How do you handle Donor Cover online pledge payments that OVERPAY the pledge?

Jimmy Cudzilo
Jimmy Cudzilo
Tenth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

We recently implemented Donor Cover for all of our NXT donation forms, but now we are running into a sticky situation where the gifts are coming in through the NXT view to fulfill pledges booked through the DB view. This isn't an issue when the total amount of the gift + Donor Cover doesn't exceed the outstanding pledge balance. But, when the gift booked into RE (via RE NXT online form) exceeds the outstanding balance, RE DB view doesn't allow me to apply the booked gift to the outstanding pledge.

gasp Is the only option to allow the transaction to manually adjust the transaction amount and then split the Donor Cover amount off to another gift record?

So far, we have been applying the FULL amount brought into RE (donation + Donor Cover) and applied it all toward the outstanding pledge balance. Should we look at splitting all gifts into the “actual gift” and the “donor cover” amount?

We use Campaign, Appeal, and Fund to track every gift, and I'm also wondering if we should look at splitting off the Donor Cover portion to a special campaign since when I pull total giving towards this year's annual fund, the Donor Cover amount will appear. Then when we start setting AG targets for next year, we will end up with strange amounts. How are others handling booking Donor Cover to keep their data "clean"? Also, would prefer NOT to write off pledges when donors are fulfilling them through NXT transactions.

Trying to tap into the hive mind here to see if there is any consensus.

Comments

  • Austen Brown
    Austen Brown Community All-Star
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge: Product Update Briefing Feedback Task 3 bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge

    @Jimmy Cudzilo - I would apply the full amount of the donor's gift to the pledge, if there is overage that is an additional cash gift. I do not recommend doing a pledge write-off for this. It's up to you how you track that additional donation on that actual gift record, I've seen it it done through an attribute or by splitting the gift (I recommend the former). Instead of seeing the odd amounts as ‘dirty data’ I encourage you to see it as it is - additional money to your organization.

    When it comes time to set goals for the next year, continue with your normal process. If you are tagging gift records that have that additional donation that happened to be used to cover fees, you should be able to account for that increase within your modeling.

  • Jimmy Cudzilo
    Jimmy Cudzilo
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    @Austen Brown

    This is what I was thinking of doing. Just so I'm clear:

    • Commit the full amount of the gift (plus Donor Cover) via the RE NXT gift batch.
    • In DB view, calculate the overage between the NXT gift and the outstanding pledge balance.
    • In DB view, adjust the NXT Gift to the outstanding pledge balance, apply that toward the outstanding pledge balance, and create a new gift with the remaining balance from the original NXT gift.

    Did I get that right?

    Are there plans to bring over the ability from DB view batch entry to apply these online payments to pledges with the option to automatically create new gifts from the overage?

    Also, when I have major donors with $1M+ in outstanding capital pledges, making payments of close to $250,000 annually online, should I be concerned about having multi-year pledges paid off early due to Donor Cover being chosen, and future pledge reminders being sent with strange balances due? I'd love to hear from other organizations about how they handle this specific concern. It's just a shift that I need to be able to support so having multiple other institutions supporting this practice is what I'm looking for.

  • Rachel Cavalier
    Rachel Cavalier Community All-Star
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 5 Agents for Good Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing First Reply

    @Jimmy Cudzilo Is adding a pledge for the Donor Cover amount an option? Then you can pay the part that is for donor cover against that, and the actual pledge payment against the actual pledge.

  • Paul Stankus
    Paul Stankus
    First Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    @Jimmy Cudzilo
    I came looking to see if there was a solution to this also. I have found that just saving the gift on the front end and then going into the back end and splitting the gift between the pledge amount and having the left over amount (the donor cover amount) as a separate gift works. But it is not ideal and there won't be a solution when the back end goes away. People obviously aren't going to pledge the random amount that includes donor cover so the gift entry should be more flexible on the front end.

Categories