beneficiary gift rec'd - how do you mark the Campaign?

Angela JohnstonGoch

How does your Org mark beneficiary gifts for the Campaign? Normally gifts get put under Annual but this isn't an annual gift, it's a one time gift as a donor put our Org in her will. This is first time I've gotten one of these so want to make sure it is recorded correctly. Thank you!

JoAnn Strommen

@Angela JohnstonGoch How do you enter your other “one-time” gifts? If I'm understanding every gift recorded in your campaign name Annual is someone making annual gifts?

Angela JohnstonGoch

@JoAnn Strommen
yes, we always mark them as Annual. My new CAO said that might change in the future but for now, that's how they get marked. I'm assuming that's not a Best Practice but…

JoAnn Strommen

@Angela JohnstonGoch Sorry, so is “we always” for one-time gifts (Q1 or for all Q2)? If so, how is this beneficiary gift different than any other one-time gifts?

Christine Robertson

@Angela JohnstonGoch Ultimately, I'm afraid that the answer to how to correctly do this is up to each organization as far as Campaign, Fund, Appeal, etc.

I personally create a separate account for Estates (Org constituent) so that the gift can be linked to the Individual, but also to the executor (Individual relationship). I also create a relationship between the Estate and the deceased Individual. If necessary, I will soft credit the gift to the deceased Individual (for giving summaries).

Dariel Dixon

@Christine Robertson is 100% right on this. This is completely dependent on your Campaign, Appeal, and Fund structure. At one organization, this wouldn't be a campaign question, but more of an appeal. At others, it was a coded differently.

It sounds like this wasn't entered in as a planned gift or something that you have already in your database. If that were the case, you would want to make sure that the gift is counted toward the Campaign that the planned gift or pledge was originally counted toward.

Faith Murray

@Angela JohnstonGoch
Echoing what others have said - this is more of an organization policy rather than a hard and fast rule on how to use RE. If you have the Planned Giving module in RE, you should of course create a Planned gift record and then enter the gift as cash and link the two.

At our org, we have a designated fund for undesignated estate bequests, but when it is designated to our capital campaign (or scholarships, or any other restriction), it goes to that normal fund, and it is denoted in the gift reference as well as linked to a Planned Gift. “Annual” is not a fund type that we use.