Contributions & Finance

Pledge Overview¶

A Pledge is a record of a donor’s intent to give a certain amount to a specific fund. In order to track a person’s giving as it relates to a Pledge, the first thing to do is for the person with Finance role to create the Fund to which your donors will pledge. This will be the same Fund to which they will make donations in order to reduce their Pledge balance.

Pledges should be posted to Funds that will eventually be closed (i.e. they will have an end date), not to a Fund such as your normal Tithe or General Budget Fund.

Note

The Fund does not need to be named Pledge Fund. It just has to have the Pledge Fund box checked.

Tip

If you will have Pledge Funds each year, it is helpful to include the year in the name of the fund. For example: Love Offering 2013; Love Offering 2014. If this is a one-time fund that will stay open for several years, then you do not need a year in the name.

A person’s Pledge can be recorded after actual contributions have been recorded. The contribution statement will still reflect the Pledge and all gifts given to that Fund regardless of when the Pledge was recorded.

Roles for Entering/Managing Pledges¶

A user must have either Finance and Access roles or FinanceDataEntry and Access roles in order to enter Pledges. Click here to read about the FinanceDataEntry role.

Administrative Settings¶

These are found by going to Admin > Advanced > Finance > Pledges

EnableDirectPledgeToPledgePayment: If the Enable Direct Pledge to Pledge Payment setting is True when a user clicks NEXT (and after the form posts its update), the user should be taken immediately to a page to set up their recurring gift. This setting is intended to work with recurring pledges.
PostContributionPledgeFunds: Enter as this setting’s value the fund ID(s) for which you would like summaries displayed when posting contributions in a bundle. If you enter multiple fund IDs, separate them with commas but no spaces. For example 301,412.
ShowMakeAPledgeButton: This setting toggles on and off the Make a Pledge button on a profile’s Giving tab. Set it to True to display the button or to False to hide the button.
ShowNegativePledgeBalances: In places where a pledge balance is shown, the balance will be displayed as a negative number if someone gave more than what was pledged.
ShowPledgeIfMet: If your church tracks Pledges, you have the option to display the pledge or not to display it once the pledge has been met. The default is to not show the Pledge if the person has fulfilled his Pledge and the Fund is still Open. Add the setting ShowPledgeIfMet and set the value to true if you want to show the Pledge. Once you close the Fund Pledges will no longer display on the Statement.
UseRecurringPledges: Instead of making one-time pledges, this allows the donor to make pledges on a schedule, similar to recurring giving.

This is found by going to Admin > Advanced > Finance > Recurring

Enable Annual Recurring: This setting allows you to set annually as one of the recurring giving options. This only affects pledges if UseRecurringPledges is set to True.

This is found by going to Admin > Advanced > Finance > Statements

Pledge Only Statements: Contribution statements have been designed primarily as tax documents and so, by default, are generated only when the donor has tax deductible gifts in the statement period. If, however, you want to generate statements also for donors who have no contributions during the period, but do have open pledges, change the setting Pledge Only Statements to True. If you select this option, be sure your statement template includes a pledge summary section.

See also

Migrating to HTML Contribution Statements

Once you understand the pledge related roles and administrative settings, read the following help articles for more information about pledges.