Pledge Setup
General information regarding fields when you're setting up a Pledge.
Pledge Setup varies slightly depending on the type of campaign you are managing.
- Donor
- The person who is causing the money to be given to the church (the "fundraiser"). In the case of the Capital Campaign and Budget Campaign, this person makes the donations directly. In the case of Mission Trips, this person may make donations, but many others also assist. In the case of a memorial, the donor is the deceased so all donations come from those who want to memorialize the individual.
- Individual Donor Not Found: If an individual donor is not found, use the Add/Edit Family tool to search for the donor in the contacts list. If not found, create the donor. If found, then select the Create Donor Record check box for that person.
- Company Donor Not Found: If a company is pledging to a campaign and the company does not yet have a MinistryPlatform record, then use the Add Company Tool to create this record.
Note: If this pledge should always be given pledge credit for any donation made by this donor or their spouse, you can go to their Donor record and select this pledge for Always Pledge Credit. Be careful, though. If you use this field, then ALL donations distributed to the program on the pledge campaign from ALL years will be applied to the donor's pledge. That includes past year's pledge campaigns. - Pledge Status
- Pledges should generally begin as Active if created in the Platform. Use Pending only if an immediate question needs to be resolved before the pledge is complete. For pledges created by congregants, see the default Pending Pledge Approval Process for a way to manage/monitor this status. Pledges would be discontinued only if the donor elects to quit before meeting the entire pledged commitment. Pledges would be marked as completed when all donations have been given. The church may elect to mark all pledges as completed or discontinued at the end of the capital campaign. Some reports treat the balance of a discontinued pledge as a write-off or "not expected" amount.
- Total Pledge
- The amount of money the donor intends to raise for the campaign. In some cases, like a memorial, an amount of $0 may be appropriate.
- Installments Planned
- The number of gifts the donor intends to make. This is primarily used for Capital and Budget Campaigns. A value of 1 or 0 is appropriate in cases where this number is not known. As an example, if a campaign lasts three years and the donor is going to give monthly, then 36 would be the number in this field. If a capital campaign donor doesn't specify the installments or frequency, input the number of years the campaign runs.
- Installments Per Year
- The number of gifts in a single calendar year. This may also be thought of as the frequency of giving. Use 52 for weekly, 26 for every other week, 24 for twice per month, and 12 for monthly. If the capital campaign donor does not specify the increment of their giving, select 1 for annual. A value of 0 is acceptable for Mission Trips and other campaigns where the installment is not critical.
- Installment Amount
- A value calculated by MinistryPlatform.
- First Installment Date
- The date when the donor is most likely to make a first donation. Use discretion when the date is unknown.
- Last Installment Date
- A date calculated by MinistryPlatform based on the First Installment Date, Installments Per Year, and Installments Planned. Note that this date can only be calculated if Installments Per Year is set to one of the following values:
- 1: once per year
- 2: twice per year
- 4: quarterly
- 6: every other month
- 12: monthly
- 24: twice per month
- 26: every other week
- 52: weekly
- Notes
- A field where the campaign management team can record important information not already captured.
- Beneficiary
- A text field further clarifying how money raised by this specific pledge is used. This is primarily used for child-sponsorship scenarios where the name of the child the donor is supporting needs to be recorded. It may also be used in the case of "general mission trip donations" that are going to be specified for a trip-specific purpose. For example, money towards a trip to Africa where goats will be purchased. The beneficiary field could indicate "Goats". The donor associated with this pledge record would be a generic database record like "General Trip Donations". This value appears in the Batch Manager Tool (BMT) to facilitate entry.
- Trip Leader
- Indicate if the individual is one of the trip leaders. Those who are marked as trip leaders have the ability to view the fundraising progress of all mission trip participants for their specific trip in My Mission Trips.