Best practices: Managing planned giving data in LGL
In this article:
- Introduction
- Setting up data for your planned giving program
- Example: Using a fundraising goal to track planned giving for an unknown dollar amount
- Start a planned giving program for your organization
Introduction
Managing planned giving data in Little Green Light can be as simple as creating a custom category, adding the values or levels within the category that you want to use, and then assigning these categories or category values to your constituents based on their status in your planned giving program. This works well to quickly see who is participating in the program.
If your planned giving program is on the smaller side and you want to track your constituents’ bequests in a more focused way, there is also the option to use a fundraising goal.
Setting up a planned giving program
Tracking participation in your planned giving program: Use custom constituent categories
To use a custom constituent category to track your planned giving, follow these instructions:
- Go to Settings > Menu items and create a custom constituent category. (You might name it “Planned Giving Status” or something similar. We named ours "Planned Giving Category".)
- Once you've created the category, you can add values for different statuses, if you want to track this.
- Assign your new category or category values to the constituents for whom you are tracking planned giving. Once those categories are assigned, you’ll have the option to search and report on them as needed.
If you want to use just one category, you can add it under Groups:
Tracking commitments made by each constituent: Use a fundraising goal
When you want to track details related to a constituent’s specific commitment related to planned giving, a fundraising goal works nicely because:
- A goal holds a monetary value and can hold a high and low expectation
- You can add goal categories that would enable you to track what type of planned giving commitment it is
- You can even add tasks to the goal to help you stay on top of any to-do items you may have for the planned giving commitment
These instructions show you how to add and work with fundraising goals.
Example: Using a fundraising goal to track planned giving for an unspecified dollar amount
The two most important questions in this context are:
- Are you written into their estate plans (e.g., their will), and
- For how much? (determined in the will by a dollar amount or a percentage)
If you don't have the answer to the amount question yet, you'll just want to know whether or not you are in their will. You can track this by assigning a category to the goal. If necessary, you can add $0 to the Amount field.
If you have an approximate amount, with a low and high range, you can add that to the goal.
You can also add tasks related to the goal (for example, checking in with the executor of the estate).
When the funds arrive, you can then connect the gift to the goal.
Start a planned giving program for your organization
If you don’t have a planned giving program at your organization and would like to implement one, this blog post contains guidance on how to get started.