Let's talk about split gifts (warning: rant follows)
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Does anyone have any solutions for dealing with the incredibly poor way that split gifts are implemented in RE?
Let's discuss the ways in which the implementation is bad:
1. Split pledges don't have a campaign/fund/appeal on the installments -- only an amount and date. This means that, say you're in a campaign, and one of your donors says, I'll make a campaign commitment of $5M total over five years. $1M will be for my annual unrestricted commitment over the five years. $3M will be for capital projects, and the remaining $1M for endowment -- but pay off the capital portion first.
How do you record that pledge? If you have three different pledges, then you don't have one record for the full $5M pledge. If you split it, you have to record somewhere how it's being paid off, and apply the amounts manually.
2. Split gifts export out of RE poorly. Say the person above makes their first $1M payment -- that's $200K for operations and $800K for capital - both are separate funds and campaigns, and you split the payment. You think, I will report on the campaign split amount and all will be well. But you export the gift, and it comes out:
$200K - Ops Campaign - Ops Fund
$200K - Ops Campaign - Capital Fund
$800K - Capital Campaign - Ops Fund
$800K - Capital Campaign - Capital Fund
If you are exporting to Excel and you don't know to accommodate for this, you will end up reporting on $2M instead of the $1M they actually paid.
I would love to hear anyone's explanation as to why this happens. Theorizing from other users is welcome.
I mean, I wrote a SQL statement that pullls this same information correctly in about 10 minutes, and it only took that long because I'm not that great at SQL.
What it comes down to is this: a lot of organizations, when they start a campaign for instance, look to get people to commit a pledge to the campaign, whether or not the specific purpose of their gift is decided. And there's no good way to track these in RE -- and even if you do use the limited functionality provided by RE, reporting on it becomes a mess very quickly because of how the data exports.
Anyone? Anyone? I've had it about up to here with this stuff.
Let's discuss the ways in which the implementation is bad:
1. Split pledges don't have a campaign/fund/appeal on the installments -- only an amount and date. This means that, say you're in a campaign, and one of your donors says, I'll make a campaign commitment of $5M total over five years. $1M will be for my annual unrestricted commitment over the five years. $3M will be for capital projects, and the remaining $1M for endowment -- but pay off the capital portion first.
How do you record that pledge? If you have three different pledges, then you don't have one record for the full $5M pledge. If you split it, you have to record somewhere how it's being paid off, and apply the amounts manually.
2. Split gifts export out of RE poorly. Say the person above makes their first $1M payment -- that's $200K for operations and $800K for capital - both are separate funds and campaigns, and you split the payment. You think, I will report on the campaign split amount and all will be well. But you export the gift, and it comes out:
$200K - Ops Campaign - Ops Fund
$200K - Ops Campaign - Capital Fund
$800K - Capital Campaign - Ops Fund
$800K - Capital Campaign - Capital Fund
If you are exporting to Excel and you don't know to accommodate for this, you will end up reporting on $2M instead of the $1M they actually paid.
I would love to hear anyone's explanation as to why this happens. Theorizing from other users is welcome.
I mean, I wrote a SQL statement that pullls this same information correctly in about 10 minutes, and it only took that long because I'm not that great at SQL.
What it comes down to is this: a lot of organizations, when they start a campaign for instance, look to get people to commit a pledge to the campaign, whether or not the specific purpose of their gift is decided. And there's no good way to track these in RE -- and even if you do use the limited functionality provided by RE, reporting on it becomes a mess very quickly because of how the data exports.
Anyone? Anyone? I've had it about up to here with this stuff.
Tagged:
7
Comments
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P.S. I'm going to post a similar version of this rant on the FUNDSVCS listserv and will report back any advice from people over there.0
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I'll be happy to hear any solutions to this problem. I got fed up with split gifts long ago and enter those gifts and pledges separately. My finance office prefers this because they too don't like split gifts in FInancial Edge either. Reports in RE and Dashboards also don't work well with split gifts.
Thanks for this post!3 -
Now I'm wishing I knew how to write SQL.
After a few experiences of skewed reports, we quit using split gifts. Per Blackbaud support it is working just how it's designed to work. Duh. But it's not designed how many users would like it to work. Reports get messed up. Pledge balance reports get messed up. Applying payments to one fund is a mess. Etc., Etc.
As we're heading into a campaign with donors making gifts to capital, annual campaign and endowment as part of the campaign I'm already composing my reasons why it will have to be recorded as 3 pledges instead of 1. Hadn't even thought about how it affects accounting/FE as we quit splitting gifts. Just added this to my "How does your software handle this" list when we start officially looking at other software options.1 -
JoAnn Strommen:
Now I'm wishing I knew how to write SQL.
After a few experiences of skewed reports, we quit using split gifts. Per Blackbaud support it is working just how it's designed to work. Duh. But it's not designed how many users would like it to work. Reports get messed up. Pledge balance reports get messed up. Applying payments to one fund is a mess. Etc., Etc.
As we're heading into a campaign with donors making gifts to capital, annual campaign and endowment as part of the campaign I'm already composing my reasons why it will have to be recorded as 3 pledges instead of 1. Hadn't even thought about how it affects accounting/FE as we quit splitting gifts. Just added this to my "How does your software handle this" list when we start officially looking at other software options.Oh you should learn SQL, it's totally fun. And it's interesting to dig into how RE is structured -- they don't offer a ton of support for that kind of work, though, so I end up being kind of uncertain that what I'm doing is correct and very wary to try and roll out any production reports.
And I'm un-splitting the few split gifts that we have in the system, just as soon as I get the permissions/training I need to do gift adjustments.
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I am currently training a new staffer for gift entry, and going forward we are training to not do split gifts. I will enter each "split" as a separate gift now - the reporting is a nightmare. At the end of the year, we do a balancing with finance and we have to manually remember to pull out split gifts so that the reports make sense. Which is fun trying to explain when there is an auditor in-house looking over your shoulder. Sigh.
I will check out SQL, but for now, our org policy will be to avoid using split gifts.
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I enter each line item in batch with a note in gift the reference that this split gift with check # . Because I've tired it the other way and had the same problems in reporting. This however keeps it clean.0
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We don't do split gifts either. I had the "Aha!" moment when working in another software (not RE) that absolutely could not/would not do split gifts. Each portion was entered seperately. I realized at that moment it is not a battle worth fighting anymore when the competitors of RE won't even do it/allow it. Since then I just keep them seperate. Not worth the headache. Good luck!0
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Export of split gifts is poorly designed, making accurate custom eporting almost impossible. Put some votes on this to help bring the problem to the attention of the developers: http://rediscovery.uservoice.com/forums/137015-raiser-s-edge-discovery-topics/suggestions/5948452-gift-export-split-gift-fund-campaign-appeal-as-on1
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I'm with all the non-splitters who have answered. It is utterly pointless to try and chase that function around. We can always look at the whole giving history of the constituent (as we do when we add them to the President's Circle or send them the Annual Summary in January), but when we want to know what's been donated to a campaign or a fund or through an appeal, a split gift is useless. My fabulous trainer/consultant got me off of those. We also did away with recurring gifts (but have brought them back) and with most soft credits (the majority are not really "soft credit" gifts, they are pass-throughs and we have created a system for that). After all the system has to work for you and your reporting. My boss always says look at what you want/need to report first, then decide what goes where in the database.
I'm interested in the discussion about using SQL - can't you get what you want out of Query? What's missing that you need to run it through SQL?0 -
+1 for non-splitting here. I also am writing our data entry procedures with "the end" in mind. Essentially asking myself, what will this look like on a report?0
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I abandoned this process awhile ago because of how split gifts show up in reports and queries, plus my Finance Department staff asked me not to use split gift because it skews the GL distribution report. I usually just enter gift separately for each Fund or Appeal.0
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Sounds like you're exporting from query -- because of how RE exports splits, for some purposes I have to export gifts from query instead of export. I throw in gift import ID and use conditional formatting to find duplicates.
When you export fro Export -- you get the gift on one row, but the split in one cell. So amount "$100", fund "acb: xyz" and then you have to look up how the gift split up. Depending on just how I'm looking at these number, this is a HUGE pain.1 -
There is spot somewhere where users can 'vote' on changes, but with the new community I have no idea how to find it. Just thinking if so many of us are hating the split gifts, it may be time to go vote on some changes. Does anyone have that link handy?0
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I think it's all still on the discovery page0
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The link to the discovery page just takes one to the new discovery topics. I've been thinking the same thing - that if so many users are not satisfied with programming for split gifts that all the comments/issues need to be logged in one place. If one searches for 'split gifts' on the discovery pages it brings up hundreds - some relevant, some not. I would sure like to see a topic of "Split gifts/Split gift issues" and then instead of everyone posting and voting for their own issue, users can comment and vote for one post. WIth thousands of posts before 7.94 release and all the new ones that has generated, there's not really much chance of all being read by users or addressed by BB, in my opinion.2
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yep. I tried to find a specific post, but so many came up. The discovery page has gotten a little out of hand. So many duplicate or just confusing suggestions. Someone really needs to spend some time cleaning it up and merging posts or just clarifying what the suggestion is. And maybe even connect it with the KB so that before posting they can see if there is already a solution.
I have a similar issue is the BBNC idea bank. So many of the top issues are just ignored. And if you have an issue with BBNC and RE where does it go? Each group says it's a problem that lives with the other. Between the two, it just makes me wonder what all the voting is for is many of the highest ranking issues are not being addressed.0 -
Also, let me add that split pledges are a problem when the donor pays their pledges through BBNC. Since there's no "Pledge Payment" BBNC part, it's done through a donation part linked to a transaction manager part - but the payments don't have the campaign or the appeal, that was part of the split. If a fund has a default campaign or appeal, those do show up within a BBNC gift batch. In our case, however, I have to manually adjust the splits in the batch, if there's more than one campaign or appeal for a given fund.0
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James Andrews:
Does anyone have any solutions for dealing with the incredibly poor way that split gifts are implemented in RE?
Let's discuss the ways in which the implementation is bad:
1. Split pledges don't have a campaign/fund/appeal on the installments -- only an amount and date. This means that, say you're in a campaign, and one of your donors says, I'll make a campaign commitment of $5M total over five years. $1M will be for my annual unrestricted commitment over the five years. $3M will be for capital projects, and the remaining $1M for endowment -- but pay off the capital portion first.
How do you record that pledge? If you have three different pledges, then you don't have one record for the full $5M pledge. If you split it, you have to record somewhere how it's being paid off, and apply the amounts manually.
2. Split gifts export out of RE poorly. Say the person above makes their first $1M payment -- that's $200K for operations and $800K for capital - both are separate funds and campaigns, and you split the payment. You think, I will report on the campaign split amount and all will be well. But you export the gift, and it comes out:
$200K - Ops Campaign - Ops Fund
$200K - Ops Campaign - Capital Fund
$800K - Capital Campaign - Ops Fund
$800K - Capital Campaign - Capital Fund
If you are exporting to Excel and you don't know to accommodate for this, you will end up reporting on $2M instead of the $1M they actually paid.
I would love to hear anyone's explanation as to why this happens. Theorizing from other users is welcome.
I mean, I wrote a SQL statement that pullls this same information correctly in about 10 minutes, and it only took that long because I'm not that great at SQL.
What it comes down to is this: a lot of organizations, when they start a campaign for instance, look to get people to commit a pledge to the campaign, whether or not the specific purpose of their gift is decided. And there's no good way to track these in RE -- and even if you do use the limited functionality provided by RE, reporting on it becomes a mess very quickly because of how the data exports.
Anyone? Anyone? I've had it about up to here with this stuff.You're absolutely right. We enter split gifts as separate gifts; it's the only way to report out correctly.
1
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