Giving Societies - Do You Count Gifts-in-Kind? Matching Gifts? Pledges?

I am putting together a donor list for our last campaign and was requested to use all gift types, Soft Credits, MG, Pledge Balances, and Planned Gifts.

I think the nuance with pledges and planned gifts has to do with whether they are revocable, documented, and what your organization's standard fulfillment rate tends to be.

We usually have more than 95% of pledges fulfilled, and certainly all the big pledges, even though we don't require legally binding pledge contracts. Our auditors tell us that is an exceptional success rate. When considering whether to include non-binding pledges in a lifetime total for a giving society, ask yourself what you would do if the donor failed to follow through. Would you quietly take his/her name off the donor rolls? Would you leave the name on, in the hopes of maintaining the relationship and cultivating a future commitment?

This is especially true with planned gifts. Our Planned Giving consultant repeatedly reminds us that only something like 20% of people keep their will beneficiaries the same over the span of their lives. Wills get changed every 5-10 years at least, and most of the time the nonprofit is ignorant of the change. Only if a bequest exists in the form of an irrevocable annuity or trust is the income and amount guaranteed.

We do include stock in lifetime giving, treated the same as cash, but that is because our stock policies involve selling the stock immediately upon receipt. By the time the stock makes it to our Development department for posting in RE, the stock has already been sold and its cash value realized. I'm not sure you would want to include stock in giving totals if your nonprofit retains the stock indefinitely.

We do also include GIK's in our totals, but again that is because of Tom's reasoning: in the case of any significant gift that would matter for society levels, the gift has made a known benefit to our bottom line, and/or it has been evaluated by an independent assessor.

The purpose of Giving Society levels is not to act as a legal tax receipt, but to build relationships for future gift cultivation. If a donated painting values at $10K by an independent assessor, but only at $7k when your org auctions it, what does that really matter? Your donor has still made a generous gesture of support, and by recognizing that support, you open the door for future gifts.

My suggestion is Analytical Reports>Donor Category Report. You can select your dates, gifts, funds etc. Before using the report, you will want to go to Config > Tables and put in your different giving society details/levels.

When running the report, on the Format tab > Detail you can select your donor category table and can run for all or selected categories.

You can view a sample report by clicking link at the bottom of the page after you select Donor Category Report.