Configuring Contact Methods in GC GO: Your Guide

Welcome! Every time a gift officer logs a contact report, they pick a Contact Method — was this a phone call, an email, an in-person visit, a text? That one choice does more than label the interaction: it decides which of your metrics the touch counts toward. The Contact Methods settings page is where you shape that list — the options your team sees, the defaults that get pre-filled, and how each one rolls up into reporting.

This guide walks you through it start to finish: what a contact method is, where the setting lives, the fields that matter (especially Visit Type and Contact Type, which drive your metrics), how to add, edit, reorder, and delete methods, and how your choices show up when a gift officer writes a report.

What contact methods are

A contact method is a type of touch a gift officer can record on a contact report — Phone, Email, In Person, and so on. Your school gets a starter set, and you can rename them, add your own, control which appear in the dropdown, and set which one auto-fills based on how a report was started.

GC GO has a default set of contact methods. Additional contact methods are then populated based on the data uploaded via contact reports. Once contact reports are uploaded, you should do the contact method setup after the initial contact report import. This will save you time. 

Two attributes on each method quietly power your reporting:

• Visit Type — whether the touch counts as a meeting (and if so, in-person or virtual).
• Contact Type — whether it counts as a call, an email, or neither.

Get these right and your “Number of Meetings,” “Prospects Called,” and “Prospects Emailed” numbers stay accurate. That’s the real reason this page matters.

Where contact methods live

From the GC GO menu, open School Settings and click Contact Methods. The page — titled Contact Method Settings — shows:

• A New Contact Method button, top right.
• Your methods, listed in order, each with a drag handle on the left, its Selectable / Not Selectable status, and edit (pencil) and delete (trash) icons on the right.

What ships out of the box

Every school starts with nine built-in contact methods:

• Email
• Event
• In Person
• Mail
• Other
• Phone
• Social Media
• Text Message
• Virtual Visit

By default, Email is the default for emails, Phone for calls, Text Message for texts, and In Person for visits. You can rename any of these, reorder them, add more, or adjust the defaults — the guide below shows how.

Anatomy of a contact method

When you add or edit a method, you’ll set these fields:

Name (required)

What gift officers see in the dropdown — e.g. Phone. It’s the only required field.

Visit Type

Controls how the method counts toward meeting metrics. The page tells you the impact as you choose:

• In Person — “This contact method will count for the Number of Meetings metric and the In Person Visits submetric.”
• Virtual — “This contact method will count for the Number of Meetings metric and the Virtual Visits submetric.”
• Other — “This contact method will count for the Number of Meetings metric.”
• Not A Visit — “This contact method will not count for visit metrics.”

Contact Type

Controls how the method counts toward contact metrics:

• Phone — “This contact method will count for the Prospects Called submetric.”
• Email — “This contact method will count for the Prospects Emailed submetric.”
• Other — “This contact method will not count for any specific submetrics.”
• Not A Contact — “This contact method will not count for Constituents Contacted metric.”

Why this pairing matters: Visit Type and Contact Type are independent. A “Coffee meeting” might be In Person (visit) + Other (contact); a “Voicemail” might be Not A Visit + Phone. Set both deliberately so the touch lands in the right buckets.

Selectable

“This contact method will be selectable when creating a Contact Report.” Leave it checked to offer the method to gift officers; uncheck it to retire a method from the dropdown without deleting it (and without disturbing reports that already used it).

The four “Default for…” flags

These pre-select a method when a report is started a particular way. Only one method can hold each default at a time — checking it here moves the default off whatever held it before (the modal warns you: “Checking this will replace ‘[name]’ as the default.”).

• Default for Visit — “…set by default when creating a Contact Report from the Trip Planner or for a past visit.”
• Default for Email — “…set by default when creating a Contact Report from an Email.”
• Default for Calling — “…set by default when creating a Contact Report from a Phone Call.”
• Default for Texting — “…set by default when creating a Contact Report from a Text Message.”

Add a contact method

1. Click New Contact Method. A panel opens titled Add Contact Method.
2. Enter a Name (e.g. Phone). The Create button stays disabled until you do.
3. Choose a Visit Type and Contact Type — watch the helper text to confirm the metrics impact.
4. Leave Selectable checked so gift officers can pick it.
5. Check any Default for… flags this method should own.
6. Click Create. You’ll see a Contact Method Created confirmation, and it appears in your list.

Edit or reorder methods

• Edit: click the pencil icon on a method’s row. The panel opens as Edit [Name] Contact Method. Change any field and click Save — you’ll get a Contact Method Updated confirmation. Renaming carries through everywhere the method is used.
• Reorder: grab a method by its drag handle and drag it up or down. The order is the sequence gift officers see in the dropdown, so put your most-used methods near the top.

Delete a contact method

• If a method can be removed, a trash icon appears on its row. Click it to delete — you’ll see a Contact Method Deleted confirmation.
• If a method can’t be deleted, the trash icon is grayed out, and hovering shows why. A method is protected when it’s:
  • Attached to existing contact reports — “Contact method is attached to contact reports and cannot be deleted.”
  • Attached to contact report templates — “Contact method is attached to contact report templates and cannot be deleted.”
  • Holding a default flag — “Transfer the default to another contact method before deleting this one.”

Important: Deleting happens as soon as you click the trash icon — there’s no separate “are you sure?” step. If a method is in use but you want it out of the dropdown, uncheck Selectable instead of deleting; that keeps your historical reports intact.

To delete a method that holds a default, first give that default to another method (edit the other method and check the flag), then delete.

How contact methods show up for gift officers

When a gift officer creates a contact report, they’ll see a required Contact Method dropdown. A few things you control shape that moment:

• Only Selectable methods appear in the list (a report saved earlier with a now-unselectable method keeps its original value).
• The right default is pre-filled based on how the report started — from an email, a phone call, a text, or the Trip Planner — using your Default for… flags.
• The order matches your list, so your reordering carries straight through.

From there, the Visit Type and Contact Type you assigned decide how that logged touch counts in reporting.

Contact methods and your metrics, at a glance

• Meetings come from Visit Type — In Person and Virtual each feed their own submetric; Other still counts as a meeting; Not A Visit doesn’t.
• Calls and emails come from Contact Type — Phone feeds Prospects Called, Email feeds Prospects Emailed.
• Not A Contact keeps a method out of the Constituents Contacted metric — useful for touches you want to log but not count.
• Custom metric tiles (Tasks, Prospects Contacted, Contact Reports Logged) can filter by specific contact methods, so a clean, well-typed list makes for cleaner reports.

A few tips to configure like a pro

• Match CRM. Update the list of contact methods in GC GO to match the list you have in CRM. If you prefer to have a different list in GO, make sure you are mapping them appropriately during the import/export process to/from CRM. 
• Set Visit Type and Contact Type first. They’re the whole reason this page affects reporting — don’t leave them on the default without thinking.
• Retire, don’t delete. To pull a method from the dropdown without losing history, uncheck Selectable.
• Keep one clear default per channel. Email, Calling, Texting, and Visit should each point at the method your team expects.
• Name for the dropdown. Use names a gift officer will recognize at a glance mid-report.
• Reorder for speed. Drag your most-used methods to the top.
• Move the default before deleting. A method holding a default can’t be removed until you hand that default to another method.