Donations can be marked as pledges in Neon Fundraise. This allows organizations to identify donations that weren't yet received and report on them. Donations are marked with the "Pledge" payment type in the donation record in the Admin. Note that marking a donation as a pledge does not affect whether they appear in fundraising totals.
Submitting a Donation Pledge
There are two ways a donation might be submitted as a pledge:
- A fundraiser entering an offline donation chooses "Pledge" as the donation type.
- An administrator selects the "Pledge" payment type when entering a donation (or editing it) in the Admin.
In either of these two scenarios, a dedicated pledge autoresponder is sent to the donor (provided the donation was entered with the donor's email address). This autoresponder is accessible in the Admin under Email > Automated Emails > Donation Pledge Confirmation.
Some notes:
- The email is sent regardless of whether the donation is verified. To differentiate verified vs. unverified pledges in the email message, use placeholder
{{Donation.Is_Verified}}. - Like regular donations, pledges count towards fundraising goals unless they are not verified.
- The email is not sent when an existing donation is marked as a pledge.
Fulfilling a Donation Pledge
Once submitted, donation pledges have a fulfillment status of "unfulfilled", which indicates that the organization has not received the pledged funds yet. This indicator is displayed on the donation record in the Admin and in the User Profile section.
Once the organization receives the funds, administrators can submit an offline "Credit" transaction to offset or fulfill the amount pledged, which then sets the fulfillment status of the pledge donation to "fulfilled".
Only administrators can fulfill pledges at this time. To fulfill a pledge, follow these steps:
- Navigate to the donation pledge record in the Admin, either using the global search function, or in the donations grid within the relevant campaign.
- Once the record is pulled up, click the "Fulfill" button. This will open a form where a Credit transaction can be submitted.
- At this time, Credits can only be submitted as offline transactions.
- Once the Credit is submitted, the donation pledge will display its fulfilled status as "fulfilled", both in the Admin and in the User Profile section where the transaction is displayed.
Alternatively, administrators can fulfill pledges by creating credit transactions directly in the Credits grid:
- Navigate to Transactions > Credits within a given campaign
- Click the red plus button
- Fill out the requisite donor information or choose an existing donor, then choose the donation settings
- Choose any pledges that the credit should fulfill
- Set the amount and payment type
- Click "Add Credit"
Tracking Pledges
Donors can view donation pledges in their User Profile, under Payments > Transactions. Donation pledges are listed as any other donation, with the payment method reflecting that it's a pledge, as well as its fulfillment status.
Administrators can report on pledges by running donation or transaction reports and filtering them by Payment Type. Administrators can further report on which pledges have or have not been fulfilled by filtering the above reports by the "Fulfilled" column.
Credit Charges
Credit charges are used to fulfill donation pledges, matches, and endurance pledges. Credit charges can also be created as standalone transactions. Credits should be viewed as adding a positive balance to a donor's account, to offset any pledges they have made.
Tracking Credits
Donors can view Credit transactions in their User Profile, under Payments > Transactions. Credits are listed in the transactions list as type "Credit".
Administrators can view and manage Credits in the Credits grid in the Admin, under "Transactions". All Credit transactions, along with their information and associated pledge donations, can be viewed in this grid.
Administrators can report on Credit transactions either in by running the Transactions report and filtering by transaction type (for which "Credit" is one), or by running the dedicated "Credit Transactions" report.
Credits in Salesforce
Pledges and credit charges are synced to Salesforce in the following manner:
- For Salesforce instances where the "Pledge" stage is enabled (NPSP), pledges are synced with "Pledged" stage.
- If a credit is manually created without any associated pledge donation, it is synced as a regular opportunity.
- If a credit is manually created and it fulfills a pledge donation by the same amount, the stage of the opportunity previously-created in Salesforce (when the pledge was initially created) is updated to closed. If there was no previously-created opportunity, then one is created at this point and the stage is set to closed.
- If a credit is manually created and it partially fulfills a pledge donation, a new opportunity for the partial credit amount is created, and the stage is set to closed. The amount of the original opportunity not fully covered by the credit is updated to equal the remainder of what was not covered.
- If a credit is automatically created and it fulfills a match, it is synced as a regular opportunity. Individual matching donation pledges generated by the match are not synced to Salesforce.
- If a credit is automatically created and it fulfills an endurance pledge, it is not synced at all, rather provides the payment information for associated donation pledges, which are synced as closed opportunities.
Credits in Neon CRM
Pledges and credit charges are synced to Neon CRM in the following manner:
- Donation pledges in Neon Fundraise are synced to Neon CRM as pledges.
- If a credit is manually created without any associated record, it is synced as a regular donation.
- If a credit is manually created and it fulfills a pledge donation by the same amount, the pledge is updated to closed. If there was no previously-created pledge donation in Neon CRM, then one is created at this point and is closed.
- If a credit is manually created and it partially fulfills a pledge donation, the payment will be added to the pledge. Once enough credit charges have been created that they equal the amount of the pledge, the pledge will be closed.
- If a credit is automatically created and it fulfills a match, it is synced as a regular donation. Individual matching donation pledges generated by the match are not synced to CRM.
- If a credit is automatically created and it fulfills an endurance pledge, it is not synced at all, rather provides the payment information for associated donation pledges, which are synced as regular donations.