Pledges tracked on a spreadsheet... Expected but not confirmed donations.

Suzie Capps

Hi all ?

I've just started at a new organisation that tracks any pledged on a spreadsheet… ? they didn't know pledges on RE existed. I've come in with some RE expertise, and obviously want to get them using pledges asap.

One question for the community I had is, some of the gifts they track on their spreadsheet are not necessarily confirmed e.g., they have a community group who have told a fundraiser they will be raising £15k for the charity, but we don't know if that will be their total (it could literally be anything!). To enable me to replicate their spreadsheet via RE, I would need to include these figures too, in a way that will smoothly pull through to NXT reports (I don't have insight designer).

I'm considering entering these potential funds raised as a gift, but having a gift subtype of ‘unconfirmed amount’ or ‘predicted amount’, so that these can be included or excluded as needed. Is there anyone doing this / does anyone have any advice?

p.s. we don't have the Proposal tab and are unlikely to get it soon.

Thanks all ?

Have a great weekend!

Alex Wong

@Suzie Capps
any confirmed promise should be in RE as pledge

unconfirmed, should not, as you may have a problem with these gift posted to your financial system. Instead, you can create a proposal/opportunity and track/report that way.

Katie Werly

@Suzie Capps
Congrats on the new position, and Happy Friday! ?

I agree with you and Alex that confirmed pledges should be recorded in RE. I could see a few options, depending on how you use the records, for the unconfirmed ones. 1) You could enter a Recurring Gift, and then apply to it whatever ends up being received. 2) You could enter a pledge with a specific gift attribute or subtype that you would then use to exclude those from posting to your finance records. (we do something similar to exclude ‘verbal pledges’ compared to ‘confirmed/documented’ pledges). 3) Or another option could be to utilize the “other” gift type for the unconfirmed ones. Hope that helps, good luck!!

Ashley Gelderblom

@Suzie Capps or you could set the pledge status to held for unconfirmed promises, then when promised swithch them to active

Christine Cooke

@Suzie Capps I have always given unconfirmed commitments a Gift Subtype of Verbal Promise. That way they could be counted or excluded from pledge reporting depending on what the report was for.

Jaclyn Whitelock

@Suzie Capps in my opinion, a pledge should only be entered when it is an exact, confirmed amount. For the types of situations you're referencing, we personally use opportunities and the amount expected. Additionally, we have status fields within the opportunity that indicate the likelihood.