Hi all! How would you suggest managing a pledge that is shared by two individuals? The pledge was made about 8 months ago by donor #1 who has paid about 1/4 of the balance. The remaining balance will be paid by donor #2. Both donor #1 and donor #2 need to receive credit for the full pledge amount.
I know that you cannot use a contribution to pay off another person's pledge so I fear I need to adjust the pledge down so the balance is $0 and then make a new pledge on donor #2 for the balance amount. But then when pulling giving reports they won't each be credited for the total, but instead only for the amount they paid off. I could also see a scenario down the line where donor #1 decides that they will actually make some more payments on the pledge which would require further adjustments/more confusion.
Any suggestions are appreciated. Thank you!
Is there a world in which these two donors are a household? Or would that make the rest of everything for them more confusing?
Hi Katie! No, in this case it would not make sense to make them a household.
Can you put into each record the amount they actually paid and then soft credit each donor for the other's gift (so Donor A pays $250 and Donor B pays $750, but Donor A gets soft-credited for Donor B's $750 and Donor B gets soft-credited for Donor A's $250, giving them each a "total giving" of $1,000)? You may also want to cross-post this in the Fundraising & Development Community.
Hi Colleen - thanks for the suggestion, I'm going to post in the Fundraising & Dev Community too.
I do plan to soft credit the payments but I'm not sure how to handle the pledge portion of this. Not having a pledge isn't an option since the solicitors want to see what the expected total donation will be. We have only been using Tessitura for a couple of months so I was hoping maybe there was an option I'm overlooking but I think this is just a tricky situation!
Ah, I see. And you don't know ahead of time how they plan to split the payment? If that's the case, what about initially doing a 50/50 split in each of their records (with the soft credit) and then once it's clear how they plan to split payments you could adjust the pledges accordingly (either increasing or decreasing as needed)? It's not ideal, but that is the only thing I can think of.
I think we are going to adjust the gift down by the amount left on the pledge and setup a new pledge on donor #2 for the remaining amount. We will definitely soft credit all gifts to each other. Luckily there is only one case like this (for now) so we'll also make sure that we keep it in mind and on a list of any other unique situations to review when pulling any lists. Thanks!