When organizations talk about pledges, often times they have different meanings. For some, a specific payment promise, such as a fixed amount each month for a year (or in perpetuity) constitutes a pledge. Others believe that any promise to pay is a pledge, whether it’s for a certain amount or a certain timeframe. The dictionary definition of the word pledge is simply a promise to give money. (There are other definitions, but for our purposes we’re focusing on the financial one.) The question remains: when is a pledge not a pledge?
When it comes to putting promises to pay into FundRaiser Software, there are a couple of options. The first is to consider it a later promise to pay. This is good when there isn’t a definitive time frame for the money to be paid. In fact, there often may be some uncertainty about the money to be paid.
“I will pay you at least $500 by the end of summer.”
This statement is a later promise to pay, and generally should be put into FundRaiser as such. Then, once the money is paid, the gift entry can be adjusted to reflect the date the gift was paid, the amount, and the type of gift with appropriate codes.
The pledge module within FundRaiser considers a pledge a specific amount of money given over a certain time frame. A monthly sustaining gift, for example, would be a pledge because the donor is giving a fixed amount on a regular schedule. The frequency doesn’t have to be monthly. Annual, semi-annual, quarterly or weekly schedules also work, and the FundRaiser pledge module has options for just about every payment frequency you’d want.
More times than not a pledge is a pledge. But sometimes, it’s a later to promise to pay. FundRaiser software will help you collect and manage both.
To learn more about how FundRaiser can help you manager all your donations:
Take an online guided tour of FundRaiser and learn about the features in FundRaiser for tracking metrics like Gift Source.