Plans in GC GO – GiveCampus University

Welcome! A Plan is your strategy for a constituent, written down and given a timeline. It answers four questions in one place: who you’re working with, what you’re working toward, where they are in the cycle, and what happens next. Everything else — the calls, the emails, the visits, the handwritten note before the ask — lives inside the plan as Plan Moves.

This guide is for gift officers who build and run plans day to day: how to create one, how to work the moves, how to advance a stage, how plans connect to opportunities and cadences, and how to close a plan out when the work is done.

Plans, Plan Moves, Tasks, and Cadences

Four words that sound similar and do different jobs:

Plan — the whole strategy for a constituent: a name, a type, a stage, a date range, a plan manager, and a narrative.
Plan Move — a single step inside that plan (a task or contact report with a stage attached). “Send intro email,” “Lunch at the reunion,” “Present the proposal.”
Task — any to-do in GC GO. A Plan Move is a task; it just belongs to a plan. Tasks can also stand alone.
Cadence — an automated sequence of outreach. A cadence can be connected to a plan, and its steps then show up among your Plan Moves.

Where plans live

You’ll find plans in three places:

Your plans — from the GC GO menu, click Plans to open My Plans. Tabs for Active and Inactive, a Search Plans box, and a table showing Constituent, Name, Type, Start Date, End Date, and Plan Manager.
On a constituent’s record — open a constituent and go to the Plans tab to see every plan for that person, filtered by All, Active, or Inactive.
Schoolwide Data — if you have access, Schoolwide Data → Plans shows plans across your whole team, not just yours.

Click a plan’s name anywhere in those tables to open it.

Create a plan

Start from either New Plan on your My Plans page, or New Plan on a constituent’s Plans tab — starting from the constituent saves you a search, since they’re filled in for you.

You’ll land on New Plan, with a Plan Basics panel:

Template (optional) — pick a Plan Template to have GC GO build the whole set of Plan Moves for you (see below). To look at your options first, click the here link to preview templates in a new tab.
Plan Name (required) — what you’ll recognize in a list of forty. “Sasha Whitfield ’04 — Reunion Ask” beats “Plan 1.”
Primary Constituent (required) — search and select the person (or organization) this plan is about.
Secondary Constituent(s) (optional) — add a spouse, partner, or anyone else on the same strategy.
Select Type (required) — the Plan Type that describes the goal: Annual Fund, Major Gift, Reunion Gift, Stewardship, and whatever else your school has set up.
Start Date and End Date — start defaults to today and end to 90 days out. Change them to match your real timeline; the date range shows on the plan and drives your template’s due dates.
Plan Manager (required) — the gift officer who owns this plan. Defaults to you.
Secondary Gift Officer(s) (optional) — click + Add Another for anyone else working the strategy with you.
Plan Narrative (optional) — up to 1,000 characters of context: what you know, what you’re trying, what to avoid. Your future self will thank you.

Click Save & Add Plan Moves. The plan opens, ready for its steps.

Editing later? Open the plan and click Edit Plan Details. The same form reappears, and the button reads Save Plan.

Start from a template

If your school has built Plan Templates, selecting one at the top of the form does two things: it sets the Plan Type for you, and — once you save — it generates every Plan Move in the template, with due dates counted forward from your Start Date.

That’s the fastest way to run a consistent play. A template with moves at Day 0, Day 7, and Day 30 becomes three real Plan Moves on real calendar dates the moment your plan exists. From there they’re yours: edit them, postpone them, add more, or dismiss the ones that don’t apply to this constituent.

The plan page

Open a plan and here’s what you’re looking at.

Across the top: the plan name with an Active or Inactive pill, and Edit Plan Details.

The card underneath: the constituent (click the name for the quick side panel), their affiliations, the Plan Type, and the date range.

The sidebar on the right:

Current Plan Stage — where this constituent sits in the cycle. Click it to change it.
Narrative — the context you wrote on the form.
Linked Opportunity — New Opportunity to create one, or View Opportunity if it’s already linked.
Plan Manager and Secondary Staff.
Created and Last Updated, each with the person who did it.
Linked Cadences — any cadences tied to this plan, with their status.

The main panel: All Plan Moves, your running list of steps.

Work the Plan Moves

The Plan Moves list is where a plan stops being a document and starts being work.

At the top you’ll see your progress — “3/8 Plan Moves Complete” — with a note that dismissed moves don’t count toward the total. You can also Search move titles, Filter Plan Moves, and check Display Completed Plan Moves or Display Dismissed Plan Moves to bring finished work back into view.

Add a Plan Move

Click Actions → Add Plan Move. In the Add Plan Move window:

Title (required) — up to 100 characters.
Stage (required) — which Plan Stage this move belongs to.
Assignee (required) — usually you; pick a teammate when they’re the one doing it.
Due date (required).
Description (optional) — talking points, context, the thing you promised to follow up on.
Notify me about this Task (optional) — check it, then set Remind me [ ] days before Due Date.

Click Save and it joins the list.

Assigning to a Read Only user? GC GO will tell you: they won’t be able to see the plan in GC GO, but the data still flows to your CRM.

Act on a move

Each move carries its own actions:

New Contact Report — log what happened. (Once one exists, the same spot reads View Contact Report.)
Postpone Task — push the due date. Select several moves first to postpone them together with Postpone Selected Plan Moves.
Dismiss Task — it’s not happening; take it off the list without pretending you did it.
Complete Task — done. The move gets a Completed badge; dismissed moves get a Dismissed badge.
Re-open plan move — put a completed or dismissed move back into play.

You can also edit a move with the pencil icon, or delete it with the trash icon.

Advance the stage

Stages are how you show movement: Identification → Qualification → Cultivation → Solicitation → Stewardship, or whatever sequence your school uses.

In the sidebar, click Current Plan Stage, choose the new stage, and click Save. That’s it — the change is live, and your reporting reflects it right away.

Update the stage when the relationship actually moves, not when the calendar does. A stage that’s honest is worth far more to your team than one that’s optimistic.

Link an opportunity

When a plan turns into a real ask, connect it to an Opportunity so the dollars, designation, and expected close date live alongside the strategy.

In the sidebar under Linked Opportunity, click New Opportunity to create one from this plan, or View Opportunity to jump to the one that’s already attached.

Plans and cadences

Cadences and plans work together: a cadence runs the outreach, the plan holds the strategy.

When a plan is connected to an active cadence, a banner appears at the top: “This Plan is connected to the [cadence name] Cadence. In order to make any changes, navigate to the Cadence page.” Cadence steps show up among your Plan Moves, but you edit them from the cadence.
Add Plan Move is unavailable while an active cadence is driving the plan.
To break the connection, use Actions → Disconnect Cadence.
Finished and in-progress cadences are listed in the sidebar under Linked Cadences.

Close a plan out

When the work is finished — the gift came in, the strategy changed, the prospect moved to a colleague — archive the plan rather than leaving it open.

Click Actions → Archive Plan. GC GO asks “Are you sure you want to deactivate this plan?” and, if any moves are still open, warns that “This will dismiss all associated tasks.” Click Confirm.

The plan moves to your Inactive tab, where it stays readable forever. Changed your mind? Find it on the Inactive tab and click the reactivate icon to bring it back.

A few tips

Name plans so you can scan them. Constituent plus goal beats a generic label every time.
Let templates do the setup. If you run the same play often, start from a template and adjust — it’s minutes saved on every plan.
Keep the narrative current. It’s the fastest way for a colleague (or you, six months from now) to pick up the thread.
Log a contact report as you complete a move. The strategy and the history stay in step, and your CRM gets the full picture.
Set end dates you believe in. They’re what make a plan a plan instead of an open-ended wish.