Contributions - Pledges

[Linda Stepanek]

Has anyone found a report or custom report that will allow you to pull the names and addresses of only the individuals that have not pledged to a campaign so a second mailing can be sent out just to them. I tried the Custom Report with the value being that the Pledge amount exactly matched 0.00 but it didn't pull any names.

PowerChurch: On Version 9, it doesn't look like there has been any enhancements to the Pledge side of the program. Is there anyway a date field could be added so that we could pull the number of pledges entered on a specific day. The pledge date range doesn't work because it pulls everything in the range not by date entered?

[Jeff]

Linda,

Have you looked at the list of contributors that have not pledged report? It was added in verison 8 and is the second from the bottom in the list of reports in contributions. You can select by a range of dates, fund numbers, envelope numbers, and personal status codes.

As far as your suggestion, it really is too late to add for version 9. We are close to finishing up the manual so no new features can really be added at this point.

[Linda Stepanek]

Yes, I have looked at that report, but it will only give you names and envelope numbers, not addresses. We would need to have their addresses in order to send them another letter. Any other ideas?

I hope that the programers will take the contribution pledge into consideration for a future version. It is wonderful to hear that Version 9 is almost ready.

[Kristi]

Linda,
I had the same problem last year. We have at least 3 mailouts sent to non-pledgers at the end of our commitment campaign.

The information that we are needing is not in the Contribution module because we want letters sent to every adult in the church. The contribution module only includes those that have given for some fund at some point in time...not people who have never given.

Last year I decided to try to flag all the adults we wanted to receive a mail-out...we exclude some elderly, those moving, etc. But that was too difficult to go in and "unflag" all the ones who pledged. Another problem with flagging....some people wouldn't get other information we were mailing....we have not mastered how to flag correctly.
You may come up with a way that flagging works.


This year we are trying a different approach. In Activities and Skills we created a number 922 Campaign Contribution. We added this "Activity" to the appropriate families. We can run labels from Activities and Skills for all adults to receive a pledge card. I think what I will have to do is create a new number for each mailout:

923 CC Mail Out2

....for the first set of non-responders, but we don't want to label it that way (non-responders) so that personal decision does not appear on any of their personal reports we may print.....

924 CC Mail Out3

....for the final set of non-responders.

I hope this works for us and gives you an idea to try.
Kristi

[Linda Stepanek]

Kristi:

Thanks for the input. We are also using PowerChurch here at the Diocese for our stewardship campaign and what we are doing here is using the Visit area and the Who Visits area. We put the date the pledge came in there and then we run a custom report asking for all records with the blank. Next year we will use the Who Visits area. This makes the inputting of pledges a little easier as far as not having so many screens to use. This has worked fairly well but it would be nice to have a date in the contribution area that allows you to tell when the pledge was actually received. The problem is that after two years these spots are taken and I don't know what we will do then. We have over 14,000 records and I think it would be too time consuming to use the Activities and Skills because you would need to select every record.

[SteveFaulkner]

Replying to an old post here that I found while browsing. As someone correctly pointed out, Contributions only "knows" about people (Profiles) that have contributed at some point in that past... actually, I think that it is more correctly said that Contributions only knowns about people that have an assigned "envelope" number. By default, a profile created in membership data does not have an assigned envelope number. When you first enter the person into Contributions, if it finds a matching entry in membership data, it asks if you want to edit the entry, and all you really do it add an Envelope number - which makes that person show up in the list of people visible to Contributions.

So - if you want to be able to run Contributions reports which include people who are entered in Membership profiles but have never given/pledged, then you need to assign an envelope number to these people. You can do this either from membership or from Contributions (by starting to create a new profile of a member you know exists, then it prompts you to edit when it finds the existing profile, then you assign the next available envelope number). To start, you need to run a report from the membership module of everyone that you want to be visible in Contributions - this might for example be only official church members, or maybe you have noted long time attenders via the "personal status" field and want to include those, and you probably want to exclude kids. You might also be able to exclude profiles that already have an assigned Envelope number - or at least include their envelop number in the report so you can skip those that already have an envelop number. Note that multiple members of the same household can be given the same envelope number, in order to be treated as a single giving unit, or you can choose to only enter an envelop number for one profile per couple. (if you want to assign the same envelope number, you've got to make note of the envelop number assigned to the first family member and then assign that same envelop number manually to the spouse). Once you have a list of profiles that you want to assign Envelope numbers for, you will need to assign envelop numbers one at a time to the list. You may also want to periodically repeat this process for new members - or make it a practice to always assign an Envelop number (if not already assigned) when changing a Profiles' status to "Member".

Once an envelop number is assigned, then you can do such reports from Contributions as reporting on all Contributors who have not Pledged during a specific period.

Note, I haven't actually verified any of the above, as we haven't had a reason to do this, it is just based on my reading of the v9 manual.

[NeilZ]

Steve, you basically have it in a nutshell.

At my former church location, we assigned an envelope to every official member, whether they give or not. This gives us the capability to pull reports to see who has pledged or who has not.

If any of the 'attends but are not members' request an 'official' box of envelopes, they get one with the normal numbering scheme. However, anyone who gives (and we have an address) gets one of the numbers outside of the boxed envelope numbering scheme (numbers above 1000). Of course when someone becomes a member, they are then reassigned to a 'regular' envelope number.

This does give us a chance to verifiy the attendence of these worshippers, as well as their giving history, which then gives us the capability to 'target' mailings to these people.

[vtz]

Hello,

I have a similar problem. We are running a campaign and would like to send a letter out to those who have not pledged to this campaign (or essentially the Fund #). I tried to do a report for those members (or those with envelope numbers including visitors) who have not pledged but I get the report with their envelope #, name and phone number which is insufficient information for a mail merge. Is there a way to get the report with the addresses??

I also tried the custom reports (by setting the contribution amount to 0.00) but no luck. Thanks. (PC+ 8.5)

[Jeff]

This is a new feature that has been added to version 10. Signup for the beta if you need access to this now and help us make sure the feature is working correctly. The beta period is quickly coming to a close and we are working as hard as we can to make sure the program is as stable as possible.

[NeilZ]

This is a new feature that has been added to version 10. Signup for the beta if you need access to this now and help us make sure the feature is working correctly. The beta period is quickly coming to a close and we are working as hard as we can to make sure the program is as stable as possible.

I have to give some KUDOS to the Powerchurch staff for adding this around the beginning of September or so to the beta. From what I was able to tell, it worked, but had a few rough edges that needed to be tweaked.

This is going to be a heavily used functionality by alot of churches getting ready to do their annual stewardship campaigns, so while a beta should not be used to do 'real' work, if you're looking for a way to pull members who have not pledged for a mail merge, I do urge you to sign up for the beta, and use it for your pledge drive mailing.

By the way Jeff ... what's the date of the latest beta version available, I haven't downloaded anything in about 3 weeks or so.

Thanks,

[Jeff]

Thanks Neil, I wasn't suggesting people use version 10 for day to day work, but if they need some of the functionality in version 10, it would be a good incentive for them to particpate in the beta.

The last beta date was posted 8/29. We have been working on a MR for version 9 for the past couple of weeks. It takes longer because we have to make sure all the problems we fix in version 9 are also getting fixed in version 10 as well. Hopefully the version 9 MR will be posted very soon. It has been 11 months since the last version 9 MR, so there are a number of issues including small changes made to the W2 & W3 for 2006 and changes to check layouts for canadian customers as well.

[stpaulser]

This is a new feature that has been added to version 10. Signup for the beta if you need access to this now and help us make sure the feature is working correctly. The beta period is quickly coming to a close and we are working as hard as we can to make sure the program is as stable as possible.

You said this feature has been added.... but not where. Looking for a way to pick out those who have not yet returned pledge cards for 2007 in a mailing list format.

Thanks, Linda - St. Paul's Episcopal

[Jeff]

In PC+ 10 go to Contributions -> Create Mailmerge file -> Non-pledging Contributors.

[soozr1]

I was very excited to see this thread and tried the Contributions>Mail Merge>Non-Pledging Contributors option. So I tried it and I got a txt file with people in it that DO pledge. I ran it for this year, and they have pledges in for this year, and I ran it for our general operating fund, and I even narrowed it to active members just to make sure I wasn't confusing the issue.

Any ideas?

[NeilZ]

I was very excited to see this thread and tried the Contributions>Mail Merge>Non-Pledging Contributors option. So I tried it and I got a txt file with people in it that DO pledge. I ran it for this year, and they have pledges in for this year, and I ran it for our general operating fund, and I even narrowed it to active members just to make sure I wasn't confusing the issue.

Any ideas?

Hmm ... I just did a test. If you have the dates setup from the beginning of the year, to the current day (which is the default) you'll get the full list of contributors to that fund.

If you change the dates from Jan 1st, to Dec 31st of the year, that will filter out the pledges from the non-pledges.

I suspect the logic in the report checks to see what the beginning and end dates of the pledge periods are as entered in the dialog box.