DAF Intentions -- how are you tracking?

Allan Delmare

Does NXT provide a way to track DAF intentions?

Since a donor cannot use a DAF to make a payment towards a pledge, is there another way to track "intentions" (it is not legally a pledge, but they have verbalized their intent to donate x dollars over time and intend to make payments via DAF)?

We want to be able to note that the donor has this intention and track it for the purpose of campaign reporting … but we need to be able to put them into the system so that they're not showing up with other commitments and being counted like a normal pledge would.

Any official way to do this? If no official way, any workarounds y'all have come up with for sanity?

Tatyana Leifman

Can you use opportunities? There is a field there of Gift Type that can be defined as "DAF" or something similar?

Allan Delmare

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/313902#Comment_313902

Hmmm. Interesting to consider. Don't love it, but better than anything else I've considered. Thanks for your input. Curious to see if anyone else has taken this (or any other) approach in practice.

Allan Delmare

Okay for anyone else looking, one way that has been suggested is to enter it as a pledge but use a gift subtype of 'non-binding intent' on the pledge — which essentially tags it as a pledge "in name only." … then you just need to be careful/mindful during reporting and auditing to handle any pledges with "non binding intent" as special cases which are distinctly not actual pledges.

Tatyana Leifman

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/313904#Comment_313904

That works but if one's RE is integrated with FE, the gift subtype might have to be mapped to the GL too otherwise a pledge payment will get pushed without a pledge already in the system to match it to. Or the gift from the DAF will have to be entered as cash gift and the pledge zeroed out with a note that it was fulfilled.

Christina Mohler

I have used gift subtype for doing this and have found it to be an easy way to separate out these types of pledges. Yes, you do have to keep in mind the post/not post field if you are connected to FE or exporting to another GL system. And, yes, you do have to exclude those gifts at times depending on the reporting.

I'm curious what kind of reporting that you need where you wouldn't be able to exclude with a gift subtype query/filter. Do you have a specific example?

Allan Delmare

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/313906#Comment_313906

Nope - subtype works perfectly! It gets a little complicated, but I've got it sorted out.

if pledge subtype = normal, then count pledge as commitment and exclude pledge payments from commitment report.

if pledge subtype = non-binding intent, then count pledge payment as commitment, and exclude the pledge from commitment report.

Example of a normal pledge:

Example of pledge where 'gift subtype= non-binding intent' :

Carlene Johnson

I discussed this at length in a comment on another post. Check it out here to see if it is helpful!

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/308677#Comment_308677

Amber Salvage

Our finance department doesn't count pledges as revenue, they are already considered non-binding because they are conditional pledges. Also any pledges under a certain amount are not posted to the Financial system. Really the only exception are foundation and corporate grants that are awarded and have a proposal budget.