Multi Year Pledges

Options
Elysha Kensinger
Elysha Kensinger ✭
Ninth Anniversary
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Our organization wanted to find out how others are coding multi-year pledges.  How do you make it clear which year the money is being raised for, for accurate reporting for Finance teams.  Is there a specific place you code this information in Gifts - Campaign or Appeal?


Thank you!
Tagged:

Comments

  • Joanne Felci 2
    Joanne Felci 2 ✭
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Elysha Kensinger:

    Our organization wanted to find out how others are coding multi-year pledges.  How do you make it clear which year the money is being raised for, for accurate reporting for Finance teams.  Is there a specific place you code this information in Gifts - Campaign or Appeal?


    Thank you!

    Hi Elysha,

    For finance reporting we have the pay-cash gift that would use the gift date to indicate when the cash actually came in. We would change the campaign to reflect the correct fiscal year, but any appeal or fund would stay the same.

    Joanne

  • Stephanie Crawley
    Stephanie Crawley ✭
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Elysha Kensinger:

    Our organization wanted to find out how others are coding multi-year pledges.  How do you make it clear which year the money is being raised for, for accurate reporting for Finance teams.  Is there a specific place you code this information in Gifts - Campaign or Appeal?


    Thank you!

    I've seen this done a couple of different ways.  One way is that you create an Appeal for each year, and then enter separate pledges for each Appeal, but all with the same gift date and GL date.  Like 3 pledges, with AppealA, AppealB and AppealC, respectively, but all entered with gift date and GL date of today, but with installment date on each pledge for the future years expected.  I have found that one to be easy to enter on the front-end, but difficult to pick up for reports especially in later years.  Another way is to enter as one Pledge on the current Appeal, with multiple annual installments on that single pledge.  This to me is easier to report on in subsequent years, and just use installment date to report on to show when that money is expected, using Cash Flow reporting.

  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    All of our capital campaigns have had multi-year pledges. Other than that they are placed in the correct fund and payment schedule is selected, I can't think of anything that is different than any other pledge. The fund in our structure shows for what the money is being raised. Our campaign/fund/appeal structure is such that campaign for all the capital projects is 'capital.; Then each building project (campaign) has a unique fund. Appeals are used when apporpriate.


    If this is new for your org, you may want to visit with your finance office. For finance, pledges are reported on as short-term receivable or long-term receivable in their reports. We do not use split gifts as that can mess up RE reports especially for multi-year pledges.


    With our current capital campaign, it has included an ask for 5 year pledges to our annual fund. Those pledges are entered as separate pledges to the appropropriate fund for that year. Our structure is a separate fund for each year as the asks and money for each year overlap and that is the cleanest way for us to pull data.

     
  • Lauren Short
    Lauren Short ✭
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    We have used the highlighted approach AND changed the campaing as well. So we have:


    2017 Campaign, CAMPAIGN FUND, 2017 Appeal

    2018 Campaign, CAMPAIGN FUND, 2018 Appeal


    This seems to alleviate reporting challenges!

    One way is that you create an Appeal for each year, and then enter separate pledges for each Appeal, but all with the same gift date and GL date.  Like 3 pledges, with AppealA, AppealB and AppealC, respectively, but all entered with gift date and GL date of today, but with installment date on each pledge for the future years expected.  I have found that one to be easy to enter on the front-end, but difficult to pick up for reports especially in later years.  Another way is to enter as one Pledge on the current Appeal, with multiple annual installments on that single pledge.  This to me is easier to report on in subsequent years, and just use installment date to report on to show when that money is expected, using Cash Flow reporting.

     

     

  • Heather MacKenzie
    Heather MacKenzie ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Elysha Kensinger:

    Our organization wanted to find out how others are coding multi-year pledges.  How do you make it clear which year the money is being raised for, for accurate reporting for Finance teams.  Is there a specific place you code this information in Gifts - Campaign or Appeal?


    Thank you!

    Perhaps I'm missing something here, but why isn't the year that the money is being raised for the year that the pledge is made to you?  Why does what year you receive it in matter?  Our view is that a $100 pledge made to us in 2017 is all 2017's money as far as when we raised it is.  The fact that we only received the first payment of $25 in 2017 does not affect how we view this at my org.  It only affects how much money we have to spend on that cause in what year.

Categories