Best Practices for Conditional Pledge Entry in Raiser's Edge

Patricia Landry

I am hopeful someone can help us. As of this FY, our Fiscal Department has begun to not book pledges that have conditions. Many of the large Foundation and Major Donor pledges we receive are conditional. Meaning there are parts of the pledge that we will not receive unless we complete a report, meet the funder's expectations, etc.


We need to ensure we reconcile with Fiscal, however, we also want to ensure we are reflecting the donor's true intention in Raiser's Edge. I am curious how others have found ways of being able to reconcile with Fiscal and also maintain the donor-centric database of RE.


For example, a Foundation has pledged $465,000 total. The first $365,000 we receive upon signing the contract. So, Fiscal books only that $365,000. To reconcile, we need to have this $365,000 reflected in RE as the pledge. However, the Foundation's full pledge is $465,000 and we want to ensure from a donor-centric perspective and also to ensure we know what we have been fully pledge, the donor's full history, etc. we also want to reflect the $465K


Typically we would enter a pledge of $465,000 and then enter the pledge payment schedule of $365,000 and $100,000. However, in an effort to reconcile, I am trying to figure out how to not only enter the gifts, but also ensure we are then pulling out the correct information. Currently, when trying to reconcile, we would run reports with gift types of: Cash, Pledge, Matching Gift Pay Cash, Other and Recurring Gift Pay Cash. So, I am trying to think this all through with that framework in mind. If we enter the pledge of $465,000 as that is the full pledge amount, we won't reconcile. 


Someone at Blackbaud had mentioned we could maybe use gift attributes, but I am just wondering if anyone has any best practices out there that have worked best for them. From a full on gift entry perspective and then also from a reporting perspective.


Thank you!


all the best,

Patty 

Ryan Hyde

We have a slightly similar situation with some grants we bring in. Our method (and this is less than a year old at this point) is that we have a range of project codes connected to our GOS fund that are set aside for grants that require granular tracking. In RE, I set up special funds for each of these grants, and each one points to the same GOS fund in FE. The only difference is that each RE "fund" has every gift type and subtype associated with a specific project code. The funds are also named after the project codes (e.g. "Grant - 5001"). This makes it easy to identify the grant both in RE and FE.


However, the main reason that we do this is so that expenses can be attributed to the grant easily without restricting it or otherwise keeping those specific dollars separate from the rest of our dollars. But maybe you could utilize this somehow for your purposes?


Or maybe it makes more sense to record these gifts separately, as in have two separate pledges. If you're using proposals to track the whole ask/funding process for these things, then each pledge can be linked to the proposal, and thus each payment will ultimately be linked to it. But you can have the first $365k go to your GOS fund and the additional $100k go to a separate fund set up as above? 


Also, you don't have to post pledges to FE. There are a lot of cases where it doesn't make sense to do so even. So you could officially post the $365 portion of the pledge to FE for accrual, and mark the other $100k pledge as "do not post." Obviously payment on that pledge will still be posted, but the pledge itself is just for your records.


I'm not sure if any of this is useful. It seems like anything you do is going to be a bit messy.

Patricia Landry

Thank you so much, Ryan. This is super helpful!


My one question is how you enter something and not post it, make it as "do not post". We have always posted all of our gifts and pledges and never realized there was an option to not post something. Looking around in the Pledge and Installments and gifts in RE, I am just curious where you would do this?


Thank you again so much for your help!


all the best,

Patty 








Ryan Hyde:

We have a slightly similar situation with some grants we bring in. Our method (and this is less than a year old at this point) is that we have a range of project codes connected to our GOS fund that are set aside for grants that require granular tracking. In RE, I set up special funds for each of these grants, and each one points to the same GOS fund in FE. The only difference is that each RE "fund" has every gift type and subtype associated with a specific project code. The funds are also named after the project codes (e.g. "Grant - 5001"). This makes it easy to identify the grant both in RE and FE.


However, the main reason that we do this is so that expenses can be attributed to the grant easily without restricting it or otherwise keeping those specific dollars separate from the rest of our dollars. But maybe you could utilize this somehow for your purposes?


Or maybe it makes more sense to record these gifts separately, as in have two separate pledges. If you're using proposals to track the whole ask/funding process for these things, then each pledge can be linked to the proposal, and thus each payment will ultimately be linked to it. But you can have the first $365k go to your GOS fund and the additional $100k go to a separate fund set up as above? 


Also, you don't have to post pledges to FE. There are a lot of cases where it doesn't make sense to do so even. So you could officially post the $365 portion of the pledge to FE for accrual, and mark the other $100k pledge as "do not post." Obviously payment on that pledge will still be posted, but the pledge itself is just for your records.


I'm not sure if any of this is useful. It seems like anything you do is going to be a bit messy.

 

Ryan Hyde

I'm glad this was useful for you


Click over to the Miscellaneous tab within a gift and you'll find a field called GL Post Status in the upper right. Change this to Do Not Post. You can also make this field viewable within a batch so that you can manually change the post status right there, if you tend to do these types of things in gift batches.