Manually edit a thermometer for a giving challenge
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Liz Iannaconi
This is a recommendation based on a feature that I used in GiveCampus' crowdfunding software. The idea is that you can manually manipulate the thermometer for a giving challenge that does not impact the actual gifts received online. For example, we base our giving challenges on participation from our alumni. However, we have several alumni who are married to other alumni and give one gift as a household. In Almabase, this would only count as one gift, but two alumni are in fact participating in this campaign not one. In GiveCampus, they provide the ability to increase donor participation to account for this extra person (as an example). Additionally, when alumni couple give as one household it would be helpful to also count the spouse in the leaderboard for their class. This is again a situation where one gift is made, but it accounts for two alumni giving. There are other examples as well, but this is the primary one. Happy to clarify this if it is helpful.
Kanhai Shah
Hi Liz Iannaconi
Thanks for sharing this — the household/dual-alumni scenario is very real, and your explanation helps.
We’ve considered manual thermometer adjustments in the past, but we’ve been hesitant to support them because they allow the public campaign numbers to diverge from the actual gift/participation data in the system. That often creates inconsistencies in reporting, reconciliation, and end-of-campaign summaries, which increases manual workload for advancement/ops teams.
The use case you’re highlighting is fundamentally about joint/household gift participation (e.g., 1 gift → 2 participating alumni + correct class leaderboard attribution). We are actively working on proper joint gift support so this is handled automatically and accurately.
A quick question: if joint gifts counted correctly toward participation and class leaderboards, would you still need manual control over the thermometer, or would that cover your needs?
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Liz Iannaconi
Kanhai Shah, I think adding joint gift functionality would address much of this issue. It’s not just married alumni who give together. There are also alumni with children who are also alumni, and they often make a single “family” gift.
The only other situation where having manual control over the thermometer would still be helpful is when we want to count participation by a specific affiliation. For example, we’ve run alumni-focused fundraising challenges where parents and employees also contributed. While we are very grateful for those gifts, we wouldn’t necessarily want to count them toward the goal if the campaign is alumni-specific.
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Katherine Halvorson
Great idea! Would also allow us to update tracker faster with offline gifts without needing to import them midday.