Entering Planned Gifts HELP!!

Options
Danny Levy
Danny Levy ✭
Eighth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Novice here in the area of entering Planned Gifts. We felt we should finally be using this aspect of RE and properly enter and track the Planned Gifts we have.  We had some gifts input in 2016, nothing since.  My initial question is say for some one with a Life Insurance gift to us, I get the initial Planned Gift entry, with the value of the insurance.  How do you handle the annual premium payments that come after, as we would like these reflected in the donors record as well.  I was thinking entering as a new Planned Gift, but with a different appeal "Life Ins Premium".  So I could differentiate? 


Second question is what is your best practice for an Endowment Planned Gift entry? I can see where you enter the initial, with what every dollar amount they are providing to establish the fund.  Then what do you do with any future contributions to the fund?  Enter and apply to original gift?  This won't mess up any report pulling, just show the increase corpus of the fund?  Or default to thought above in creating a secondary appeal "Endowment Infusion"?


Any thoughts will be gladly appreciated.  Thank you. 


Danny
Tagged:

Comments

  • Art Bryman 2
    Art Bryman 2 ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    "Planned Gifts" in RE are used a little different from other types. 
    • You can add "Total Realized" as a column to gift view
    • You can't link external gifts (from other donors) to the planned gift as income.
    • There's no concept of "balance" for a planned gift.   
      • The total of the realized gifts can exceed the planned gift amount, and there'll be no problem. 
    • Reporting can get difficult. 
      • You can't filter out planned gifts with realized income vs. planned gifts with no income. 
      • Let's say I want to do a budgeting report, and look at cash, pledge, and planned gifts.  I can't add criteria for "Exclude cash gifts linked to planned gifts".  Then, I end up seeing both gifts in report - and double-counting. 
    RE wasn't designed with Endowment tracking in mind, so a better solution for your question might be to utilize the Projects Grants Endowments module in FE (if you use FE).   

    If you really want to use RE, however, I'll throw out a crazy suggestion: set the planned gift to $0.  Then, add the initial endowment contribution, and all of the subsequent contributions, as Cash gifts linked to the planned gift.  Then, you can include the planned gift in your reports (so you know there's one).  And you can query on gifts linked to a planned gift, if you want to single them out.  In exports, you would use "Total Realized" to see the running total for the endowment corpus.  If you really want to get detailed about initial vs infusion, appeal is one of the many options to track this. If the "infusion" requires special treatment on the GL side, however, I would suggest using Gift Subtype instead.


    Sorry for the rambling, but a planned gift caused me some headaches, so I'm in planned gift investigation mode.
  • Danny Levy
    Danny Levy ✭
    Eighth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Wow!  That was a ways back.  You answer makes sense and i'm sure will help.  Now I have to go back are reread what I was asking! Thanks.  
  • Nate Laning
    Nate Laning ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Name Dropper Photogenic
    I ran across this post as I'm looking to learn more about tracking planned gifts in RE. Although we've had RE for many years, we just added the planned giving module. I'm curious if either of you have run across a good resource for learning how to use the module appropriately? Like you Danny, I'm also a novice in the area of planned gifts. Thanks in advance.
  • Tom Klimchak
    Tom Klimchak ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Totally agree with everything Arthur Bryman BCREPRO‍ said: Planned Gifts will definitely give you headaches, and sometimes in ways you can't even begin to predict .  I have had more than my share of angry rants/complaints on these community boards about how planned gifts are handled in Raiser's Edge (hint: poorly)....


    At the heart of the problem is the fact that Planned Gifts are almost always a type of "Pledge" but when you receive a payment (bequest, annuity, etc) you have to enter that transaction as  Gift/Outright Cash items which links to the Planned Gift record as a realized payment.


    In my mind this is a Pledge being paid off (realized) by a Cash Gift.  And that makes it really easy to double-count if you're not careful.  So in most cases when you're counting Committed money (Pledges + Gifts) you have to purpose exclude any Cash Gifts linked to a Planned Gift.  And while queries and database views allow you to do that some parts of NXT still don't.  


    A few years ago we went through our 40 year giving history and properly entered everything into the Planned Gift module.  It sparked a lot of discussion (and a lot of grumbling) but it DID help us all understand the nature of Planned Gifts a lot more.  And we can now produce a quick report that shows approximate future cash flow from our bequests for the next 20 years... That was one of the first things our new president asked for, so it was a worthwhile endeavor...


     

Categories