Apply Recurring Gifts To Pledges

Lisa McCaskill
Lisa McCaskill
Seventh Anniversary Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

A knowledgebase article let me know that recurring gifts cannot be applied to pledges. Anyone have a workaround for this? How to make it so the pledge shows as fulfilled, and do it in a way that will satisfy accounting and audit requirements?

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  • Barbara Kunkel
    Barbara Kunkel
    Kudos 5 Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant

    Hi Lisa, I have discovered the same situation earlier this year. My only workaround is to write off the recurring cash payments in the pledge and make a note on the write-off `to refer to the recurring cash payment. This way anyone reviewing the pledge balance can see a true picture of the pledge balance. I look forward to others answering this question.

  • Aldera Chisholm
    Aldera Chisholm Community All-Star
    Sixth Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge: Data Health #3 First Reply

    Our process isn't ideal, but we enter the Pledge as a Recurring Gift with a set end-date based on the number of months required to pay off the pledge. We have in the past done variants on creating a pledge, and a recurring gift and manually notating the situation but it's confusing. We also ensure to add an action to the donor to contact them to ask if they wish to continue on as a monthly donor - the answer so far has often been yes, which is part of our reason for just doing it as a Recurring gift. We have an appeal type that ensures we see quickly that these gifts are truly pledges not the usual monthly gifts.

  • Carrie Powell
    Carrie Powell
    Kudos 5 Fifth Anniversary Raiser's Edge NXT Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge First Reply

    We were doing what Barbara said, because we do not have a lot of pledges, but I was finding it clunky to have to write off the payments each month. Whenever possible, I canceled the recurring gift and set it up as a pledge (and we removed the recurring gift option from our online donation form for the capital campaign). Although the payments cannot be automated the way recurring gifts are, this has avoided all the write-offs. I also learned that in order to apply a payment to a pledge, I have to select “Other” as the pay type if entering it in a webview batch. Then I have to manually go to the gift record in database view and apply it to the pledge. But that does mean that donors' pledge balances are accurate without having to write the payment amount off. We're closing in on our campaign goal, so this has been manageable, but if we had ongoing campaigns where donors wanted to make pledges, it does involve a lot of manual steps. I do wish Blackbaud would enable pledges to work as seamlessly as recurring gifts.

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