Glossary

Karani: A Swahili word for a clerk or a majordomo--as we see it, someone who takes care of everything for you.

User: An individual who can log into Karani. Identified by an email address or a Google account. Each user is one human being (hopefully).

Account: A funding target within your organization. Usually each user has one account which maps to their personal saraly, but many users have more than one account--for example, one for their salary and one for a school scholarship fund. Each account has its own set of contacts, gifts, pledges, tasks, interactions, and even its own settings.

Account Share: Any user can share access to their account(s) with any user. Sharing an account with another user allows interact with the shared account fully as if they owned it.

MailChimp: A service for sending out email newsletters.

PrayerLetters.com: Like MailChimp but for paper mail; easily send out paper newsletters with the touch of a few buttons.,

Contact Organization ID: Each donor in Karani's system can best be matched against future imports by using the "organization ID". Your organization's donation system almost always will assign a unique ID to each donor, so make sure that field is set. If not, you can use the donor's email address as their organization ID.

Pledge goal: The yearly amount you need to raise to meet your budget.

Yearly gift goal: Usually equal to your pledge amount. The actual amount of money you expect to receive this year, regardless of your budget.

Monthly gift goal: The gift amount you expect to receive each month. For many people this will be your yearly gift goal divided by 12, but you can customize it in case, for example, you expect to receive a large amount of your gifts in December.

Mail merge: Taking names and addresses in an Excel or CSV file, importing them into Word or another document processor, and printing them automatically on envelopes.

One-time pledge: An amount a donor says they will give only once. The purpose of tracking one-time pledges is so that the pledge totals and graphs are up to date for the year in which the one-time gift is given.

CSV: A file type very similar to Excel's .xls and .xlsx, but not owned by Microsoft. This is the format that Karani uses to import and export data.