Working across client organizations

Consultants and fractional development staff often carry four or five client organizations at once. Relae handles that as separate workspaces you switch between, not as one book with a client column.

One workspace per client

Each client organization is its own workspace with its own donors, gifts, settings, fiscal year and receipting configuration.

Donor data never crosses between clients

There is no shared pool. A donor who supports two of your clients is two records, one in each workspace, and neither client can see the other’s.

This is a hard boundary rather than a setting. Each client is the controller of their own donor data, and a consultant relationship does not merge them.

Switching between clients

You switch workspace from your account menu. The workspace you are in is always visible, because the most expensive mistake available to a consultant is logging a call on the wrong client’s record.

Your role in each

You are given a role per client, by that client. Usually manager or officer.

Your access to each is theirs to grant and theirs to revoke. A client who ends an engagement removes your access to their workspace and keeps everything you recorded in it, because the record of what happened is theirs.

Comparing across clients

Agency arrangements are set out in the Consultant and Agency Terms. If you need a view across clients rather than one at a time, that document is the accurate reference for what the arrangement covers.

Whatever the arrangement, the boundary above holds: figures may travel, donors do not.

Setting up a new client

The order is the same as any other workspace, and worth doing in this order:

1. Create the workspace with the client’s legal name and their fiscal year.
2. Import their history, oldest data first.
3. Clear the review queue while their data is fresh in your mind.
4. Rate their top thirty with someone who knows the donors, usually the executive director.
5. Show them the forecast. This is generally the moment a client understands what they have bought.

Step four is the one to do together rather than alone. Access ratings live in the client’s head, and an hour with them is worth more than a week of your guessing.

See your first week for the detail.

Working with a client’s board

A read-only campaign view suits a board that wants progress without accounts. For a development committee working named prospects, individual viewer accounts are the alternative. See who can see what.

When an engagement ends

The workspace belongs to the client. They keep it, along with the records, the notes and the history.

If they are also leaving Relae, walk them through the export before their window closes. See deleting everything.

The terms

Consultant and agency arrangements have their own terms, which set out the relationship between you, your clients and Relae. See the Consultant and Agency Terms.

Next

• Your first week
• Who can see what