Anyone Tracking Multiyear Pledge Programs in Membership Module?

James McLain

We have a 5 year pledge program (1K-10K annually) that we would like to manage better in RE. Looking at using the membership module and wondered if others can share their experience? From what I can tell not quite a perfect fit for reporting.

JoAnn Strommen

What are your issues/needs that you are looking at membership for tracking pledges/donations?

James McLain

The big issue is that while memberships are lapsed at the end of their specified period (and the hard-wired standing sorting pulls them into reports), 5-year pledges can be lapsed after a year or so (sooner if the donor is on a monthly installment that stops coming in), long before the pledge period ends.


Other related situation comes up when donors take 6 or 7 years to complete their 5-year pledge commitment. Looks like I can just tweak the end date but not sure how that plays out.

Pledge extensions happen a lot; these eventually would be renewals. Again looks like I would just add alter the membership end date.


Guess what I am finding is that while the Membership module will do nicely in keeping track of pledge sociuety members, it does not make any of the usual pledge tracking headaches any easier.


Hoping someone who uses the module for m,ulti-year pledges can share some general tips from their experience.

Michelle Kolak

James McLain:

The big issue is that while memberships are lapsed at the end of their specified period (and the hard-wired standing sorting pulls them into reports), 5-year pledges can be lapsed after a year or so (sooner if the donor is on a monthly installment that stops coming in), long before the pledge period ends.


Other related situation comes up when donors take 6 or 7 years to complete their 5-year pledge commitment. Looks like I can just tweak the end date but not sure how that plays out.

Pledge extensions happen a lot; these eventually would be renewals. Again looks like I would just add alter the membership end date.


Guess what I am finding is that while the Membership module will do nicely in keeping track of pledge sociuety members, it does not make any of the usual pledge tracking headaches any easier.


Hoping someone who uses the module for m,ulti-year pledges can share some general tips from their experience.

We used the membership module in the past for our giving society when we had one and it worked out great.  I used the Category and Subcategory fields to segment the different types of members.  I then created several Crystal Reports to audit the Memberships.  One of the reports looked at the lapsed date and calculated those that were up for renewal in 1-30 days, 31-60 days and lapsed broken out into several date ranges. It showed the last gift date on the constituent record just in case the membership wasn't updated properly.

A popular report I wrote showed current members with FY giving for the last two years, how many years they had been a member, and Capacity.  You could also run it for dropped members to see if they needed some special handling to get them back as donors.