How money flows from a Gift through GiftDesignations to fund Projects under Campaigns — and how Virtuous’s terminology maps to the ‘funds’ concept used by other platforms.
When a donor gives a gift in CRM+, that gift is allocated to one or more specific purposes. This page covers the three-layer model that connects a Gift to those purposes: GiftDesignation (the allocation), Project (the destination), and Campaign (the organizing context).
If you are coming from another nonprofit platform (Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge, DonorPerfect, Salesforce NPSP, NetSuite), you may know this concept as a “fund.” In Virtuous, the equivalent resource is the Project.
Other platforms
Virtuous
Fund
Project
Fund designation / Gift allocation
GiftDesignation
Appeal / Campaign
Campaign
The page title uses “Funds” because that is the partner-recognizable term, but every endpoint and field in the API uses Project. The rest of this page uses the Virtuous terminology.
A Project is a fundable purpose. It has a name, a code, balances, and a set of flags controlling its visibility and behavior. A typical Project record:
Virtuous’s internal Project ID. Unique within an organization.
projectCode
string
The organization’s short code for the Project (e.g., "CLEAN-WATER"). Often more stable across system migrations than the numeric ID.
externalAccountingCode
string
The Project’s accounting-system code (often the GL account number). Used for reconciliation with the nonprofit’s accounting software.
For partner integrations, projectCode is usually the right reference. It is human-readable, it can be configured to match your platform’s identifier for the same fund, and it stays stable even if Virtuous database IDs change in unusual recovery scenarios. The GiftDesignation accepts projectCode directly:
Four boolean flags determine whether a Project is currently usable for gift designation:
Flag
What it controls
isActive
Whether the Project accepts new designations. An inactive Project can still hold historical gifts but cannot be designated to on new gifts.
isPublic
Whether the Project is visible in the organization-wide Project list. Internal Projects are excluded from most reports.
isAvailableOnline
Whether the Project can be designated to from a public donation form.
isTaxDeductible
Whether designations to this Project are tax-deductible for the donor. Affects receipt generation.
Partner integrations submitting gifts should respect isActive — designating to an inactive Project will produce a 400 or 422 error from the API. The defensive pattern is to query for active Projects at integration setup and surface them to your customer for mapping.
Projects can have a parent-child hierarchy through the parentId field. Sub-projects roll up to their parent for reporting purposes — giving to “Clean Water → Sub-Saharan Africa” is also counted toward “Clean Water” totals.
Field
Description
parentId
The parent Project’s ID, if this is a sub-project.
parentName
The parent’s display name.
isSubProject
true if this Project has a parent.
For partner integrations, the hierarchy is mostly transparent — designate to the most specific Project (the sub-project), and Virtuous handles the rollup automatically.
Three patterns for discovering Projects in your integration:
Endpoint
When to use
GET /api/Project/{projectId}
Look up one Project by Virtuous ID.
GET /api/Project/Code/{projectCode}
Look up by projectCode — useful when your platform stores the code rather than the numeric ID.
POST /api/Project/Query
Filtered paginated retrieval. Filter by isActive: true and isPublic: true to get the set of Projects valid for new gift designations.
GET /api/Project/{projectId}/Balance returns the current balance and giving totals for a specific Project — useful for displaying progress in a donor portal or partner dashboard.
A Campaign is a time-bound fundraising effort that groups Projects together. “Year-End Giving 2024”, “Capital Campaign Phase II”, “Giving Tuesday 2024” — each is a Campaign that combines one or more Projects toward a unified goal.A typical Campaign record:
Campaigns are referenced indirectly by Gifts — through the Projects in their GiftDesignations. A gift designated to a Project that belongs to “Year-End Giving 2024” is part of that Campaign for reporting purposes.
Campaigns are read-only through the CRM+ API. The API exposes GET /api/Campaign/{campaignId}, POST /api/Campaign/Query, and GET /api/Campaign/QueryOptions — but there is no POST /api/Campaign, no PUT /api/Campaign/{campaignId}, and no DELETE /api/Campaign/{campaignId}.Partners cannot create Campaigns programmatically. If your integration needs a new Campaign, direct the nonprofit administrator to create it in the Virtuous UI under Campaigns, then reference its Projects in your gift submissions.
Some Campaigns are structured as a sequence of activities or touchpoints (a “campaign plan”). GET /api/Campaign/GetStepsByCampaignId/{campaignId} returns the steps defined for a Campaign. Most partner integrations do not need to interact with campaign steps directly.
A GiftDesignation records the allocation of a portion of a Gift to a specific Project. Every Gift has at least one designation. The total of all designation amounts must equal the Gift’s amount.
Field
Type
Description
id
integer
The unique designation ID. Created when the Gift is recorded.
projectId
integer
Reference to the funded Project.
project
string
Display name of the Project (read-only).
projectCode
string
Organization’s short code (read-only on response). On request, can be used in place of projectId.
externalAccountingCode
string
The Project’s accounting code (read-only on response).
amountDesignated
number
The portion of the Gift allocated to this Project.
The API rejects gifts where designation amounts don’t sum to the gift amount — the validation runs synchronously on Gift Transaction submissions and returns a 400 if the totals don’t match.
If your platform captures a single fund per donation, always submit one designation for the full amount. Do not omit giftDesignations — gifts without designations are rejected.
Filtered retrieval of designation records — useful for reporting on giving by Project across many gifts.
GET /api/GiftDesignation/QueryOptions
Discover the filter parameters and operators available for GiftDesignation queries.
Designations are also embedded in Gift responses (giftDesignations array on the Gift), so most workflows don’t need to query designations independently.
A Segment is a related concept worth a brief mention here even though it is not a Project or Campaign. Segments are groupings of Contacts (e.g., “Major Donors”, “Lapsed Givers”, “Board Members”) used for outreach targeting and campaign association. Unlike Projects and Campaigns, Segments are Contact-centric — they answer “who” rather than “what” or “when.”Endpoints:
Endpoint
Use
GET /api/Segment/{segmentId}
Retrieve one Segment.
GET /api/Segment/Code/{segmentCode}
Look up by Segment code.
POST /api/Segment
Create a Segment.
PUT /api/Segment/{segmentId}
Update a Segment.
Gifts can carry a segment (or segmentCode) field to associate the gift with a specific Segment for attribution and reporting. Some Campaign workflows use Segments to identify which donors received a particular appeal.
