Crimson Feature of the Month: Maximizing Pledges

Pledges are a major component of political fundraising, and Crimson features can simplify tracking and managing these donations. Below are instructions for several tools that make reconciling and accounting pledges faster and more accurate.

In this month's post:

How to Find Pledge Features Outstanding Pledge Search Use Source Codes to Automatically Match Payments to Pledges Use Received In-House to Differentiate from Donation Data Add Tracking Numbers to Credit Bundlers Pay Later Feature Under Events

How to Find Pledge Features

Pledges are located under the People Profile. For help on how to locate an individual record, please see the guide on the People Search or use the Quick Search to select the Quick Pledge Search.

1. Once the correct People Profile is opened, click on the Pledge panel.

a. If you are unable to view the panel due to the size of your screen, then click on the blue bar to the right to access the additional features on a People Profile.

b. A third column will appear, and the Pledge panel will be listed.

If you click on the Pledge panel, the Pledge Summary will populate where Giving History is located by default on the People Profile.

If you click on the

, a window to add a new pledge will open.

3. Under the Pledge Summary on the People Profile, you can review the donor's pledge history:

1. Click on the

button to record a new pledge.

2. Click on pledges by Year, Last Year, or Two Years Ago.

3. Click on each number under By Fund for a list of pledges made by Fund Code.

4. Click on All-Time Total to see a list of all the pledges ever made by the donor.

5. Under Summary, review the date of the first pledge, the most current pledge and the largest pledge made in the donor's history.

6. Click on the numbers under Top 3 Sources for all pledges made by the donor to specific Source Codes.

7. Click on the individual pledge in the Recent Pledges timeline, located on the right to open a specific pledge.

8. Click on All, located in the top corner of the Recent Pledges timeline, to open a listing of all the pledges ever made by the donor.

Outstanding Pledge Search

From the Crimson 3 dashboard, there's a new search feature to help find outstanding pledges across the entire account. The green Outstanding Pledges card lists the total amount of pledges that have been made and the number of gifts.

1. Click on the Pledge Outstanding card.

2. A list of all outstanding pledges in your entire Crimson account will populate using the Pledge Search.

1. Quick Pledge Search: use this search bar to quickly look for a specific pledge by donor name. 2. Click on

to change which columns are displayed. 3. Click

to open an individual pledge. 4. Click the

to download the results of the search. 5. Click the

button if you wish to keep this search for future uses.

3. If you want to adjust the search parameters of the Outstanding Pledges search, click on the Filters tab.

4. In order to display more filters, click on the toggle for “selected only.” Additional filters will appear that you can use to customize the results of your search.

5. If you would like to save this search to run in the future, click on the

 button.

Use Source Codes to Automatically Match Payments to Pledges

When adding a pledge, Crimson requires you to complete the Amount, and Date field. If a Source Code and Fund Code is added, the pledge will automatically reconcile when a gift with matching details is added later via import or data entry.

Since a pledge is almost always recorded before the donation is made, the Source Code can prevent adding duplicate donations or spending additional time on data entry. Without a Source Code, to match the gift the to the pledge, the two will need to be reconciled manually in Crimson.

Once a gift is entered that matches the details of the pledge, it will automatically be matched in Crimson. The details will display under the Payments tab.

Use Received In-House to Differentiate from the Donation Date

If you need to log that a check or payment was received before it has been deposited and entered  via data entry, such as before a bank holiday, complete the Received In-House section on the Pledge. This way the fundraising team doesn’t have to wait for data entry to know what funds have already been received.

Enter the date of reception in the Date field or click the calendar icon to select the date from a calendar, and the gift amount in the Amount field. The pledge will still appear if you search for unfulfilled pledges, but the received in-house information will be visible in that search to avoid confusion about the status of the pledge.

Add Tracking Numbers to Credit Bundlers

If you have a bundler fundraising program, the Tracking feature will help you properly credit each donation.

In the third column of the Pledge, enter the fundraiser's tracking number in the Track# field and then enter the amount of the donation to be credited to the fundraiser in the Amount field.

 If you need to track multiple fundraisers or share tracking of a donation, click on the   

 button to look up the tracking numbers for additional fundraisers and enter the amount to be credited.

Under the Balance section, you can see what amount is remaining after a payment with the same tracking # has been linked to this pledge.

Pay Later Feature Under Events

The Pay Later feature allows event organizers to record a pledge at an event and connect it to a donor's People Record. For more information on this feature, please see the Event Dashboard Guide.

1. From the Event dashboard, either search for the event by name or click on Upcoming Events.

2. Click on the Event you wish to record the pledge. 3. From the Event listing, click on the Invitees tab at the top.

4. Select the guest and click on the 

  button.

5. At the bottom, click on the Pay Later (Pledge) tab.

6. Complete the fields including Pledge Amount, Fund Code and click on

.

7. A confirmation message should appear that the pledge was recorded.