Payroll Deductions - Recurring GIft or Pledge?

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Shawn Cobbs 2
Shawn Cobbs 2 ✭
Sixth Anniversary Photogenic
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
I work for a community college in Illinois and my colleagues asked this question: Should we continue to use pledges to record gifts made through payroll deductions or should we change to recurring gifts?  What are the benefits of using pledges vs recurring gifts?
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  • Ofelia Gomes
    Ofelia Gomes ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
    I use both pledges and recurring gifts. We have donors the do not have a total amount that they want to commit to but want to commit to a biweekly amount of $20 this is were I use recurring gift as a schedule and I do not have to put a pledge on the book that my not be paid off completely. I try to avoid write offs for these types of gifts.
  • Austen Brown
    Austen Brown ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    We utilize Recurring Gifts, unless the employee already has an existing pledge with the organization and they are choosing payroll deductions to pay off their pledge.  I agree with Ofelia Gomes‍ that you should avoid future write offs whenever possible, as there are larger implications for a write off on your organization's financials than ending a recurring gift. 
  • Aaron Rothberg
    Aaron Rothberg ✭
    Eighth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    I guess I break the rules here. I don't use either. I have a recurring gift batch which contains all of our employees enrolled in bi-weekly payroll deductions. I simply run the batch every two weeks and add outright gifts to their records. The downside to this method is that it does not allow me to use any canned reports for gift projections into the future. The upside is that since I reconcile the report I get from Payroll and make any necessary changes before commiting the batch, I never have to deal with write offs or gift status.
  • Shannon Tran
    Shannon Tran ✭
    Sixth Anniversary First Reply
    I agree with Aaron - having a pre-existing batch is what we do - but, the total #s are not huge, and we receive notification of the fist intended deduction and add the record manually as a scheduled recurring gift, then manually into the batch.  I really only need to reconcile the payroll deduction report against the actual batch itself (total # gifts, total $), globally change the gift date and GL postdate, and I'm good to go.  But, you still need to end the gift when employment ceases, or you would have expected recurring payments that are outstanding and could appear as legitimate receivables, depending on the reporting needed.


    PS - If you had a large amount (say, even in the 150-200 range and a lot of adjunct faculty, for example) this method may not be the most efficient for you 
  • Aaron Rothberg
    Aaron Rothberg ✭
    Eighth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Hi Shannon-


    Just to be clear, I skip this step: "...and add the record manually as a scheduled recurring gift"


    If I see an employee has left the organization, I just delete that employee from my batch. This alleviates the need for me to find the recurring-gift pledge to change the status.


     
  • Shannon Tran
    Shannon Tran ✭
    Sixth Anniversary First Reply
    Hi Aaron, thanks for the clarification.  I suppose for us there is more value in being able to report on this, so it's worthwhile to take the extra step on the inbound rather than handling them like outright one-off gifts.  Using the 'recurring batch' methodology is simple bi-weekly, but we need to be on top of starting and ending these 'Active' status gifts as we're verifying the batch - so either way, it's an extra couple of actions...  :)
  • Aaron Rothberg
    Aaron Rothberg ✭
    Eighth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    I hear ya Shannon. We all do things differently and usually for good reason!
  • Sunshine Reinken Watson
    Sunshine Reinken Watson ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    We don't use either. We have 500+ employees donating, and pledges or recurring gifts would be a monster to maintain. I use a recurring batch and add/delete gifts each pay period after comparing a report from payroll with the previous pay period in Excel.
  • Candy Reichert
    Candy Reichert ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    We use recurring gifts, and pledges too, depending on the circumstances.


    On a little bit off topic,  Does anyone use a Donation form to collect Payroll Deduction gift information?

    If so, would you be willing to tell how you have it set up?

    Thanks.
  • Mark Guncheon 2
    Mark Guncheon 2 ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    We don't use a donation form to collect an employee's payroll deduction or PTO donation. We use a common form. Because we are in multiple markets, we set up a form for each based on the differences when dealing with payroll. Information from this form is emailed to our gift processor who creates a pledge and then sends the information off to payroll who lets us know what the final total will be which can then be added to their record. I like this because it's easy to adjust based on what your particular needs are.


     

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