When to create an Opportunity vs a Pledge

Candi O'Hara · August 2023

Does anyone have a working definition as to the best time to create an Opportunity (proposal) vs a Pledge? What is the best practice? Do you only use Pledges for certain gift types? We're looking for the most streamlined process to track proposals and minimize duplicate entry for both Development (pledge) and Finance (gift entry) teams.

Appreciate any insights this community has to offer

Joe Moretti · August 2023

@Candi OHara Proposal/Opportunities are not the same as a pledge, though it could be depending on your organization. In our Organization, a pledge can only be entered into Raiser's Edge if there is a signed LOI. This is required by accounting. A proposal/opportunity does not necessarily relate to a pledge and can be entered as part of your moves program, if you have one.

Lucy Ruiz · August 2023

@Candi OHara We create Opportunity records the moment a prospect comes to our attention or our researcher has found a record. Depending on the size or your org the researcher may create the opportunity record or the development officer.

The pledge is linked to the Opportunity record when a signed gift agreement/sponsorship agreement/reply device or email confirming the terms. Something has been agreed to. Usually in writing but I have worked with orgs where verbal is okay as well.

The details of the pledge e.g. schedule, funds, etc, are summarized as an appendix to the gift agreement. Our donors find this summary helpful. This summary form is sent to gift entry. If the pledge is entered correctly then their should not be any issues with payments. Although if payments are received from different entities that may cause an issue. If Jane Doe makes a donation but the payment comes from Doe Family Foundation or Doe Inc.

JoAnn Strommen · August 2023

@Candi OHara Great answers so far.
To consider: gift entry will be cash (no pledge) or pay-cash (applied to a pledge). I'm thinking you can link gift to Opp fund I think you still will need to have a fund for the gift entry which will auto populate when you apply it to a pledge. If cash gift, you will have to enter fund every time.

Note: we found that linking $25K to Opp will show on the Opp as Amount funded $25K. If there were previous payments, it does not show cumulative amount funded. ?

We enter as noted with signed agreement, a pledge. Trying to figure out best option to keep amount funded accurate on the Opp side.

Candi O'Hara · August 2023

@Lucy Ruiz this is exactly the working definition that I'm looking for, thank you for interpreting and understanding my situation It intrigues me when you mention that “The pledge is linked to the Opportunity record”. Can you functionally explain how-to link an opportunity and a pledge? Perhaps this is may alleviate our internal teams. Thank you!

Faith Murray · August 2023

@Candi OHara, in database view, you would go through “Proposals” and click “Link Gift” to link it to the pledge.

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In database view gift batch, this can be done under the Gifts tab of the batch:

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In webview, I don't see a button for linking through the Opportunity - perhaps another user can answer to that.

Candi O'Hara · September 2023

@Faith Murray thank you so much for your note and screenshots, this is a tremendous help! Enjoy your day ?

Candi O'Hara · September 2023

@Faith Murray one more question occurred to me. By chance have you ever created a custom workflow to create/link an Opportunity and Pledge?

Faith Murray · September 2023

@Candi OHara, I have not, although I think it could be easily done if you had your Workflows set up to include the Opportunity creation process among the Solicitation steps. The tricky part would be setting the conditionals of your timing, since a pledge might be realized at various points in the donor communication process.

We enter gifts in database view, so we use a Business Rule for Opportunities/Proposals. We also use a similar prompt for unrealized Planned Gifts.

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I do not think that Business Rules, at this time, transfer over to webview, however. There is an entry in the Idea Bank, which I encourage everyone to vote for!

Candi O'Hara · September 2023

@Faith Murray thank you again and great insights here! Appreciate your speedy reply too ?

Cherylynn Lumasag · March 2025

@Lucy Ruiz Hi Lucy, thanks for sharing this. We're planning to implement the same process but just have a couple questions that are holding us back.

Wouldn't linking a pledge to an opportunity cause the opportunity to appear as ‘Funded’?
If the pledge is for 5 years, should there be a new opportunity created every year showing the expected pledge payment as it relates to the original opportunity linked to the pledge?
Maybe the bigger questions are — does a pledge constitute a funded opportunity or is the yearly expected pledge payment still an opportunity?

Elizabeth Johnson · August 2025

Wouldn't linking a pledge to an opportunity cause the opportunity to appear as ‘Funded’?
- Yes - we change the opportunity status to stewardship until the pledge is paid in full and fully thanked. (They can have more than one open opportunity at a time)
If the pledge is for 5 years, should there be a new opportunity created every year showing the expected pledge payment as it relates to the original opportunity linked to the pledge?
- We do not do this. You can link the pledge and all the payments to the one opportunity.
Maybe the bigger questions are — does a pledge constitute a funded opportunity or is the yearly expected pledge payment still an opportunity?
- A pledge is funded but the opportunity is not closed until it is paid in full.

@Cherylynn Lumasag hope this is better late than never! I'm researching a linking question I have and came across this :)

DeAnn Acosta · January 26

Do any of you use Opportunities to track capital campaigns? We are considering, but the "ask", "expected" and "funded" fields don't seem to be accurately updating so wondering the usefulness of this over traditional pledges/payments.

I have multiple payments for an opportunity and the gifts are all linked, but the funded field isn't accurate.

Thanks for any insight!

JoAnn Strommen · January 26

We had issues with funded amount, too. Was told that we were not doing something correctly. Didn't figure out what was wrong.

While dev staff do enter as opportunities, we also have created pledges. This also works well for us to send reminders of upcoming due payments.

Elizabeth Johnson · January 26

Yes we use opportunities to track both capital campaigns and annual fund ask amounts (we use the custom fields for the ask string)

Ask and expected have to be updated by users. We figure the expected amount is 40-50% of the ask, although industry standards (to my knowledge) drop to around 33%. If you have enough data you can start to build this on your own stats.

If the pledge is linked then the amount funded will not update with each payment as it should already show the full amount of the pledge.

Echoing what @JoAnn Strommen wrote about the pledges and beauty of the upcoming payments (works better imho from dbv over wv at this time)

When to create an Opportunity vs a Pledge

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