Glossary of Terminology

In this article you will find definitions for common gift and giving terminology used in REACH.

Account Rules – This is an area in our Admin Console, under Settings, where you can change your account settings such as preferred date format, sponsorship rules, campaign notification and review requirements and recurring donation notification preferences.

ACH/EFT – ACH and EFT payments are both types of electronic financial transactions. ACH stands for Automated Clearing House and is the process of moving funds from one bank to another. EFT payments is an umbrella term that includes ACH payments, wire transfers and other types of digital payments. Only certain payment gateways accept ACH/EFT payments. 

Active Sponsorship (Not Left or Graduated): This refers to currently active sponsorships in your sponsorship program. These sponsorships can be sponsored and viewed publicly by any supporters. 

Admin Permissions – REACH allows you to customize the areas within REACH that your admins have access to based on their role within your organization. This is only available on certain plan levels.

API – API stands for “application programming interface.” An API is essentially a set of rules that dictate how two systems talk to each other. REACH includes an open RESTful API for our Pro and Pro Plus plan levels. These features can be used for building connections between your account and any other services that your organization uses.

API Secret Key – This refers to a code required to set up Stripe with your REACH account. 

Batch Entry – A batch entry refers to inputting multiple data at the same time. In REACH terms, this typically is in reference to entering in check donations that have been snail-mailed to your organization. 

Biggest Need – Label a sponsorship as Biggest Need to denote sponsorships in their program that are in the most need of sponsorship.

Campaign – A campaign is any coordinated effort meant to raise money for a specific purpose. Campaigns are usually short-term initiatives with a set goal amount and/or set end date.  

Contribution – Contribution is an inclusive term that is used for any transactions, soft credits and non-cash gifts.

Conversations – In terms of REACH, Conversations, also referred to as Messages on the Donor Portal, are replies to moderated messages among supporters and their sponsors under admin review. Conversations are available on the Essentials, Pro and Pro Plus plans only. 

Crowdfunding – A fundraising initiative that use individuals or groups of people to raise funds for an organization through their social networks. Also see peer to peer fundraising.

CSS Editor – REACH includes a CSS Editor for web developers to control the styling for an organization’s Donation Page, Supporter Login Page and Donor Pages.

Custom Fields – Data fields an organization creates to capture additional information for their Sponsorships, Supporters, Projects, Places and Campaigns.

Custom Payment Type – Create any number of payment types to categorize their payments. Typically, this is used to record a single offline donation that was set up from your supporter’s side with a bank or with a secondary payment gateway.

Data Categories – Group items within areas of the database into separate Data Categories for ease of look-up and classification.

Donation Categories – Donation Categories are the classification areas in which the supporters donations will be distributed. These are shown on the Purpose dropdown area of the donation page, are unlimited in number, can be reordered as desired and can include a general donation, project, place, event or any specific fund you set up.

Donor Portal – REACH includes an online area, termed the Donor Portal, where donors/supporters can login to access their personal information, view their donation history and sponsorships, start and review their campaigns, send messages (see Conversations) to their sponsorships and print their own giving statements. 

Email Template – This refers to an html file you create to be used for communication to your donors/supporters sent via email, such as automatically emailed receipts or year-end tax receipts. Custom Email Templates are available on the Essentials, Pro and Pro Plus plans.

External Reference ID – This is a unique ID entered into a data field often used when importing Sponsorships into REACH from another system. It’s intended to help map the sponsorship to multiple systems. 

Filter – A filter is a search parameter used to segment data available in our reports and in your database to find certain criteria such as a donor/supporter name, activity, sponsorship for example.

Fully Sponsored: A sponsorship is classified as Fully Sponsored when all sponsorship shares have been sponsored. Once fully sponsored, the sponsorship will be shown as fully sponsored on your public sponsorship page by default. 

GDPR – The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union (EU) regulation that governs consumers’ private information. Using REACH, you have the option to allow REACH to display opt-in fields on the supporter registration and donation forms asking your supporters to opt-in to meet the GDPR requirements.

Gift – A gift is a monetary entry into our database, also known as a donation or transaction.

Gift Aid – REACH offers a Gift Aid option for UK-based charities. Gift Aid is a tax relief option that allows UK charities to reclaim an extra 25% in tax on every eligible donation made by a UK taxpayer. 

GL Codes – General Ledger (GL) codes can be added on your transaction descriptions to further record, designate and track your accounting transactions. Once added, these codes will be available in your donation reports and exports for accounting (such as QuickBooks). 

Graduated (from Program): This refers to sponsorships that are deactivated, no longer in the sponsorship program because they have specifically graduated and not publicly viewable by any supporters. These sponsorships are still visible to previous sponsors but can not accept new sponsors. This classification, by default, is not considered an Active Sponsorship in your Reports and in your sponsorships list. 

Groups – In REACH, you can create different Groups to manually place your supporters in. A supporter can belong to more than one group and the groups they are a part of display on their supporter record. Groups are available on the Essentials, Pro and Pro Plus plans only.

Head of Household – If multiple family members of the same household are Supporters, you can designate one Supporter as the Head of Household in their Supporter record (available on Essentials, Pro and Pro Plus plan levels). Other family members can then be listed under that record. This is primarily used for Contribution Statements and tax documentation and as a supporter filter in the Supporters Report. This allows the donation history of all members of the household to be included on the Head of Household’s Contribution Statement, if desired.

Hidden: A sponsorship is classified as Hidden if it is not viewable to visitors on your public webpage, but is visible to sponsors when logged into their donor portal.

Household Record – A record that includes multiple contacts connected under a family or business relationship.

Index – Similar to a Top Donors report, the REACH Index is an algorithm that is calculated weekly to provide an organization with a larger picture of the work the supporter is doing for the organization. It includes how much money supporters have raised through campaigns they have run as well as any matching donations brought in via soft credits. 

In-Kind – Donations deemed as in-kind are non-cash contributions typically of goods, services or time. See also Soft Credits.

Integration – An integration is the automated sync of data between a third-party service and a database. REACH integrates with various email marketing, event management and accounting services.

Left Program (Disabled) Sponsorship: This refers to sponsorships that are deactivated, no longer in the sponsorship program and not publicly viewable by any supporters. These sponsorships cannot be sponsored or viewed by any supporters. This classification, by default, is not considered an Active Sponsorship in your Reports and in your sponsorships list.

Legacy Sponsorship – A legacy sponsorship refers to a sponsorship that was sponsored (partially or fully) from a previous system. When an organization imports these sponsorship records into REACH, they will automatically be listed as legacy sponsorships. Organizations will need to convert these legacy sponsorships to online sponsorships by choosing a payment start date to reinitiate the sponsorship process and start accepting recurring payments.

Liquid Objects – Liquid objects, a coding term that is also known as liquid variables, contain attributes to output dynamic content on a page. In REACH, these are used to insert an object’s custom fields in Email Templates, Mail Merge Templates and Themes.

Mail Merge Template – In REACH, mail merge templates can be used to create a number of documents including custom donation receipts, contribution statements, sponsorship flyers, address labels and more.  

Manual Refund – If a refund is initiated from your payment gateway, REACH does not know the refund took place, requiring you to make a Manual Refund to reflect the refund within REACH.

Matching Gift – A donation that is identical to another donation of the same amount. This is commonly done through companies who will match the donation of an employee to a nonprofit of their choice.

Multi-Currency – Multi-currency is offered by REACH to allow organizations with supporters from various countries to set their base currency to the currency you use for record keeping. Organizations can accept donations from various currencies and have them converted to their base currency. Multi-currency must be accepted by your payment gateway. REACHpay does accept multi-currency. Multi-currency is disabled by default, please email us to enable it for your account.

Partially Sponsored: A sponsorship is classified as Partially Sponsored when some sponsorship shares have been sponsored, but not all. Partially sponsored can be filtered on your public sponsorships page by default and can still be sponsored.

Past Due – REACH calculates past due amounts for donors/supporters with online and offline sponsorships. Payments are typically marked past due one month after the due date. A sponsorship is classified as Past Due when its sponsor is late on their recurring sponsorship payments. A Past Due sponsorship classification is not publicly viewable and only shown in various areas within the Admin Console. 

PCI Transfer – A PCI transfer is a secure file transfer of credit/debit card data into or out of REACH. 

Peer to Peer fundraising – A fundraising initiative that use individuals or groups of people to raise funds for an organization through their social networks. Also see Crowdfunding. Peer to Peer fundraising can be set up in REACH as a Supporter Campaign. 

Permalink – A permalink is a permanent URL that is intended to remain unchanged. They are typically simple in order to be easier to type and remember. Any page published online will have its own unique permalink. In REACH, you can view your permalinks by going to Settings > Data Categories.

Public: A sponsorship is classified as Public if it is viewable to sponsors on your public webpage.

Public Portal – The public portal is your front-facing website that can be viewed by anyone navigating to your site on the web.

QR Code – A square barcode that can be scanned by a supporter’s mobile device and will point to a pre-specified REACH web page. In REACH, QR codes can be generated for your Sponsorships, Sponsorship Types, Projects, Places and Campaigns and can be individually downloaded or added via Mail Merge to sponsorship flyers and sponsorship cards.

REACHpay – The payment gateway offered directly from REACH with a 3.25% flat transaction fee.

Retainer Service – REACH offers a retainer service allowing organizations to purchase individual hours or subscribe to a monthly package of hours for our customer support team to accomplish a variety of tasks for you. Its intent is to help organizations plan ahead and budget for tasks that you know you will need additional help accomplishing.

Refund – If you process a refund for a donation within REACH, REACH will send a transaction notice to your payment gateway to reflect the refund and will then list the donation as refunded. Also see Manual Refunds.

Segment – A segment in REACH is used to separate donor/supporters by activity such as donation count, donation amount, sponsorship count and campaign count. For example, a segment of donors/supporters could include any that have given over $1,000 in the past year.  Segments are available on the Essentials, Pro and Pro Plus plans only.

Share – In REACH, each Sponsorship Type created will need a stated number of Shares. A Share is the set number a child can be sponsored. For example, if a full sponsorship costs $100/month, your organization many want to split the amount up into 4 shares, so up to 4 separate supporters can give toward the sponsorship.  You ask up to four sponsors to each donate $25 to meet the $100/month – the share amount is the $25. You can set the Share to 1 so only one supporter can sponsor a child. Also, when you have more than 1 Share, a supporter can elect to sponsor all shares available.  

Share Amount – The share amount is the monetary amount designated for each sponsorship share. For example, if a full sponsorship costs $100/month and you ask for four sponsors to each donate $25 to meet the $100/month, the share amount is the $25.

Share Type – A share type is how you sub-divide your sponsorship shares. For example, continuing with the above example, out of the four $25 shares, if you want to earmark two shares for education and two shares for discipleship, the education and disciple are the share types. 

Skipped Donation – A skipped donation refers to a past due recurring sponsorship payment that an organization’s admin has marked as current for a supporter. The skipped donation has not been processed by the system. In basic terms, it is a method for an admin to overlook a missed payment so it does not continue to be shown as past due.

Split Transaction – A donation that is designated to more than one fund.

Soft Credit – A soft credit is a record you can add to a contact when they have given to your nonprofit indirectly, often through a donor-advised fund, husband/wife or a foundation. Soft Credits do not have accounting or tax-receipting implications are used to help determine the donor/supporter’s overall impact on your nonprofit through giving. See also In-Kind donation. 

Soft Supporter – In REACH terms, a soft supporter is a supporter who wants to have the same access to a sponsorship in terms of notifications, access to messaging the sponsorship, etc. but is not themselves paying for the sponsorship. A good example is if a sponsorship is a gift and the gift giver actively pays for the sponsorship and the gift receiver actively manages the sponsorship. Using this example, the soft supporter would be the gift receiver. 

Sponsor – A sponsor is a Supporter who sponsors a child (or entity) through your organization. All Sponsors are also considered Supporters.

Sponsorship Type – Defines the parameters of each different sponsorship program your organization manages. This is where you add information like how much a sponsorship costs, how many shares are available, who is being sponsored (child, teacher, etc), and what information you want to collect and display about the sponsorship. 

Supporter – A Supporter is an overall term used for anyone who supports your organization. This person could donate, sponsor a child, attend your events, volunteer, etc. A Sponsor is considered one type of Supporter.

Task Management – The ability to assign certain tasks to other admins within REACH.

Text to Give – Text to Give is a method of donating via text message. Text to Give is available and included for all REACH account plan levels. 

Theme – A REACH Theme is a design layout, providing your organization with the ability to style and design your REACH Donor Portal. REACH offers several Themes to choose from so you can best match your intended look of your site.

Transaction – A transaction refers to any instance where money is exchanged between a supporter/donor and the nonprofit organization. Transactions have accounting or tax-receipting implications and count towards your bottom line.

Unsponsored: A sponsorship is classified as Unsponsored when no sponsorship shares have been sponsored. Unsponsored can be filtered as No Sponsor on your public sponsorship page by default and can be sponsored.