Every gift in GoodBooks is designated to a campaign — it's the answer to "what was this money given for?" The campaign, in turn, decides where the money lands in your books: which fund it belongs to and which revenue account it posts to. Donors think in campaigns ("the building fund," "the food shelf"); your books think in funds and accounts; the campaign is the bridge between the two.
Campaigns you get automatically
GoodBooks creates one campaign per fund for you (e.g. a "General Fund" campaign for your General Fund), so gift entry works from day one. These auto-generated campaigns are permanently tied to their fund — you can rename them and adjust their settings, but the fund is fixed, and they're deactivated by deactivating the fund, not the campaign. They also never count against your plan's campaign allowance.
Creating your own campaigns
From Donations → Campaigns, click to add a campaign:
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Campaign Name | What donors and your staff see — "2026 Building Fund Drive". |
| Fund | The fund that receives gifts designated to this campaign. |
| Gifts are donor-restricted | Turn this on when gifts to the campaign come with strings attached (see below). |
| Revenue Account | The account credited when gifts post. Leave blank to use your organization-wide default from Accounting Settings. |
| Tax Treatment | Fully deductible (the default), partial deduction, or non-deductible. |
| Fair Market Value | For partially-deductible campaigns — the value of goods/services the giver receives (a gala dinner, an auction item), which receipts subtract from the deductible amount. |
| Goal Amount | Optional fundraising target — drives the progress display on the campaign's online giving page. |
| Start Date / End Date | Optional. Outside these dates the campaign is hidden from your donate page's dropdown, its giving page shows "opens on…" or "ended on…", and an order-taker fundraiser stops taking orders. The campaign itself stays active for entering gifts by hand and for reports. |
Donor-restricted campaigns
If gifts to a campaign may only be used for a stated purpose — a capital campaign, a mission trip, a memorial — flip on "Gifts to this campaign are donor-restricted." GoodBooks then routes the campaign's gifts to a with donor restrictions revenue account (creating "4110 Contributions – With Donor Restrictions" for you if you don't have one), which is what makes the restricted-money machinery work:
- Your financial statements split activity into without and with donor restriction columns automatically.
- When you later spend the money (using the Spend Against selector on the expense), GoodBooks automatically records the release from restriction — no manual journal entries.
Ordinary operating campaigns should leave the toggle off.
Where campaigns show up
- Gift entry — the campaign dropdown on the donation form and in Batch Gift Entry; one gift can be split across several campaigns.
- Online giving — campaigns appear as choices on your public donate page, and can each have their own giving page.
- Spending — expense lines in the register can be tagged Spend Against a restricted campaign, which drives the automatic releases.
- Pledge drives — a campaign can track pledges against a drive window.
- Reporting — the Revenue by Campaign report (Reports menu, Core plan and up) totals posted gift revenue per campaign for any date range.
Retiring a campaign
When a drive ends, mark the campaign inactive — it disappears from gift entry and current pickers but keeps its entire history. Campaigns tied to your default fund and auto-generated fund campaigns can't be deactivated (there always has to be somewhere for a plain gift to go).
Good to know
- A campaign belongs to exactly one fund. If a project spans funds, make a campaign per fund and let givers (or your staff) split gifts between them.
- Changing a campaign's revenue account affects future gifts only; posted history stays where it posted.
- Your plan may cap the number of custom campaigns you can have active at once (Core: 10, Pro: unlimited); auto-generated fund campaigns don't count.
- Campaigns aren't grants: a campaign is who you're asking and what for; a grant is one funder's specific award. A grant gift is designated to a campaign and tagged to the grant.
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