I need some sage advise on beginning structure [ Edited ]

[Detroit Charlie]

Hello,

My name is Charlie Johnson ad I am with the Share A Smile organization in Michigan. I have finally convinced our group to get approved and begin implementing SFDC for our charitable org... we have been on SFDC for our company (Flagstar bank) for a few years now... I am the business owner of SFDC in our company and this charity was founded by our CEO 10 years ago... anyway, on to my question.

I am managing a large upcoming event that involves registrations of participants (using web to lead from on our charity website for automaton), tracking participant payments for the event, tracking the corporate sponsors of the event, and keeping track of those that participated in last years event.

My challenge is that I am trying to work out how I should structure this from a parent/child relationship and still make sense to our users. While I need to convert the registrants from the leads that they will come into, over to contact records... my challenge is that they are then slung under "account" records... well I really need them to fall under an "Event" record... as they will be registering for a particular event.

Our event is called the "Miles of Smiles" a charity walk event... My challenge is that I am not sure I want to set a precedent of account records the titles of our annual events as there may be uses for true "account" records in the future... possibly partner corporate sponsor records... of curse the "organizations" object could be used for that... but that might also be used for sister charitable "organizations" that we partner with for joint events throughout the year.

Can you see where my concern is... I need some guidance on best practices... basically we will have events throughout each year... I need to track those events and be able to associate many different I guess "types" of records to that... I will have participants, direct donors, corporate sponsors, vendors that are working at the event, facilities or organization records that they are being held at and then of course the various activities that will be associated to all of these types of either individual people or companies.

I guess I am surprised that there is not an "events" object out there for the tracking of progress and association of activities surrounding fund raising events...

Can someone lend me some advice or direction based on their experience?

Please feel free t contact me at cdjohnson@flagstar.com or (248)312-5008 with any advice you could lend...I will of course be monitoring this post as well

Message Edited by Detroit Charlie on 01-15-2009 08:37 AM

Message Edited by Detroit Charlie on 01-15-2009 08:38 AM

[Nesbit]

It looks like your question on events has been addressed in the previous thread. Using the campaign object and member status is a great way to associate people to an event, as well as track associated incoming revenue by associating related opportunities to the campaign as well.

You might also check some apps on the AppExchange if you have more sophisticated registration needs -
http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/category_list.jsp?NavCode__c=a0130000006P6IoAAK-b4&

ActevaRSVP has great discount options for nonprofits.

[tanner_shamrock]

Charlie,  I have rolled out many nonprofit implementations of Salesforce and I know the best practices.  If you'd be interested, I could help you get up and running quickly without regretting an improper setup a year down the road.

Send me an email at tanner@shamrockcrm.com .  Speak with you soon!