Pledges

Pledges play an important role in planning and overall revenue strategy by creating reliable and steady streams of income. This allows your organization to make more accurate budgeting predictions. Setting up unique donor pledges streamlines the process for donors, and increases the likelihood that donors will make pledge payments on an agreed-upon schedule.

Admins can create and track a donor’s commitment to planned donations. This article describes the pledge setup and the donor experience.

*Note: If you'd like to add pledges to your giving plan please contact communitysupport@factsmgt.com

Create a Pledge

You can create customized pledges based on individual donor preferences, directly from a person’s profile.

To create a pledge, go to Profiles > People in the portal and select the donor's profile. Then click the + Create New Pledge button.

 The Create Pledge window opens. Enter the custom pledge details:

• Total Pledge Amount

• Frequency. How frequently the donor wishes to make payments towards this pledge.

  • Weekly

  • Biweekly

  • Monthly

  • Quarterly

  • Yearly

• Start Date. When the donor plans to make the first installment payment.

• End Date. When the donor plans to make the final installment payment.

Once you enter these details, the portal automatically calculates the Installment Amount. This is the amount the donor sees on their unique payment link. The donor can easily override this value at the time of payment.

After you enter the pledge details, complete the following:

• Reminder. Use this option to send the donor a reminder at noon, 3 days before each installment's due date. The reminder includes pledge details and a clickable link, so the donor can make the payment with ease. The default is set to Do not remind, so if you want a reminder, you must set it. Both email and text are selected by default, but you can deselect either option if you only want the other.
  *Note: A donor must first opt-in to receiving text messages with their primary phone number before they are able to receive text reminders. You can see a donor's text status within their profile under Contact Info, or from the People list Ok to Text? column:
  For more information on the opt-in process, and how to send donors an opt-in form, read this article.

• Fund. Select from the list of active funds. Funds associated with multiple campuses will default to the first campus associated with that fund.

• Appeal. Select from the list of active appeals. If you choose an appeal, the associated fund is automatically selected.

• Comments. Enter up to 255 characters of optional comments about the pledge.

Click the Save button to create the pledge series.

Now that you have created a pledge series, a Pledge Payment Link will be associated with that series. See the Pledge Report article to learn more about how to access that link, so you can copy and paste it into communications with donors.

Identify Pledge Transactions

Once a donor makes a payment that is part of a pledge series, the payment is denoted with a checkmark in the Pledge column in your Transactions list. Go to Giving > Transactions in the portal to find this list. See the Transactions Page article for more information regarding Transactions.

Associate a Transaction with a Pledge

When editing an existing transaction, or adding a transaction manually, you can select a Pledge to associate with the transaction.

Select the Pledge option to see the drop-down menu of all pledges previously created for the current donor profile.

If you have not yet created any pledges for the donor, you will see a message telling you that no pledges exist yet for the donor.

*Note: For more information on how to edit existing transactions, or how to add new transactions manually, see the Manual Entry - Cash & Non-Cash Transactions article

The Donor Experience

Donors may receive a unique and clickable URL to make pledge payments in two ways:

• The donor receives the customized pledge link that was copied and pasted into communications by an admin.

• The optional email and/or text reminder was selected when the pledge was created. The donor will receive the unique URL as part of the reminder notification 3 days before the installment due date.

Once a donor clicks the link to make a pledge payment:

1. The Installment Amount pre-populates on the Donation page. Pre-populating the default Installment Amount makes the process simple for the donor, and it increases the likelihood the donor gives the already-selected amount to keep the pledge series on track.

2. Below the Installment Amount is the additional pledge information, including the donor's name, the total amount pledged, the related fund, and the scheduled end date.

After changing the installment amount or accepting the pre-populated amount by clicking the Next button, the donor moves through the normal giving sequence. The donor enters personal and payment details. The portal processes the pledge payment immediately after the donor clicks the Donate button in the final step.

The system sends the donor a receipt that shows the pledge payment details. The donor can also click the link on the confirmation page to view the receipt.

If you have any questions or need help, send us a note at communitysupport@factsmgt.com!