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Moves Management

Moves Management is a term used primarily with the non-profit sector in relationship to donor development. It refers to the process by which a prospective donor is moved from cultivation to solicitation. (Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moves_management/) NetForum offers a Moves Management module that will help you in this process.

Common Terms

Before getting started in the Moves Management module, it is important to understand some common terms related to Moves Management.

Some of the terms used in the Moves Management module and on the various help topics related to Moves Management are:

Moves Management - the process of moving a potential donor (or other participant in your organization) from contact to commitment.
Moves Series - a Moves Series is a discreet process, or initiative, designed to cultivate potential donors (or other participants in your organization) into committing to donate or otherwise participate in the organization. A Moves Series needs to be specific to a certain goal. For instance, a Moves Series titled "Fundraising" is too broad. A better Moves Series would be "Increasing Repeat Donation Rates" which would be designed to include individuals who had donated to the organization in the past and work towards encouraging them to donate again. A Moves Series is made up of one or more Moves Stages.
Moves Stage - a Moves Stage is a single step in the Moves Series process. As individuals enter a Moves Series, they will pass through a series of Moves Stages. Each stage is designed to help increase the possibility of getting the individual to commit to a donation (or participation) to the organization. Moves Stages can be designed to flow in a linear fashion (stage 1 -> stage 2 -> stage 3, etc.) or they can be designed to allow individuals to skip stages if applicable. Individuals enter a Moves Stage based on the result of a Moves Task.
Moves Tasks - are used to either add people to the Moves Series or advance them to the next Moves Stage within the Moves Series. There are two basic types of Moves Tasks; the add (or create) task and the transfer task. The add task, as its name implies, adds individuals to a Moves Series based on a set of criteria. The transfer task is used to move individuals from one Moves Stage to the next based on a set of criteria. Moves Tasks are set at the Moves Stage level.
For example, at the Moves Stage where it is possible to have people added to a Moves Series, you will create an add task. All individuals who meet the criteria of the add task will be added to the Moves Series. To transfer individuals from stage 1 to stage 2 (for example), you will create a transfer task in stage 2 to "pull" those individuals who meet the transfer criteria up to the next Moves Stage.
The criteria used for Moves Tasks is called a Selection Query and is set at the Moves Stage level.
Selection Query- is the criteria that is used to either add individuals to a Moves Series or transfer them along to the next Moves Stage. Every Moves Stage will have a Selection Query that outlines the criteria needed to be added (or transferred) to that Moves Stage.
Assignments - are the actual action items that are completed during the Moves Stage. Assignments can be added manually, or they can be added automatically to all of the individuals who are added/transferred to a Moves Stage.
Move - is the action of an individual being added or transferred into a Moves Stage. Moves are created by the Moves Task.

Moves Management Workflow

Before you begin using the Moves Management module for use, you must determine what your overall (specific) goal is and what steps will be necessary to achieve that goal. You must also think carefully about your workflow and processes; both online and offline and how these will tie into achieving this overall goal. Before adding records to NetForum, you might find it useful to map out how you envision this process unfolding on paper or a whiteboard. As you map this process out, think of the overall set of activities that you perform against a set of people and what progression of activities will be required to achieve the desired result. This overall set of activities and corresponding progression, from a beginning stage to a culminating stag,e is expressed in the NetForum Moves Management module as a Moves Series.

Identify the Goal

The first step in the process is to identify the overall, yet specific, goal for the Moves Series. Remember, a Movies Series is a set of activities performed with a set of people, over a period of stages, with the goal of cultivating potential donors (or other participants in your organization) into committing to donate or otherwise participate in the organization.

Some examples of overall goals for a Moves Series could include processes and activities that:

Lead a first-time donor to renew his or her gift a second time
Encourage a set of donors with stagnant or declining gifts to increase their annual gift
Take a pool of advertisers and convert them into a trade show exhibitor
Identify prospective event sponsors and motivate them to sponsor an event
Identify prospective donors and motivate them to make a first donation.

Identify the Stages

Now that you have identified the goals for one or more Moves Series, the next step is to think about the steps (or stages) a person goes through over the course of a particular Moves Series. The steps in a Moves Series are called Moves Stages. Each Moves series could have very different Moves Stages. Some Moves Series might only have two Moves Stages, while others may have a dozen or more.

Moves Stages should be thought of as steps along the path of the series. You need to think about what causes a person to go from one Moves Stage to the next.

For example, a Moves Series designed to turn a fundraising prospect into a donor, the Moves Stages might be:

Inform
Cultivate
Ask

A person in this Moves Series might start out in the Inform stage, which may include tasks geared towards getting the prospect information about the programs and mission of the charitable cause. The Cultivate stage might include more personal tasks such as invitations to special events, site visits, or personal communications. Finally, the Ask stage could have an Assignment to set up a solicitation for a donation by someone who knows the prospect.

Moves Stages have two main features:

They identify the stage of the process that a particular person occupies at a particular time.
They can drive the creation of Assignments that need to be fulfilled for the person.

Progressing Through the Moves Stages

NetForum supports a manual and an automated option to move individuals through the Moves Stages in a Moves Series:

A staff user may edit the Moves and change the stage manually.
The Transfer Moves process can automatically transfer people from one stage to another based on the criteria you set up.

The Transfer Moves process selects whom to transfer based on a selection query. The selection query may select any filter desired.

Generally, there are two ways to trigger a automatic stage transfer:

Date Based: Moves Stages may be based on a stated time frame. For example, you might have a Moves Series in which people go through a 6-month process, with each month represented by a Moves Stage. In this example, you will have six Moves Stages with people staying in each stage for one month. Therefore, the selection query criteria must be set to transfer individuals at the end of their term in their current Moves Stage onto the next Moves Stage in the Moves Series.
Condition Based: Moves Stages may be based on meeting certain conditions. Once an individual meets these conditions, they are moved onto the next Moves Stage. Most often these conditions are based on Assignments that are associated with their current Moves Stage. For example, in the Inform/Cultivate/Ask set of Moves Stages above, the criteria to get to the Ask stage might be triggered when all the Assignments in the Cultivate stage have been closed. With this logic, some people might stay in the Cultivate stage for a day, a month or indefinitely.

A series and its stages may work with a combination of all these transfer rules. For example, you may have a stage that allows for exiting via a Date Based rule after one month, or people might also transfer out to a different stage if all the assignments are completed. Further, there might be another stage in the series that transfers people in based on a query.

Note: If a Workflow rule is used to advance stages based on conditions, the rule must be set to active for the conditional processing to work. A Toolkit license and a user with access to the Toolkit are required to create and edit workflow rules. Workflow execution is also controlled by the WorkFlowEnabled system option. For more information, see Debugging Workflow

Setting Up Assignments

The third major setup piece in Moves Management is setting up Assignments. Assignments represent activities that a staff person needs to do for each customer within each Moves Stage and tracked with a due date and status code. These assignments can range from sending information, making a phone call, introducing a prospective member to a current member, verifying an application, or any other type of activity that needs to be assigned to a staff person and tracked.

Completing Assignments will trigger the status code for that customer's stage to flip to Closed, which signifies that the process has been fulfilled for that particular person.

A Moves Stage may be set up to have zero, one or more Assignments. Assignments can be distributed to every person who enters a stage, or they can be given only to customers who meet a certain criteria based on the selection query of the assignment.

The pool of assignments that can be associated with each stage is based on a Workflow Rule associated with the overall stage. To streamline setup, it is recommended that you create a single Workflow Rule for each Moves Series to ensure that no one mistakenly uses Assignments setup for other Moves Series.

Sales Module or Moves Management Module?

You must also determine if it is more appropriate to set up your process as a Sales Opportunity, in the Sales module or a Moves Series in the Moves Management module. Both modules share many of the same tables and have a lot of similarities.

The Moves Management module is more about a performing a set of managed, choreographed activities with a large set of people, where the goal is often but not always the sale of a product in NetForum. The Sales module, as its very name suggests, is more oriented to driving a sale. The Sales module is generally more free form and leaves it up to the staff user working each customer on which activities to do and where to go next, whereas the Moves Management module is better suited to working with larger groups of people where the activities are more scripted and the process is more defined.