Advise for converting to automated recurring gifts

Megan Thurman

Hi all. We have tested the waters with converting to automated recurring gifts, but haven't converted all those we can. Something that stops us from converting is the fact that we use year-specific funds, campaigns, and appeals which we've noticed trips up the automated RG process (it requires manual review of a specific RG that was created in a previous FY. We have to update the campaign to this year's each month). How do you get around this hang up? Do you have a generic recurring gift fund/campaign/ or appeal that you use? I struggle to believe we're the only place that uses year-specific designations so I wanted to learn what best practices exist. Thanks.

Christine Robertson

@Megan Thurman Have you amended the Recurring Gift to reflect the current year's Campaign/Fund/Appeal?

Megan Thurman

@Christine Robertson We have attempted too…it appears that we must be doing something wrong as we've had to re-do the amendment each month the gift processes.

Christine Robertson

@Megan Thurman Are you amending the recurring gift or adjusting the payments? Amending should only need to happen once per year and you can then see each year's amendment on the recurring gift itself. Adjusting would take place on each payment.

Megan Thurman

@Christine Robertson Not trying to be daft, but a lot of our recurring gifts are multiple years old. If we amend the original RG will that affect the reporting of those historical gifts? (ie we change the RG campaign from “2020 Annual Appeal” to “2024 Annual Appeal”. Will not all the previous gift campaigns get changed to 2024 Annual Appeal?)

Julie VanErsvelde

@Megan Thurman I am still doing all of our recurring gifts in database view but each fiscal year, I go in and amend the original RG with the new campaign for the new fiscal year. All of the recurring pay-cash gifts from prior years retain the campaign they had at the time of processing. Just the payments going forward will have the new information.

JoAnn Strommen

@Megan Thurman You're not being daft. Valid question. As @Julie VanErsvelde posted it should just change gifts going forward.

If you did want to change campaign for all past gifts, that would be done by opening the campaign record and changing the campaign name there. As long as the old campaign name is intact it will remain on existing gifts.

Christine Robertson

@Megan Thurman Not daft at all - those are good questions to ask as to learn how different areas function. When you amend a recurring gift, it does not change any of the past payments. It will show the recurring gift itself with those values (which helps for your projection reports) and it will also help with the coding for new payments. There is also a history of the amendments, so you can easily see what it used to be as well as what it is now.