@Heather - we do create an opportunity for every bequest intention; when working with a donor to secure and confirm a bequest, we treat it the same as other opportunities for gifts. We do not link to a pledge, but use the opportunity for metrics to track on how the gift planning program is doing.

Opportunities are key to tracking potential major gifts before they reach pledge stage and creating a reportable pipeline. In reality there aren't really enough fields in database view and we use all of them: Reason-why a proposal did not proceed, instruments- to differentiate types of giving such as stated value or residual bequest, gift-in-kind, renewals, etc, purpose - what the gift will support- categorisation which is a combination of area and usage, type of gift is more focused on how they will pay single year, multi year, endowment, in kind. We connect the proposal to a pledge when agreement is reached.

We use it an "off-label" way. We renamed the field to Revenue year which allows us to easily pull a proposal query for just the current year. None of the date fields would suffice because they may cross FY's, so when I need to report on expectancies for the current FY, I can just pull open proposal and reason = FYXX

How do you use Purpose? How is that different than Reason, Fran?

Actively using the opportunity 'reason' field. Used to break down opportunities per specific related organizational giving areas which can't be tracked in an other area on an opportunity, AND would be cumbersome if not impossible to identify (or cross-reference) in any other area. May I add that there is a deep history of "reason" field usage, and without it opportunity reporting would be deeply effected.

We use the Proposal tab in DV all the time and use all the fields on the proposal plus all the other tabs connected to it (Action, Media, Attributes, Notes). I wish the Opportunities grid was setup to mirror DV.

Do you create an Opportunity for each bequest intention? Is that linked to a pledge for you?

We use it for the "reason" the opportunity was created. Mostly used by our gift planning team, our options in that table are things like: Self Identified, Survey Response, Will Administration Received, Reply Card. It allows us to report on which ways we learn of the bequest.

I'm interested in learning more about how you are using Reason on an Opportunity. Please share why this field is vital or if ya'll are using it in an 'off label' way because you need and field and we can do better.

Proposal/Opportunity Reason is essential for our functioning.

Agree. I am tired of adjusting where we put information so it appears in NXT. Fundraisers don't care about how Database people struggle to make this product work for them. I don't want to redesign our entire database just for one piece of information that the Fundraisers want in their Opportunities. Make all the fields available.

If I could vote 100 times for this I would. For organizations that have used the Opportunity "Reason" field, and rely on it for reporting/segmentation, this field is vital.

Yes, we use the Reason field in Proposals, without having that in Webview will require us to  create an export to segment the existing proposal data. If our Fundraisers are inputting new opportunities in Webview that key field will be missing.

Yes, we need this too! We use opportunities for major gift asks as well as grant requests, so we really need every field available. Since I realize NXT is a work in progress, I would like to mention that our first priority is type of gift since this is where we can indicate whether this is a grant application or a major gift ask.  I will also mention that some fields such as notes and custom fields (attributes) are available when you open the entire Opportunity record in NXT, even though they are not accessible when you first add the action. It would be nice to have that functionality from the outset.