Question about best practice concerning pledge payments

Diana Beutelmann
Diana Beutelmann
Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

I am new to an organization and just found a pledge that still has a balance from 2023. After researching, I think I figured out that the donor paid the pledge by check. The gift was then zeroed out, which brought the balance on the pledge back to it's original amount. A new check was sent later for the pledge, but when the new check was entered it was not applied to the pledge. Therefore, the pledge is still showing as unpaid. I no longer have the option of applying the pledge payment to the pledge. Is my best option to write off the pledge?

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Best Answers

  • Chandra Oliphant
    Chandra Oliphant
    Third Anniversary First Reply Kudos 1 Name Dropper
    Answer ✓

    I agree with JoAnn as our best practice is pledge adjustment. In our department, a write-off is used for a pledge that did not get paid for some reason by the constituent. In your scenario, it seems the constituent paid the pledge but the payment wasn't applied correctly.

Answers

  • Sara Niemiec
    Sara Niemiec Community All-Star
    Kudos 4 Second Anniversary 2026 Spring PUB Raiser's Edge NXT March 2026 Challenge: Answered Questions

    @Diana Beutelmann, if I were in your shoes, yes, I would write off the pledge balance. Additionally, I'd probably add a note to either the constituent's Notes tab explaining what I did or the Reference text box.

  • Diana Beutelmann
    Diana Beutelmann
    Facilitator 1

    Thank you. I thought that might be my best option, but wanted to double check.

  • Faith Murray
    Faith Murray Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 April 2026 Monthly Challenge First Reply

    I agree with the others that a pledge adjustment is probably your best bet as far as bookkeeping purposes. However, there are some downsides, and I must ask why you no longer have the option to apply the payment to the pledge? Understandably, it is trickier to adjust gifts from a closed-out fiscal year; however, our office has allowed us to do so when we assign a current fiscal year post date to the adjusted payment. In our case, I would probably adjust the incorrectly recorded payment to $0, and then re-enter the gift with a former year gift date but a current year post date.

    There are times when one method is better than another. If this is a smaller-level donor, or an inactive or deceased donor, then adjusting the pledge down is the easiest and most hassle-free solution. However, if this is a major pledge, or the largest pledge of the donor's history, then it can create unwanted giving summary impacts to adjust down the pledge. For example, a donor who believes he made a $100K pledge, who then looks for a copy of his giving history (or looks it up in the Portal) and sees only a $50K pledge, will be confused and somewhat unhappy. If the pledge is still open and your auditors independently verify pledge totals with your larger donors, this can also lead to confusion. Moreover, depending on how you pull prospecting reports and recognition summaries, it may negatively affect the donor's next campaign ask amount, largest gift tier, or recognition level for that year. So, the method of fixing requires looking at the long-term needs for stewarding that donor.

  • Sunshine Reinken Watson
    Sunshine Reinken Watson Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 April 2026 Monthly Challenge First Reply

    You might be able to unpost the gift to apply it to the pledge. I'm not sure if this can be done if you use FE NXT.

    • If the gift is posted, you can use the Unpost gift plug-in, apply it to the pledge, then repost.
    • If there are adjustments on the gift, you may not be able to apply it. In those cases, I carefully document the adjustments (check all the tabs and save screenshots), delete them, apply the gift to the pledge, then add the adjustments back to the gift, noting they were removed and added again.
  • Tatyana Leifman
    Tatyana Leifman
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper
    https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/313464#Comment_313464

    We are integrated with FE which has been mostly NXT/web based for a couple of years now and I have successfully unposted gifts in dbv using the plug in and reposted them.

    I will add that if the OP is integrated with FE, they should consult with Finance to determine whether the reposted gift should be pushed to FE or just marked posted in RE. Finance may have already made their own journal entries to account for the issue.

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