In the Nonprofit Cloud (NPC) Fundraising model, tracking donor intent—where the money is "designated" to go—is a core requirement for financial transparency. It is important to distinguish between the "Fund" and the "Allocation."

Gift Designation (The Fund): This object represents the master fund or program area (e.g., "Clean Water Initiative"). It is a static record that holds rollup data for that specific fund.

Gift Transaction Designation (The Allocation): This is the junction object that records the donor's specific intent for a particular gift. When a consultant identifies that a donation needs to be split across multiple programs, they create multiple Gift Transaction Designation records linked to a single Gift Transaction. This object stores the specific amount or percentage of that transaction that should be credited to a particular program.

Workflow During Solicitation:

During the solicitation of an Opportunity, the consultant or gift officer captures the donor’s intent. Even if the money has not yet arrived, the data model for NPC Fundraising (v59 and higher) anticipates that this intent will eventually live on the Gift Transaction Designation record. When an Opportunity is "Won" and converted into a Gift Transaction, the system uses the metadata captured during solicitation to populate these designation records.

Why other options are incorrect:

Gift Default Designation (Option C): These are used at the Campaign or Org-wide level to define where unrestricted or "unmarked" gifts should go by default. They are templates for inheritance rather than the record that tracks a specific donor's intent for a specific solicitation.

Gift Designation (Option B): As mentioned, this is the master definition of the fund, not the record of a specific allocation instance.