Managing United Way donors

Tenika Thompson

I am hoping someone has similar issues with trying to figure out the best way to manage UW donors. So here goes...

Every year we apply for a grant from UW and are awarded funding. The distributions are monthly. However we do not get the names of the donors with each distribution. Instead we get a yearly report yearly UW detailing who the donors are and how much they have given for the year. Herein lies the issue...How best to enter/manage how much the donor has given. 


(Side note...I am new to this organization and prior to me they were not entering donors into the database or if consistently.  Yikes...eeeeek. Yes! 


My thoughts....

1) It is a Pledge, so it should be entered as one

2) I can soft credit ...but its gets messy and dicey after that, because the donors (there are hundreds mind you..... and their total giving would have to be broken down and divided by 12 to get the monthly amount to soft credit. 


Can anyone think of another way this can be done...or is this the best solution for this situation?. 


Help!

Dariel Dixon 2

This is complex.  UW is notoriously slow with disbursements.  It also depends on what information you want to capture.  It also depends on how your organization wants to steward the UW donors.


My organization actually stopped entering these soft credits for a variety of reasons.  We found that it caused more problems than solutions for cumulative giving totals, especially since they were not technically our donors.  The reporting from UW also left much to be desired.

Tenika Thompson

Yes it is complex. I will say that we get disbursements every month without fail via ACH deposit. It is a yearly grant.

We want to capture as much info as we can, even if we are only get the first and last name we enter it to at least be able to make the connection that they give thru UW. 


Hopefully I can figure out the best way to handle this other than what I think has to happen.

Christine Cooke 2

UW is a complicated thing.  A couple things here to keep in mind.  Every branch of the UW has a different distribution schedule and a possibly a different FY that does affect when you see contributions and how long they take to roll out pledge payments.  Some are 12 months and some are 18 or even a few are 24 month distribution schedules.  So don't assume it's 12 until you get confirmation from the UW branch(es) you are dealing with.  Secondly, UW is annoying as far as notification of donors, so I would try and contact them directly and see if you can find out at the time of or ahead of the pledges who the individual donors are.  Even if that is like other orgs where they give you a website where you can download a report.  


Yes, I would put them in as pledges if it is a pledge, but not if you do not find that out until the end  and cannot find out the distribution schedule I would not recommend entering a pledge because then you will have all of these outstanding pledges at the end of YOUR fiscal year with absolutely no knowledge of whether they will ever be fulfilled.


Every database I've worked in has had a record name Anonymous.  If you have contributions with no name I would put those there.  The ones that have a name, I would make a record and add the info you are given, email, employer, address whatever it may be.  I agree that soft crediting is sticky and makes reporting sticky.  If you can, hard credit folks or not at all.  When I did experience an org with a huge volume of UW they had established a record Anonymous United Way in addition to the regular Anonymous record.  Which was nice, because it kept all the UW crazy contained sort of.

Chris Nungesser

Hi Tenika Thompson‍,


That's a good question. I agree with Christine and Dariel that United Way can be complicated. I also agree with Christine that these are not pledges. There are just several factors that make me not want to put them in as pledges:

• The payout schedule can change based on when United Way receives the money. We may have a sense of when we'll receive funds, but, ultimately, we can't say for sure. This makes setting up an installment schedule tricky. That affects our cash flow reports.
• Our United Way takes out some processing fees... unless the donor or company (I'm not quite sure who) covers those fees. So for some people, we receive the full "pledged" amount and for others we receive an amount that's a little less than the "pledged" amount.
• Say the gift is a payroll deduction, but the person leaves the company halfway through the year. Then we'd have a pledge that won't be fulfilled and would need to be written off. 

When a disbursement comes in, the gift goes on our local United Way's constituent record as a Cash gift. We use a package to note that the gift came in as a result of United Way's fundraising effort.


Via a United Way website, we get access to a file at the beginning of the campaign year that informs us of the pledges people have made. This sounds like it might be similar to the report you described. Through that same website, we'll also get access to a file with each disbursement that shows the details of that disbursement. You may want to double-check with United Way just to be sure you don't/can't have access to that type of information. (Tell them to get their act together! LOL). Using that disbursement report, I'll enter the gift on United Way's record, as I mentioned above. And then if I have a name and enough contact information to tie the donation to a constituent, then I'll soft credit that donor for the portion of the disbursement they're responsible for. They don't need the hard credit because the money is coming from United Way and the donor has already received the tax benefit.


We want to thank the donor when we can. Want to make them feel excited about the gift they've made/are making. So we do try to soft credit and acknowledge when possible. (Which is why United Way should give you access to that info. Help you help them continue to make people want to participate in their program).


Hope something here helps you. It sounds like you're definitely asking the right questions. Keep at it. Good luck.


Chris

Katherine Fritz

United Way - argh! Such a mess to try to track in a way that satisfies both ends of the spectrum!  In a previous life, I finally gave up on trying to soft-credit from the mega-huge United Way from which we got thousands of dollars from hundreds of donors, whose notification to us came at the conclusion of their annual workplace campaign but before they started doling out the money.  In a fit of desperation, I imported all the data into RE (using Importomatic) but classified the gift type as Other, rather than Cash or Pledge - then EXCLUDED Other from all revenue reports. This had the advantage of keeping donors United Way giving intact on their records (which they already thought we were doing) in order to recognize as part of their lifetime giving, while not being double-counted in our revenue reports when we recorded UW income arriving in chunks for the following 12-18-month collection cycle.  Hope that's as clear upon reading as it is in my head!


cheers,

Katie Fritz

ALS Hope Foundation