Managing Designations in Tiered Campaigns to Prevent Cross-Counting – GiveCampus University

If donations are appearing on multiple tier pages, it's because you're using the same designation across multiple groups. Each tier needs its own unique designations to prevent cross-counting. Instead of sharing designations like "Other" across tiers, create unique ones like "Athletics - Other" and "Academics - Other."

How Designation Groups and Designations Work

When a donor selects a designation that exists in multiple groups, their donation will count toward ALL tier pages that include that designation.

Athletics group: Football, Basketball and a shared Other designation.
Academics group: Scholarships, Library and the same Other designation.
A gift to that shared Other designation appears on both pages.

Why Shared Designations Appear on Multiple Pages

The platform tracks donations by designation ID, not by which group contains it. If the same designation appears in multiple groups, the system counts that donation toward every tier page that includes a group with that designation.

This is working as designed - the system assumes shared designations are intentionally meant to benefit multiple areas.

Note on tier 3 landing pages: GiveCampus supports tier 3 pages nested under a tier 2 page. The same issue applies: if a tier 3 page’s designation overlaps with another page’s designation, donations will appear on both pages. To prevent this, assign a unique designation to each tier 3 page, just as you do for higher tiers. Also, the designation for a tier 3 page must come from the same group configured on its parent tier 2 page.

Creating Unique Designations for Each Tier

Step 1: Identify shared designations

Review your designation groups and identify any shared designations used across tiers. Identical names are a reason to check, but it is the same designation record appearing in multiple groups that causes cross-counting.

Other
General Fund
Unrestricted
Where most needed

Step 2: Create tier-specific designations

Replace shared designations with separate designations that clearly identify their tier.

Replace a shared Other designation with Athletics - Other, Academics - Other and Alumni Programs - Other.
Replace a shared General Fund designation with Athletics General Fund, Student Services General Fund and Campus Improvements General Fund.

Step 3: Update your designation groups

Remove the shared designations from groups where they should not count.
Add the new tier-specific designations to the appropriate groups.
Verify that gifts to the new designations appear on the intended tier pages.

Best Practices for Tiered Campaign Structure

Use descriptive names that identify the tier.
Use the same naming pattern across tiers, such as Department - Purpose.
Plan the designation structure before launching.

After you remove a shared designation: refreshing totals

After you remove a shared designation or replace it with tier-specific designations, the totals on Tier 2 pages might still appear inflated for a short time. This happens because cached and background-calculated values can delay the update.

What to do after applying the designation fix

Wait and reload the page: Wait a few minutes after making the change, then reload the Tier 2 page to check the updated totals.
Test with a sample donation (optional): Make a small test donation using one of the new tier-specific designations and verify that it appears only on the intended page.
If the totals still appear incorrect: If the totals remain inflated after waiting, the cached values may need to be recomputed. GiveCampus support can trigger a manual campaign total refresh to update the totals and donor counts.

What the refresh does and what to expect

The manual refresh recalculates the campaign's giving totals and donor counts, ensuring that donations are attributed only to the correct tier.
After the refresh, reload the pages to verify that the totals and donor counts reflect the updated designation configuration and any test donations.

Quick troubleshooting checklist

Confirm that the shared designation was removed from all groups where it shouldn’t appear.
Wait several minutes and reload the Tier 2 page before drawing conclusions about the totals.
If the totals remain off, a manual campaign total refresh can be requested to recalculate the cached values.

Admin edits to a processed gift's designation — why totals may not update immediately

When an admin changes a processed gift’s designation on the gift detail page, the publicly displayed campaign totals do not update immediately. Unlike a new donation—which triggers an instant recalculation—the change is picked up by a background process that runs on a schedule, so there is a delay before the public tiered pages reflect the update.

What this means:

Totals on tiered campaign pages may continue to show the previous figures for several minutes after the change.
Even if no new donations occur, the background process will eventually update the totals, though not immediately.

To confirm that the update is applied:

Wait and reload: Allow a few minutes after saving the change, then reload the tiered campaign page to see if the totals have been updated.
Optional test—make a small donation: Submit a test donation using one of the tier-specific designations. This triggers an immediate recalculation so you can verify that the totals display correctly.
If totals remain incorrect: After several minutes, if the totals still appear off, GiveCampus support can trigger a manual campaign total refresh. This refresh recalculates both the cached totals and donor counts on Tier 2 and Tier 3 pages. Once the refresh is complete, reload the campaign pages to review the updated figures.

Additional tips:

The manual refresh only recalculates campaign totals and donor counts. It does not alter gift history or the underlying donation records.
If you've made several designation edits, wait a few minutes before concluding that a manual refresh is needed—the background process will eventually update the totals on its own.