A pledge represents a commitment from a donor to give a specific sum of money over a set period of time.
For example, a donor may pledge to give you $50,000 over the next five years. As part of this commitment, they may agree to make annual payments of $10,000 each, or maybe they will send checks of $2,500 once per quarter. In some cases, their pledge agreement may include a custom schedule of payments.
All of these scenarios can be tracked with pledges in Virtuous.
Creating a Pledge
To create a pledge, navigate to the Giving tab of a Contact record. There, look for the three dots in the upper-right of the giving area, click, and then select "Add Pledge."
This will bring up the Create Pledge form. Fill in the information for your new Pledge. Required fields are indicated with an asterisk (*).
- Amount Pledged - The total amount committed by the donor. So, if a donor has pledged $50,000 over the next five years, in five annual installments of $10,000 each, the Amount Pledged would be $50,000.
- Payment Frequency - The frequency is used to determine the payment schedule. Available options are Monthly, Quarterly, Semiannually, Annually, Biennially, and Custom. For more, see the Payment Schedule section below.
- Pledge Date - The date when the donor commitment was made.
- Expected Fulfillment Date - The date by which the full amount will be paid. For a five-year pledge, for example, select a date five years later than the current date.
- Private - Use the Private checkbox to indicate an anonymous pledge. Users without permission to view private pledges will see the pledge, but not the donor's information.
- Marketing Segment - As with Gifts, Pledges can be attributed to a Campaign Segment, to track the effectiveness of specific appeals and strategies.
- Project - The Project designation for the Pledges dollars. Use this to track restricted giving. A Project must be active in order to select it for a pledge. A pledge can only be designated to one Project.
- Gift Ask - If this pledge is associated with a specific Gift Ask, select that Gift Ask to link them.
Payment Schedule
When creating a pledge, Virtuous will use the Amount Pledged, Frequency, Pledge Date, and Fulfillment Date together to automatically generate a schedule of payments.
When generating the schedule, Virtuous will work backwards from the Expected Fulfillment Date to the Pledge Date, distributing the total Amount Pledged evenly among as many payments, at the specified frequency, fit into the time period between the Pledge Date and the Expected Fulfillment Date. Review the schedule generated to determine if any changes are necessary. Changing any of the four required fields will generate a new schedule. Once your Payment Schedule is correct, click on "Save Pledge" to create your new pledge.
Custom Schedules
In some cases, a donor may commit to a very customized payment schedule, which does not fit neatly into any of the prescribed frequencies. In these cases, select "Custom" for the Frequency in order to manually create a schedule of Pledge Payments.
This will bring up two fields in the "Pledge Fulfillment & Installment Schedule" section, where you can begin entering the date and amount for all Pledge Payments you wish to create. Enter a value for both fields, and then click on the add button to save and continue.
Once all of your payments have been entered, click on "Save Pledge" to create the new pledge.
In the event that the total amount of the custom payments you create does not equal the total Amount Pledged, you will see an error message after clicking "Save Pledge." You will need to re-enter your payments and correct the amounts to ensure that the entire Amount Pledged is accounted for.
Project and Campaign Tracking
When a Gift is linked to a Pledge as a Pledge Payment, the Project designation is automatically pulled in from the Pledge. However, this does not pull in the Marketing Segment from the Pledge to the Gift. This is intentional, so that Gifts received today aren’t being applied to a Campaign that may have ended many years ago.
A Best Practice for managing the Marketing Segment for Pledge payments is having a "Pledge Giving" Segment as part of your Annual Campaign.