How to count expected matching gifts in campaign totals

Janet Linaweaver

Hello,

We have 2 donors that have made multi-year commitments during our current comprehensive campaign. Neither will be complete prior to end of the campaign or installation of the donor wall.

Both donors have signed pledge forms, and have indicated they are retired from matching gift companies, so their gifts will be matched by their former employers. The matching gift portion can/should not be recorded as part of the pledge, but we need to factor it in for their campaign giving recognition. How would you go about recording this so the expected matches show in the total for campaign recognition, but not revenue and cash in? My first thought was to include the MG-Pledge gift type in my campaign reports, but the MG-Pledge isn't created until the installment payment comes in. I can't create them when I create the installment schedule.

Can anybody offer any insight on how you would handle this situation?

Carlene Johnson

Is there a reason you can't create them until the first payment has come in? Is that internal policy? While I agree that this makes sense as an overall policy this may be a case where you want to make an exception if this is a significant amount of money.

Are there posting to GL, reporting, or other implications that you and/or your org are concerned about in terms of recording this MG Pledges at this time?

At many organizations I would record the MG Pledge if it was documented in writing from the donor that this was part of their intention. We didn't count it towards the campaign goal as there was no guarantee the money would come in, but we did count it in terms of donor recognition, annual reports, donor walls, etc..

Janet Linaweaver

There's not a reason, per se, other than the nature of matching gifts being that they apply to what's received, not what's promised. Also, I don't seem to be able to create a gift with the type MG Pledge without tying it to another gift. Is there a way to create them for installments that I don't know about?

If I create a pledge for the matching gift portion, it would throw off all of my existing reporting, as the intention is only to include the full amount of the intended match for donor recognition purposes.

JoAnn Strommen

Have you considered making a MG pledge that is equal to the multi-year pledge of the donors? I have done that in a few situations and then put an annotation/alert on the record for gift entry staff to not create a MG pledge with payment of each installment as there is a MG pledge for the full pledge amount.

This way it can pull in $ when you are including MG pledges.

Carlene Johnson

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/309446#Comment_309446

This is exactly what I was thinking. Create a Matching Gift Pledge that is linked to the Pledge from the constituent. One would need to make sure that gift entry knows (in addition to a pop-up) that for this particular donor & company to double check before adding a MG Pledge to the record. Since MG Pledges can be included/excluded from most reports, I would choose to exclude MG Pledges from any report which that isn't for Donor Recognition - which is my current practice anyway.

Janet - does that help? Feel free to ask more questions or poke holes in what we are suggesting. :)