Entering pledges when amount is unknown

Robin Richardson

We're preparing our annual employee appeal. Since we're a healthcare organization, donations of paid leave (converted to cash and given to the Foundation) are a big deal. I won't know the amount of the donation for each donor until the end of the appeal but want to record the pledge now for participation tracking purposes. Do any of you deal with this situation? And if so, how have you handled it? Thanks!

Leslie McGeady

We don't
encounter this often but have used $1 as a placeholder. You
could add a 'leave' attribute so it would be easier to
identify. 

Good luck!

--

Leslie McGeady

Development Database
Coordinator

505 South Ludlow Street

Dayton, OH 45402

(937) 461-3740
x212

cjeagles.org

Rachel Cavalier

We have a similar situation with one of our annual appeals - pledgers can pick set amounts or there's an "other" option. When we enter those, we put these pledges in as £0.01 to record that there's a pledge and then it's fairly straightforward to know from that, that they didn't specify an amount and it's easy to pick up for the pledge redemption letters

Christine Cooke

When I know "something" is coming but not the amount - and want to record for participation purposes I enter a pledge of $.01 (one cent) so that it comes up in pledge reports and it's also an indicator that we do not know the amount.

Dariel Dixon

As everyone stated, a pledge of some miniscule amount is probably the way to go.  The issue I have with this practice is I don't want to have those placeholders in the system for too long.  How long does your campaign run?  I wouldn't feel comfortable putting in a placeholder if I wasn't going to be able to put actual numbers in a couple of months or so.  

Tiki Tse

We use a constituent attribute to track pledges of unknown amounts.

Elizabeth Rich

We, too use a constituent attribute of FY21 Unspecified. We set up a Word export to send letters to them. Mostly we use it for telethon pledges. We only enter pledges on the gift tab if we know the amount.

Robin Richardson

Thanks, Leslie!

Robin Richardson

Thanks, Rachel!

Robin Richardson

Thanks, Christine!

Robin Richardson

Thanks, Dariel! Thankfully it's a pretty short time period of just over a month.