Planned Gifts: does anyone use Opportunities to document Planned Gifts?

Hannah Elias
Hannah Elias
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in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

Hello! I working with my organization to document our process for Planned Gifts. It has become pretty clear that different folks with different perspectives have Thoughts about how to do this, so I am looking for some opinions other RE NXT users on Planned Gifts. Has anyone else used Opportunities to document planned giving rather than the Planned Gift type? How has it worked out for you? Second, how does your organization define "committed" and "uncommitted" when it comes to Planned Gifts?

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  • Joe Moretti
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    We use proposal/opportunities all the time, which Gift officers are required to do and we run reports off of that to see where they are. We do Planned gifts as well, but we ALWAYS use the Planned Gift Type (that should be a must). But our Planned Giving person also creates a proposal/opportunity for Planned Giving and whenever the fits come in, we link that gift to that proposal/opportunity and then close it using the Opportunity/Proposal status. The below is in RE Database View, I hate RE NXT, since it is not a complete and finished product and has many issues. If you have the Planned Giving Module, which it sounds like you do, you should always use Planned Gift type and then when the money eventually comes in, enter it as Cash Gift and we use the appeal Planned Gift, so we can keep track of Planned Gifts that are realized as opposed to the Planned Gift Type, which means it is unrealized. I am not sure what you mean by committed and uncommitted Planned gifts. Planned Gifts are either Unrealized (paper work was sent in and signed by the donor for a certain amount to give when they pass) or Realized (the gift has come in).

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  • Karen Diener
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    I think it helps to remember that Opportunities are a place to primarily store all of the work BEFORE a gift is made, so I think you could definitely use them in that way. By "committed" and "uncommitted", do you mean that they are realized, or are you using those terms to indicate that the donor has confirmed their intention to leave the organization in their estate plans? You could probably handle that with a specific Opportunity status.

  • Laura Neidhold
    Laura Neidhold
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    I have overhauled the way my org tracks planned giving this year in an attempt to get that information out of a spreadsheet and into raiser's edge. We used the planned gift gift type to track this type of gift. In addition, we use a couple of attributes to help track planned gift status (realized or other status and type). We use the opportunity tool only for major gift proposals. $10K+ as that is our major gift threshold.

    While working on building a use guide specific to my organization, I found the Raiser's Edge guide to be very helpful. It still details the workflows in database view, but that is currently where the planned gift module lives. https://help.blackbaud.com/docs/0/assets/guides/re/plangift.pdf

    Happy to share the use guide I created for my org as well. Feel free to email me laura.neidhold@kh.org.

    Raiser's Edge Planned Gift Guide.pdf
  • Delphine Rocher-Lewis
    Delphine Rocher-Lewis Community All-Star
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    Hi Hannah!

    We use Opportunities for Planned giving with a specific "Planned giving" purpose to filter them out if needed. I love it, it's very easy to use and allows fundraisers to be somewhat autonomous with data entry.

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