About Codes

Codes are short descriptions that are assigned many places in ExceedFurther: to names, gifts, activities, mailings, memberships, and campaign prospects, among others. These fields appear on the data entry screens as drop down lists where you can select the appropriate value.

Many of these are built-in fields, that is, they are available immediately when you start using ExceedFurther and do not need to be defined. For example, Source is a code field that is part of the attributes of a household or organization. Fund is a field on the gift screen. Even though these fields are available, however, you still need to create the list of values for these code fields that make sense for your organization. The list of values, or codes, for each of these fields is created and maintained on the Codes tab of the Admin tab.

You can also add additional code fields by creating User Defined Fields. User defined fields of single or multiple selection types are like codes fields. You define both the field and its list of values on the User Defined Field definition screen.

Tags are a special kind of code. Generally only one code at a time can be selected from the list of values to assign to a record. For example, each organization can have only one Source code. However, you can assign any number of tags. Tags are also defined on the Codes tab of the Admin tab.

For a full list of codes, with an explanation of how they can be used, see the Code Types topic.

Codes are an important part of the management of your data. They should help you answer the following types of questions and accomplish these types of tasks:

1. Descriptive, to answer questions like:
   1. Why is this name in our files?
   2. What kind of relationship does this person have with us?
   3. Whose responsibility is it to ensure a yearly gift donation?
   4. What restrictions apply to this gift?
   5. Why did we receive this gift?
   6. What kind of membership benefits should this person receive?
2. Managerial, to allow you to do things like:
   1. Find everyone who should receive the newsletter
   2. Ensure that gifts are properly acknowledged
   3. Send a press release to media organizations on your  list
   4. Address a letter to the volunteers who helped on an event
3. Analytical, to allow you to understand things like:
   1. The results of your annual appeal letter
   2. The comparison between current and past special campaigns
   3. The effectiveness of solicitors' efforts on your behalf
   4. Who your most likely prospects are for a capital campaign
   5. The relative value of a solicitation to several prospect lists

Before you define your lists of codes, you should take the time to consider how they will be helpful for these and other uses in your organization.