, we multiply the gift amount by the value returned, in this case a 1. The columns will be populated with the correct gift split amount. (Note that we re converting the date to a character date within the script before the date is sent to the function. This should be more efficient that doing multiple date conversions SupportingAdvancement.Com 8

9 within the function.) These functions have the additional advantage of utilizing a table that stores all of our fiscal dates. When we select cfy_beg FROM dw_fiscal_dates in the function, we are selecting a date in the format YYYYMMDD. At the beginning of the year we change the current fiscal year beginning date to the new fiscal year start date and all of our columns will be automatically updated. We don t have to go into multiple reports and scripts and change all of the date ranges. Summary All of these examples may not utilize the most efficient programming code, but your technical staff will be able to write these and other functions more efficiently. The lesson is really about leveraging your time. Functions allow you to reduce the amount of time you might otherwise spend writing blocks of SQL code that end up getting repeated in multiple programs. You can use similar strategies for stored procedures depending on what you're trying to accomplish and how your particular database engine works. The key in all of this is to evaluate your code and look for repetition of common tasks. If you are doing something in three or four scripts think about how a function or stored procedure might be a better way to manage this over the longer term, and additionally, how you can use the same functions for multiple purposes. Other examples? Don t forget to check what your vendor has already included - there may be a number of functions that you can use out of the box. At a minimum it s a good starting point to review how the vendor supplied functions are written to give you ideas and strategies on how to write your own. Brian Dowling Principal and Founder SupportingAdvancement.Com SupportingAdvancement.Com 9

10 Brian Dowling has worked at a number of non-profit and higher education organizations in both the United States and Canada where he gained understanding, knowledge and perspectives of managing in small, medium and large shops. This experience included multiple system conversions, web site development, budgetary and financial responsibilities, operations management and more. He has consulted in the United States, Canada and Australia, written numerous articles and presents regularly at conferences. He invests his spare time in SupportingAdvancement.Com and is an amateur musician. SupportingAdvancement.Com is a high traffic web property with the mission of providing free resources of interest to those working in the fundraising profession. Efficiency is crossing the bridge quickly. Effectiveness is deciding if you need to cross at all. Hopefully, you'll find some resources and ideas here to help you be more efficient and effective. Under the reporting and systems pages you ll find additional information on reporting, data warehouses, business intelligence and related links. SupportingAdvancement.Com 10