The Catholic Services Appeal (CSA) or Annual Appeal is crucial in your fundraising efforts to support the work of the Church throughout the diocese. Your diocese and parishes count on those funds to support their various programs and ministries throughout the year. We understand how important it is to track and report on the status of your campaign, so we’ve been building new features in MinistryPlatform to support you in doing just that!
Whether you’re running a centralized or distributed campaign, MinistryPlatform helps you:
- Track your campaign
- Report on campaign progress
- Utilize Tools for easier data input
Let’s look at the new features that can improve your next annual appeals campaign.
Track Your Campaign
You use MinistryPlatform to track tons of data on your parishioners, and now you can use it to track pledges and those who pledge to your campaign. New fields and views have been added to the Platform to support new tracking needs for both centralized and distributed campaigns. These include:
- View the parish where each pledge was made, including details such as the city and organization ID, so you can better track pledges across all of your parishes.
- Set a goal for your campaign so you can track progress along the way.
- View pledge goals and track details such as how much you’ve received and any write-offs so you can know who is meeting their pledges and who may need personalized communications to encourage meeting their pledge.
- Track which communication methods lead to pledges and donations so that you can spend more time on the donation sources that resonate with your audience.
- Track pledge adjustments and any changes made to an original pledge amount so you can know the full history behind each pledge.
- Utilize new fields so that you, as the diocese, can input donations and pledges without using a parish’s envelope numbers.
Report on Campaign Progress
A key challenge many face is keeping all those who need to stay informed of campaign progress up to date. You need to be able to report on the overall status of your campaign, how your pledges compare to your goals, whether payments are up to date, who has pledged, and more.
Count on MinistryPlatform to help you report on your campaign through new reports showing a parish summary and donor detail information for each type of campaign. These reports will show the parish ID number, campaign goal, total pledged thus far, total paid year-to-date, percentage of goal pledged, percentage of goal paid, over/under amount, the dollar amount for unpaid pledges, and the number of pledges made.
Utilize Tools for Easier Data Input
Tools in MinistryPlatform are designed to save you time with everyday tasks in the Platform. We’ve enhanced the Create Pledge Tool to support your needs with campaigns, including being able to add donations while entering pledges.
We hope these new features will enhance your next annual appeals campaign and save you time tracking and reporting your campaign’s progress. Read more about Annual Appeals in MinistryPlatform.
About Leigh Ann Ortega
Leigh Ann joined the ACST team in 2019 as a Product Marketing Manager. She oversees the launch and overall communication of key solutions to support the church’s needs. Prior to joining ACST, she spent several years in communications and graphic design roles, most notably as a Communications Director for a large church in Florence, SC, where she leveraged Realm to help solve key ministry challenges.
