Changing a Gift's Campaign

A check was keyed to the General Fund but the memo line said "Building Fund." An online donor picked the wrong campaign and emailed you about it. Once a gift is completed its page is read-only, but the campaign is the one thing you can still correct, and GoodBooks fixes your books to match.

Where: left menu Donations, open the gift, then Change Campaign at the top of the page. Requires ledger editing permission.

Making the change

1. Open the donation and click Change Campaign.
2. The top of the page shows the donor, date, amount, and whether the gift has been deposited. None of those change.
3. Under Campaigns, pick the right campaign. To divide the gift between purposes, click Split Across Another Campaign and enter an amount on each row. The rows must add up to the gift amount; a running note shows what's left to designate, and the save button stays off until it reaches zero.
4. If the gift has already been deposited, choose the Adjustment Date (see below).
5. Click Save Campaign Change.

If you track grants, each row also has a Grant column, so the same page fixes a gift tied to the wrong grant.

What happens in your books

It depends on whether the money has reached the bank yet.

Not deposited yet. The gift is waiting for a deposit batch, or sits in one that's still pending. Nothing has been posted, so the new campaign simply takes effect when the deposit is recorded.

Already deposited. GoodBooks posts a correcting journal entry for you. It moves the revenue out of the old campaign and into the new one, and if the two campaigns belong to different funds it moves the cash between the funds too. The original deposit entry is left exactly as it was, so your bank reconciliation and the audit trail stay intact. The correcting entry carries the deposit's batch number as its reference, so the two are easy to find together.

The Adjustment Date is the date of that correcting entry. It defaults to today and can't be earlier than the deposit date. Use today for most corrections. If you're fixing a gift from a month you haven't reported on yet, you can date it back into that month so the month's reports come out right.

When a change isn't allowed

• Refunded gifts. A gift that has been refunded, fully or partly, can't be moved. See Refunding an Online Gift.
• Restricted money that's already been spent. If the gift went to a restricted campaign and the money has since been spent on that purpose, it can't be moved out, because there's nothing left to move. GoodBooks tells you how much of the campaign's restricted giving is still unspent; you can move up to that amount. See Restricted vs. Unrestricted Money.
• Gifts that aren't completed. A pending gift can still be edited directly, campaign included, so it has no Change Campaign button.

Good to know

• Only the campaign split changes. The amount, donor, date, and payment type of a completed gift stay as recorded.
• Campaign totals, pledge progress, fund balances, and the donor's giving history all follow the new campaign right away.
• If a receipt already went out, GoodBooks reminds you when you save. The receipt lists the campaign, so re-send it from the donation page if the donor should have a corrected copy. See Donation Receipts.
• When a change moves money between funds, the correcting entry shows up in your next bank reconciliation as one item with a matching deposit and payment that net to $0.00. Tick it off like any other line; it doesn't change the bank balance.
• Every change is recorded in the activity log with who made it.