First Steps

There are a few first steps you want to take with your shiny new Karani account.

1. Configure two key settings

First, let's get your settings correct. Click the Settings button or directly navigate to the Settings Page.

You can ignore most of these fields for now, but you need to set up at least two fields: your budget and your organization's fiscal year start month.

Fiscal year start month

First, set your fiscal year start month to the month your organization resets its financial information. This is most likely to be either January or July; if you don't know, keep it at January.

Pledge goal

Next, set your "pledge goal." The pledge goal in Karani is the number that represents how much money you intend to have pledged to you this year, which is almost always equivalent to your yearly fundraising budget. You can also optionally set next year's budget with the Next year pledge goal, so that some of our calculations will start being useful as you look ahead to next year's financial status.

2. Import your data

At this point you'll want to get your data into Karani.

The easiest way is by using the importers; check out the section of this user guide titled "Importing Information" to learn about how to import all of your contacts, gifts, and more from Excel or similar documents.

Regardless of how you get your data into the system, you'll absolutely want to add your contacts, pledges, and giving history.

3. Organize your data

You'll likely also want to create a few groups or tags to help you organize your contacts. Some common groups are "Email newsletter" and "Paper newsletter".

4. Figure out what's next

Depending on the stage you're at in your fundraising, your next steps might be different.

If you're just getting started, you might want to check out the Tasks page and set yourself a few tasks for your next steps with your prospects.

If you've been fundraising for a while, you might want to check out the Reports page to find some reports that help you better uncover some next steps, or the Finances page to get a better sense of the current health of your finances.

Once you start getting your data set up well in the system you'll also probably want to check out the What's Next page any time you need to find how best to spend your time.

For more ideas of how to get your account working well, check out the rest of this guide.