Split gifts - pros and cons?

Vanessa Taylor

I would like to get some feedback from other organizations on the pros and cons of using the split gift functionality vs. entering separate gifts. We use them and don't have a lot of problems, but I know a lot of other orgs never use them. Can you help me add to this list/provide specific examples of times when they worked or didn't work for you? Thank you!


Cons:

--Reporting difficulties (can anyone give some specific examples?)

--Can't link just a split amount to a tribute (it's the whole gift or nothing)


Pros:

--More accurate number of total gifts

--More accurate largest gift amounts/major donor qualification

Brianna Soloski 3

At my last organization, when we had gifts that needed to be split among different funds/appeals/what have you, we entered those gifts separately in the batch. So, if we had a $2,000 gift that needed to be split two ways, we'd put $1,000 as one entry and $1,000 as a second entry. We didn't use the split gifts feature on the gift record.

James Andrews

The reporting cons are rough, if you're not reporting off the back end.


The other issue with split gifts, which is at least in part the deal breaker for us, is that you can't define the splits on pledge installments.  If you have a pledge for $1000 split $750 and $250, and maybe you want to pay off the $250 first and the $750 next, there's no way to set that in the installments. You just have to know to do it.


Split gift functionality in RE isn't great - it's poorly implemented, and they should have figured out a way to do it differently or else thought it through more and added a campaign/fund/appeal to the installment table.

John Heizer

A specific example of a reporting problem with split gifts is that RE doesn't let you export split gift data the way it stores the data.  For example, if a gift is split between two different Campaigns and three different Funds you can't get three lines exported to show the split details.  You have to have direct ODBC access to the SQL data to get accurate split information.

Stacy Dominick

con-the thank you letter only pulls one of the gifts, the others have to be manually added

Marguerite Gravois

We rarely use the split feature--it's not worth the limitations in reports.

Tom Klimchak

Unpopular opinion: We like split gifts and use them constantly.  We converted from a system that didn't have them at all and the functionality of split gifts was one of the reasons we originally liked Raiser's Edge.


We have A LOT of event revenue and we process ticket costs into two or three different funds each and every time.  We have found that most of the canned reports work "pretty okay" with split gifts and we can usually export the gift data correctly by using the Fund Split Amount under Fund for exporting.  


Now.... We have recently found that NXT still has some issues with split gifts.  If you make a Gift List with split gifts it counts ALL the money from the gift, not just the money to a specific fund.  


But, generally, we use them for most everything.  We do sometimes avoid using them if we have some strange payment plan on pledges or some other extenuating circumstance, but it's generally pretty rare that we need to use individual gift records like that.

 

Alan French

We also use split gifts and don't really find it an issue. We only ever split a gift between funds, never by appeal or campaign, so we're able to export the correct split amounts without running into the issue that John describes.

Matthew Nareff

We use split gits which I prefer in many respects.  My thinking is that the donor has made one gift they just want it to go to different campaigns and/or funds. 


One drawback if you don't use split gifts is the last gift criteria in queries and exports.  If you have one gift and instead of making it a split gift you just entered each split as a separate gift, pulling any last gift information will not be accurate.  To follow the example used below if you had someone donated $1,000 to split between two funds, $750 and $250, and you enter the $750 and then the $250 as a separate gift then when you pull last gift it's only going to give you $250 and that fund not the $750 and that fund and not the $1,000 with all funds attached.


Also, if you use the mail function in the database view and you have it set to pull letters for each gift you'll end up with two letters to send to that person and not just one for their total donation. 


Because of these two drawbacks you have to keep in mind who might fit into this situation and when you pull last gift info or run a mail function you need to manually update that info.

Brianna Soloski 3

@Matthew Nareff, we just combine letters for split gifts and spell out what each gift is for.


This way, the donor only receives one letter, but can see how their gift was broken out.

Deborah Johnson

We tried using the split gift for about a year, but there were too many issues when it came to reporting gifts accurately, so we no longer split gifts.  We prepare Annual Statements for our Constituents and it was a nightmare trying to provide correct gift amounts for every fund that was in a split gift because the report would show a donation to Fund A as $100 and Fund B as $100, when it was split as Fund A $75 and Fund B $25.  The total gifts amount was doubled in the report as $200 rather than $100.  I found that a lot of my time was taken trying to correct reports to show accurate amounts.

There are also issues with splitting gifts in a Pledge.  You cannot get the split Pledge balance for Fund A, $1000 and Fund B $500, it only provides the whole Pledge balance of  $1,500 for both funds.  It wasn't until a month ago that I found out that RE actually states that 'Split Gifts are only meant to be used with Payments, not Pledges', ref Article 188472 in the Knowledgebase.  As a new customer, I was highly surprised that Blackbaud does not place a higher priority for correcting the split gift issues.

Dariel Dixon 2

These posts are always fun.  I'm certain I've said this before, but it depends on the type of reporting you'll need to do.  I personally think that split gifts are a good option, iff you are aware of how they work in reports, and you use the split amount fields in your queries and exports  (Deborah Johnson‍, it sounds like this is may have been done in some of the reports that were pulled.  We've all been there at some point.)


The answer will be different from organization to organization.  Obviously splitting gifts inflates the number of gifts, but makes fund reporting easier.  It's a poison pill either way.