Donations and Pledges

Purpose: Track donations of money from individuals and organizations for fundraising campaigns, and optionally track pledges.

Cost: There is no cost to implement this module.

A donation can be recorded without needing to first create a pledge, so the use of the pledge features is optional. PSTI may need to enable the pledge feature on older sites. Contact us if you don't see the "Add a Pledge" link on the main Donations page.

Donations

Click the Donations tab in the top navigation bar to display a list of past donations and links to add new donations. If the navigation tab hasn't been enabled, visit the Admin > Donations page.

Edit a Donation

Click on the link for an existing donation in the donations list to display information about that donation, and to see links to edit the donation or delete it.

Adding an Individual Donation

Click Add an Individual Donation in the side menu on the Donations page to display the form to record a donation from an individual. The donor name field will begin searching the current list of active contacts for a match after three letters are entered in the search box. There are other fields for the name of the donation, salutation, the campaign name, the donation date, the amount of the donation, check number, and space for any notes. To submit the donation and view the donation profile, click Continue.

An individual donation can also be recorded when viewing a contact's profile page by clicking the "Add a donation" link in the side menu.

Adding an Organizational Donation

Click Add an Organizational Donation in the side menu on the Donations page to display the form to record a donation from an organization. The donor name field will begin searching the current list of active organizations for a match after three letters are entered in the search box. There are other fields for the campaign name, the donation date, the amount of the donation, check number, and space for any notes. To submit the donation and view the donation profile, click Continue.

An organizational donation can also be recorded when viewing an organization's profile page by clicking the "Add a Donation" link in the side menu.

Pledges

Add a Pledge

Adding a pledge requires two steps: first, define the pledge payment parameters; and second, tie it to a campaign, an individual or organization, and outline the pledge schedule.

The pledge payment parameters include the estimated first payment date (which is the beginning of the schedule), the total pledged, number of payments and the frequency of those payments. If "Frequency of Payments" is not selected, a single pledge is created. To add a new pledge, click Add a Pledge in the side menu on the donations list (usually accessed by clicking the Donations tab in the navigation bar):

Once the parameters are set, a donation schedule is generated. From here a campaign needs to be defined, as well as a donor type (individual or organization). LegalServer distributes the total amount pledged over the specified number of payments and uses the payment frequency to determine the payment dates. There is a field for entering how much has been paid next to how much has been pledged for each payment. The plus and minus buttons can be used to increase or decrease the number of payments. There are also fields for check numbers and notes. To save the pledge schedule, and create donation records click 'Continue'.

Recording a Pledge Payment

To fulfill a pledge, click the Pay link to the right of a donation in the donations list and the pledge schedule will display. Payments and partial payments can be applied to a pledge. After the amounts are entered, click 'Continue' and the changes will be reflected on the donations list.

Administrative Setup

Permission

There is a "View/Edit Donations" permission that controls which groups of users can work with donations and pledges. The permission is granted or denied in Admin/User Roles (Permissions).

Top Level Donations Tab

Administrators have two levels of control over the top level Donations tab. The tab can be disabled or enabled for all users on a site in Admin/Top Level Navigation Bar. The label for the tab can also be changed.

If the top level tab is enabled for the site, it can still be hidden for selected roles. Administrators can set whether the tab is displayed for each role in Admin/User Roles (Permissions).

Enabling Links

Check Admin > Process Settings and enable the desired links in the Donation Settings section.

Campaigns

Each donation must be associated with a campaign. Administrators (or users with the permission to edit lookups) create campaigns in Admin/Lookups/Fundraising Campaigns. Administrators can also mark campaigns as inactive so they no longer appear in the dropdown list when adding donations.

Example Reports

See the Example Reports page for downloadable reports on donations and pledges.