How do you handle Sustaining Gifts in TeamRaiser?

Hi Katie,

This is a great question! What I've typically seen is that orgs will offer sustaining but have a duration to choose from. So it is basically a pledge where the donor can commit to $20/month for 10 months for instance to donate $200 to a participant instead of having to come up with $200 right then. Kind of a payment plan of sort. Doing it this way sets a definitive amount raised by the participant once all the monthly transactions are processed. Also, you don't really want to try to keep up with a sustaining gift that is being credited to an event a couple years ago. If you provide a duration then it has an end date for that commitment. Then it opens the door to ask the supporter to become a monthly donor with a non-event-specific gift.

Hope this help,

Kent

Katie Schweitzer:
Hey Kent,



That's what I'm struggling with right now - What happens when a sustaining donor comes in close to the close (<--yeah, I just typed that) of the TeamRaiser cycle? That presents a tough predicament when trying to finalize the donations for that specific TeamRaiser.



Here's an example for Spring Walks. Let's say someone makes a gift of $20/month in April 2014. That will start getting applied to the 2014 TeamRaisers, but if it's for 12 months (or even 10 months) it'll be scheduled to go through February - April 2015. Since the 2015 TeamRaisers go live....August-ish, one would assume that the participant would want those dollars to come into the 2015 TeamRaiser. And then if you change even just ONE of the soft credits on the sustaining gift, they ALL change. Even if they don't want us to move it, we can't technically get final numbers ON that TeamRaiser, unless you suggest we extrapolate and predict. But what if they cancel the sustaining after 3 or 4 months, and we're left with 6-9 months of predicted-but-not-collected revenue??



Is this making your head spin, like it is mine?





Katie Walters Schweitzer

Manager, Training and Marketing

________________________________________________

The ALS Association

office 407.674.6554 | fax 312.932.1144

kschweitzer@alsa-national.org | www.alsa.org/walk<>

Lol.... You're making perfect sense. That's why I would create a specific duration like 6 or 8 months. That way they don't go too long and run into the next annual event. But there's no way to avoid your soft-credit issue. It's an "all or nothing" change to them as you've painfully discovered. The only thing you can do in that instance is cancel the existing one and ask them to commit to another one for the current event. But I think if you'll set a duration for 6 or 8 months then it will still provide the supporter the convenience of a payment plan but then help you keep the books straight for each event.

Kent