Tracking United Way gifts from individuals

Hello All,

Management and tracking of donors who give to my organization through the United Way has been a struggle for quite some time.

Tracking the gift amounts that are pledged during the campaign and then often paid out over the following year seems to be a challenge for tracking within a donor database program.  

Does anyone have the same struggle?  How do you handle these gifts that are essentially pledges and come through in multiple checks throughout the year with a processing fee removed?

Any insight would be very helpful!

By the way, my organization is using Raiser's Edge to manage our donor records.  United Way designated giving is fairly new for our organization.

Thanks! 

Dear cbuncher,

Welcome to TechSoup!

I hope that someone with hands-on experience dealing with this issue will respond.  But you should also check the archives of the Blackbaud User's Society (aka Blackbus) and the FUNDSVCS listserve.  Blackbus covers all of Blackbaud's products.  FUNDSVCS is a discussion list for Development Services folks.  Both are free to join.

My general guidance is to enter a pledge on the United Way's record with a soft credit to the individual.  You should be able to set up a pledge schedule in RE on whatever frequency the donor is paying. 

Can you be more specific about the challenges you're struggling with?

Robert

HI cbuncher,

To add some encouragement, in addition to Robert's practical advice, I do know that it is a real challenge to manage donations from multiple sources. This is an added complexity, somewhat different than tracking individual donors. I am not a RE user, but know from talking to users of another software program, that as the fundraising reach grows into areas like United Way, or online giving sites, or the like, that people need to come up with new systems. So, just that you feel in good company, it is a challenge, but one that comes because you have succeeded at gaining a new area of support.

Best wishes,

Sasha

Hi cbuncher,

If your United Way reporting there is anything like here, it is a real challenge, as you have pledges for the future, and the check you receive is combined for the previous pledges and they do not document well which payroll deduction pledge the payment is for.  So it isn't a matter of what your software does, it is a matter of having the proper documentation from the United Way as to which employee / employer pledges these funds are for.  You task is to acknowledge the pledge but not the tax deductibility as their donation is to the united way.

We use a custom query that looks directly at the Donor Database's tables. Then, a summary (pledge amount, payments by month, total payments, fees assessed) is stored in a separate table, and the info is viewed via Excel.

I wouldn't recommend this approach unless you have a strong database person. Our report was unreliable for years before it finally got passed to me. I got it working, but it took a bit of work.

Maybe check and see if your accounting software can provide what you need (if you use something separate from the donor database).

Please let us know what solution you decide on. I always like to hear what other people are doing.