Recurring Gifts - Coding

Curtis Cecil

We are looking to set up recurring giving through RE NXT but I have some questions about processing. I'm hoping that someone else has thought through this and can help.

Our current coding process is designed to follow a fiscal year of Jan 1 - Dec 31, and we code gifts accordingly so that they fall under Campaigns that are attached to the current year. What I am having trouble wrapping my head around is…how can we manage a recurring gift that is set up without an end date when it continues to draft from one fiscal year to the next? For example, if someone sets up a recurring gift in November and it is coded for the 2023 fiscal year, when we go into 2024 the coding would essentially change to ensure that those drafts/contributions are captured as part of that donor's charitable contributions for the 2024 calendar year.

This has several implications from my perspective:

• Acknowledgement - we need to be able to acknowledge the contribution in/for the calendar year in which the contribution took place. This would be simple, except that the coding of the gift determines the information that gets populated in the acknowledgement letter.
• IRS implications - we have to be able to recognize and report our fundraising based on the calendar year. If contributions aren't coded to the appropriate year, we won't be able to report properly.
• Extra work - the only way I have been able to come up with for making sure the above happens is by having our gift processor run a report at the end of every year to see recurring gifts, then manually update each one so that the coding is correct for the upcoming year. That would mean adjusting each recurring setup for contributions moving forward.

Am I over-thinking this? Maybe each draft of a recurring setup falls into an NXT batch for the gift processor to review before committing/approving the batch? That would simplify things to an extent, but I would then ask how our gift processor would know that it is a recurring gift to confirm the correct coding? Does it defaults to the original coding that was attached to the NXT donor form?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help shed some light on recurring gift processing!

JoAnn Strommen

@Curtis Cecil My experience with this has been in db view but I doubt they've made enough steps forward on this aspect in webview for it to be any different. Test to be sure but changing info on recurring gift record changed info for future gifts in db. I manually changed Fund (it was fund not campaign for us) on recurring gifts.

IRS implications - reports I would think are based on gift date. Querying on campaign can be a good grouping tool. How do you handle multi-year pledges/payments?

You should be able to run a report based on gift type for your recurring gifts for gift processor.

Only other thought is a different ‘recurring campaign’ without a year that you use for your recurring gifts and base your reporting on gift date for gifts with that campaign.

Curtis Cecil

@JoAnn Strommen thanks for your reply! The information is helpful and I'll talk through it with my gift processor. I did think about running by the gift date which would work for running query/lists, but there's other coding that determine certain reporting. For multi-year pledges, we code each annual portion to that year's Campaign/Fund/Appeal so it would go in as multiple pledges.

I did see on the NXT donor form that the Fund is the only required coding information, so that helps with the flexibility of it. I'll talk to my gift processor about it and most likely run some tests.

Thanks again for your reply!

Dariel Dixon

I think you're overthinking this @Curtis Cecil, but it really depends on your reporting structure. Like @JoAnn Strommen stated, the payments will always be able to be reported by the gift date. The suggestion of having a blank or recurring gift campaign, but you would have to account for that in your regular reports as well.

The structure is designed to keep the campaign/appeal/fund data of the original RG/pledge, which is what you want if you are campaign. Having a C/A/F structure that works well for annual gifts as well as larger campaigns can be challenging from a gift entry and reporting perspective.

Carrie Aranda

@Curtis Cecil We have all of our recurring gifts set up in NXT. Each time payments run, they will place in a batch for your gift processor to review, edit and then approve. So, if anything needs to be changed, they will be able to do it prior to approving the batch.

Think of the recurring gift (not the individual payments) as a template. Every time that payment runs it uses the information contained on the recurring gift. You can change all of the recurring gifts through a global change in database view. We have done this on a regular basis and simply build a query of recurring gifts based on the campaign that needs to be changed. Then, use replace in a global query to update the campaign to the new one for the new year. After those are changed, all new payments will run with the updated information after that point while leaving all previous payments coded to the prior year. It is a quick and easy way to update recurring gifts all at once.

We have been running recurring gifts in NXT for a few years. Let me know if you have any questions.

Sarah Thompson

@Carrie Aranda

I dream of a way for my recurring gifts created in a FY to automatically switch from that specific campaign and appeal to our annual campaign and a recurring gifts appeal. I have been doing this with our gifts as I accept batches in NXT, but if it can be automated that would be pretty amazing. Any thoughts?

Thanks Sarah Thompson

Austen Brown

@Sarah Thompson - Changing over campaigns from year-to-year for recurring gifts is a manual process. You can do this either through a Global Change as @Carrie Aranda mentioned or through importing gift amendments.

Once the change is made on the original recurring gift, all subsequent payments will show up with updated information in those fields.

JoAnn Strommen

@Sarah Thompson If you have the user rights you should be able to do a global change of the existing recurring gifts. Create gift query of the recurring gifts with data you want to change. Use global change to Replace campaign A with B and Replace appeal C with D.

Caution, be sure to select records to include before entering any change info. Good practice to always do that first and to check boxes to create query of changed records and exceptions should something go awry. arah Thompson

Sarah Thompson

@JoAnn Strommen
Thanks so much for the quick response! I wonder - can I just change the recurring gift payments from a certain point onward? What I'd love is to leave the initial recurring gift and all subsequent recurring gift payments in that same FY alone but change the ones starting with the new fiscal year, preferably without having to change the campaign and appeal information on each recurring gift payment as I accept it.

JoAnn Strommen

@Sarah Thompson If you change the data on the “Recurring Gift” gift record, that data is used when any new recurring gift pay-cash payments are entered.

No changes are made if you just change the “Recurring Gift” record to prior payments.