Create and Manage Gift Commitments
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Create and schedule a gift commitment.
- Add a designation to a gift commitment.
- Manage changes to gift commitments.
Define Your Gift Commitment Types
Gift commitments represent the promise of a gift, one that is planned but not entirely paid from the beginning. You use gift commitments to track many different types of these promises, for example:
- Recurring donations, such as a monthly gift.
- Accepted grant proposals, such as a multiyear foundation or government grant that is paid in annual installments.
- Planned gifts, such as a bequest to be paid from a donor’s estate after their death.
- Pledges, such as high-value gifts that are paid in installments or after certain criteria are met.
In Fundraising, you can track each of these different gift commitments using record types. In Salesforce, record types help you use different picklist values and page layouts on the same object. As you set up Fundraising, work with your team to determine how you want to track different types of gift commitments and set up a record type for each.
Add a Gift Commitment
Eddie receives a donation from longtime HNMI supporter Brandy Lozano. Brandy wants to set up a recurring donation to give $25 on the first of each month to support HNMI’s food distribution program, her personal favorite.
Follow along with Eddie as he creates the gift commitment.
- From the App Launcher (
), find and select Gift Commitments.
- Click New.
- Specify these details.
- Donor: Brandy Lozano
- Status: Draft
- Name:
Brandy Lozano - Recurring Donation
- Description:
A recurring $25 monthly donation. - Schedule Type: Recurring
- Campaign: Giving Tuesday
- Donor: Brandy Lozano
- Save your work.
The Campaign field is helpful in reporting, showing the source of donations and which of your efforts are leading to the most donations.
Add a Designation to a Gift Commitment
The gift commitment record doesn’t yet track all of the information Eddie needs. Remember that Brandy wants to specifically support HNMI’s food distribution program.
To connect a gift commitment and a gift designation, use the Gift Default Designation object. Create gift default designations using the flow on the gift commitment record to automate record creation and needed data updates. Launch the flow in the Gift Commitment Setup component or use a quick action button. Let’s follow along with Eddie as he uses the quick action button.
- On the Brandy Lozano - Recurring Donation record, click Manage Gift Default Designations.
- In the Designation field, click
then find and select Food Distribution, the gift designation you set up in the last unit.
- Leave the Percentage field value at
100.00%.
- Save your work.
You have the option to split the gift commitment between more than one gift designation and specify what percentage goes to each. Brandy is all-in on the food distribution program, but some gifts are divided between program distributions or between unrestricted and capital campaign distributions.
Gift default designations can be inherited from other records. For example, if a campaign is associated with a gift commitment, the gift commitment inherits the campaign’s gift default designations. In a similar way, gift transactions inherit gift default designations from a related gift commitment. See About Gift Designations in Salesforce Help for details.
Schedule a Gift Commitment
A significant detail of gift commitments is when the gift will be given, which is tracked using the Gift Commitment Schedule object. The object includes details about when the recurring gift is paid, the value of each payment, and how and how often it’s paid. Brandy wants to give $25 monthly on the first day of each month. Follow along with Eddie as he creates the gift commitment schedule to track that information.
- On the Brandy Lozano - Recurring Donation record, click Manage Gift Commitment Schedules.
- Specify these details:
- Start Date: The first day of next month.
- End Date: Blank. Brandy’s commitment is an open-ended recurring donation that only ends when the donor requests it to.
- Gift Transaction Period: Monthly
- Gift Transaction Interval: 1, to indicate the recurring donation is paid every month.
- Gift Transaction Amount:
25
- Gift Transaction Day: 1, for the first day of the month.
- Payment Method: Check
- Campaign: Already populated because it inherits the value from the gift commitment.
- Start Date: The first day of next month.
- Save your work.
In the Upcoming Gift Transactions component on the record page, click 
. The gift commitment automatically plans for several upcoming gift transactions. You explore those gift transactions in the next unit.
Before you move on, there’s one more thing to do. On the Brandy Lozano - Recurring Donation record, change the Status to Active. Now that you have all of the details, this gift commitment is ready for Eddie and his team.
Fundraising includes automation to process gift commitments based on the associated gift commitment schedule and gift transactions. See Gift Commitment Processing in Salesforce Help for details.
Manage Gift Commitments
For more visibility into future revenue, gift commitments include fields to show you the revenue expected in the current month, current quarter, current year, and next year. Find them all in the Projected Committed Revenue Information section on a gift commitment.
These revenue fields assume no changes to the gift commitment schedule, but you know that donors sometimes have to change their plans.
For example, Brandy could decide that she wants to increase or decrease the amount of money she gives each month. She could decide that she wants to give on the third day of each month, not the first. She may pause her recurring donation to HNMI or end it.
Fundraising includes flows to manage a gift commitment and quickly handle these requests. Let’s check out a few of them.
Upgrade | Downgrade
Use Upgrade | Downgrade to change the frequency, amount, and payment method of a gift commitment, starting on a specific date.
Pause
Use Pause to put a gift commitment’s transactions on hold. You can select a specific period in which the gift commitment is paused and track the reason for the pause, such as a temporary financial hardship. If a gift commitment is paused, use Resume to start it again.
Close Gift Commitment
It’s hard to say goodbye, but it’s easy to close a gift commitment. Use Close Gift Commitment to end the commitment and update any related unpaid or failed gift transactions to Canceled or Written Off status.
You can also use some of these flows from a donor’s person account record using the donor support profile. If a donor calls and asks for a change, it can be easier to find the donor’s person account record than a specific gift commitment.
And, if you make any of these changes, the projected revenue fields will automatically recalculate to reflect the new expected revenue from the gift commitment.
Now that you understand the basics of gift commitments and how they work, it’s time to move on to transactions, and how you track payments against commitments and one-time gifts.