Lesson 6.3 – Creating and Managing Pledges

Welcome to Lesson 6.3! In FastFund Raising, a pledge represents a donor’s promise to make a future tax-deductible contribution. Tracking these promises is vital for forecasting your organization’s future revenue and managing ongoing donor relationships.

The transaction entry screen for recording pledges is nearly identical to the screen used for recording standard cash donations, meaning there are no complex new procedures to learn. In this lesson, we will explore how to record a pledge, utilize gift splits, and set up a schedule for pledge reminders.

1. Prerequisites for Pledge Processing

Before you can begin recording pledges, you must ensure that your system is properly configured to handle them.

All pledges are recorded as a receivable against a specific Pledge Receivable control account. If you are integrated with FastFund Accounting, this account is created in the accounting system; otherwise, it must be established in your Fund Raising Chart of Accounts.

Additionally, you must have your active Funds, Campaigns, Appeals, and Gifts set up, as well as your Donor Receipt Templates created.

2. Entering a New Pledge

To record a promise to give, you will use the Pledges transaction screen.

Steps to Enter a Pledge:

1. Navigate to Transactions on the Main Menu, and under the DONATIONS section, click on Pledges.
2. Account: The default Pledge control account will automatically appear. If you use multiple pledge accounts for different drives, select the appropriate one from the drop-down.
3. Donor: Enter the donor’s name. If the donor does not exist in your database, you can click the name in the “No results found” pop-up to quickly add them as a new constituent on the fly.
4. Date & Reference: Enter the date of the pledge. For the Reference, if you do not use pre-printed receipt numbers, Araize recommends using a format like “PL-1001”.
5. Appeal & Gift: Select the Appeal that motivated the pledge and the specific Gift designation.
6. Amount: Enter the total amount of the promised pledge.

[INSERT SCREENSHOT: Display the ‘Pledge Receipt’ transaction screen, highlighting the Account, Donor, Date, Reference, Amount, Appeal, and Gift fields.]

3. Splitting a Pledge

Just like a cash donation, a pledge might need to be assigned to more than one gift designation. For example, a donor may pledge $50,000, but request that $25,000 goes to a “Music Scholarship” gift fund and $25,000 goes to a “Journalism Scholarship” gift fund.

To split the pledge, simply press the Tab key on your keyboard after entering the first gift line. A second distribution line will appear, allowing you to allocate the remainder of the pledge to a different gift. FastFund requires that the total of your gift distributions exactly matches the total pledge amount before you can save.

4. Setting Up Pledge Reminders

If a donor intends to pay off their pledge over an extended period of time (e.g., $1,200 paid in $100 monthly installments), you can establish a pledge reminder schedule.

Click the Reminders text link located above the gift distribution grid. FastFund allows you to create up to 60 pledge payment reminders for a single pledge. The system will automatically divide the total pledge amount by the number of payments you specify to calculate the installment amounts, defaulting to a monthly schedule. These reminders can later be printed or emailed to the donor as invoices.

5. Transaction Options and Saving

At the top right of the Pledge screen, you have several check box Options to help manage the transaction:

• Print / Email: Check these boxes to immediately print or email a pledge receipt acknowledgment to the donor.
• Recurring: Check this box if you want to add the pledge to your recurring transactions list for automated or on-demand future posting.
• Reverse: Used only when editing an existing pledge to completely reverse it out of the donor’s history.

When you are finished entering the pledge, you can click SAVE & NEW. This will post the pledge and open a new, blank transaction screen. To save you time during high-volume data entry, clicking SAVE & NEW automatically carries forward the Transaction Date, Receipt choice, Appeal, and Gift to the next transaction.