Planned Giving - Data Entry Ideas

Omar Atik

Hello Internet,


We are implementing a new type of donor giving program, in short, it is planned giving should a specific event occur. For example, a donor can commit to a contribution in the event that they decease, such as "I will donate **Insert amount here** upon my death."


Currently, we just use the actual forms they fill out as records, however, we are curious if anyone else has recorded similar gifts within Raisers Edge. It would be extremely beneficial to have both digital and physical records of such gifts. One idea I had was to create a campaign ID and set the gifts as a pledge with a balance of $0, then in the reference section, we could simply notate what the gift entails. As well as scanning the document into the constituent's actual record on RE.


We would appreciate any sort of insight on this matter.


Thank you in advance!

Dan Snyder

We do exactly that process Omar. We have PG campaign that we use and record the amount as $0.01. This allows us to exclude them from any gift counting/reporting, but still keep record of the intention with any documentation uploaded to the media tab.

Crystal Bruce‍ maybe we can have this moved to the Raiser's Edge area for some more responses for Omar?

Austen Brown

Hi Omar - My organization uses the Planned Gift Module to track this information. These appear as a gift record with a gift type of ‘Planned Gift’. Check out the PG user manual, it will give you a better idea of what is possible with the module. Alternatively, if you do not have access to the module check out KB #46499 for an idea on how you could track it using the standard gift types.

Linda Burns

Hi Omar - we don't have the planned giving module. We record Legacy Society membership as an Attribute.

Category: Legacy Society
Description: Charter Member, Member, Anonymous, Former, Named Endowment, Suspect (those who have not/will not say but we’re confident and want them invited to Legacy Society events)
Date: Date that QEHF was informed
Comments: Description of the gift


Then when constituent who has identified as having a planned gift is marked deceased:
Add Pledge:
Pledged On = Date of death

Pledge amount = avg of $40K unless othewise indicated
Schedule = Guesstimate of timing of receiving gift – suggest one year out

When bequest notification is received:

• Change record to organization and add Estate of
• Use / prior to last name for sorting purposes
• Add Alias with just the last name to aid in searching for the record
• Relationships tab – add contact person
• update the amount of the pledge gift to actual

Hope that helps

Crystal Bruce

Dan Snyder‍ it looks like it is in Raiser's Edge. Sorry I'm late to this, maybe it got moved already?

Dan Snyder

Crystal Bruce‍, no I think it was already there and I just glazed over ? the ... in the file path at the top which I am sure says Raiser's Edge.

Keith Wilson

@Austen Brown, hopefully you can help me with this. We have the Planned Gift module and only recently started using it to track our Planned Gifts. Last year we had a donor include us in her will and we entered the planned gift with the anticipated amount we expected to receive. She has recently passed and this week we received the first installment of her estate gift. The gift was from her Trust that was set up, so we added a new constituent record for the Trust. It appears I cannot link the realized revenue gift on the Trust record to the Planned Gift on the individual record. Is that correct? Do we have to move the realized revenue gift to the individual record in order to link it to the Planned Gift?

Austen Brown

Hi Keith - You are correct that it is not possible to link a gift to a Planned Gift record, if new gift does not live on the same Constituent record as the PG gift record. However, I would caution against moving the PG gift record, there is a reason why you chose to put it on Constituent A's record versus Constituent B's.

At my organization, we have specific funds that we use to record when a PG cash gift is received. If the cash gift is entered on a different constituent record than the PG gift record, we soft credit the constituent that has the PG gift record.