This is the new policy I've come up with for entering United Way pledges. Please let me know what you think.

For all pledges made to us through United Way: When we receive notice of the pledge, I create an individual record for the donor in RE, then enter the full amount as an "Other" gift. If requested, I send an acknowledgment thanking them for their pledge.

For pledges made to us through the Local Campaign: Since we received a report with the pledges for this campaign, breaking down how much the payments were and how much is deducted for processing fees, I think I can enter the master pledge for these on the UW record, then attribute each payment to them until they are fulfilled (If I'm wrong about this, please let me know).  So I enter the pledge on the UW record MINUS the processing fees, and WITHOUT soft crediting anyone.

 For pledges made to us through the Public Sector Campaigns (CMC, CUNY, and SEFA): Since we do not receive a report with these, we would not be able to tell how much of each check is attributed to each pledge. Therefore, I do not enter the master pledges for these on the UW record, and just enter enter each check (all three of these campaigns come to us in one check) without soft crediting anyone.

 I hope this makes sense, and I would very much appreciate your feedback. Thank you.

I am remembering how we did it at my old job (2 years ago), and it was very much the same.  We put the United Way pledge amount for each individual on their personal record, full amount, as "Other".   We thanked each and every one for remembering to designate us throught their UWS gift.  No tax language as the gift was really made to UWS.   Then I would book the amount of the entire pledge, subtrackting the 17% in fees and uncollectable first.  Then as the 5 checks  were received from UWS they go against the pledge booked on the main record.  If all went well, we would have over estimated the 17% and the final gift would be more than the pledge, thus no write off.  Once we thanked the donors, we did not touched their records in connection to their UWS designated gifts again that year.  We did not pay attendtion to if and/or when their specific gift was covered by the UWS checks.   As the "Other" gifts were excluded from reports, we only reported/counted the main pledge. 

Gifts from other non-local UWS were counted as cash gifts.  Again if I am remembering correctly, we only had a few of these and for the most part, we had no addresses on the donors. 

I think there is another thread about these types of gifts somewhere - but this is how we've handled them (Be very careful that none of these Untied way donors get IRS receipts from you - they did not give to you - they gave to the United Way which is a Charity all on it's own - and never count these soft credits as revenue to your org)

We put the Checks from the United Way on the United Way account and receipt the United Way. We soft-credit all the donors the United Way should be including with each check they send you. I send soft credit thank you letters to these donors (no dollar amount mentioned - not tax receipts - no irs language) I never enter the pledges that the United Way informs me of because the donors can renig on those pledges and you absolutely would not want those to be on your bad debt ratio. Until we have received the actual money from the United Way - we don't process anything.

Megan,  What you described sounds exactly like what we do provided that (as has been stated already) the acknowledgement to the individuals fromt he "Other" gift does not include receipt language and clearly states that they gave to united way and designaged to you.

Good Morning Laurel.  I wanted to ask your opinion/suggestion on how to best handle my scenario.  Normally, if United Ministries receives a gift from an United Way agency and it's specifically designated from one donor, I would enter the actual gift onto the UW record and soft credit the donor who has designated their gift to come to our organization.  However, the gift I currently have is still one gift; however, the amount of the check received from UW is different than the actual designated gift amount because of the fees involved in processing, admin., etc..  United Way does not want tp be acknowledged, receipted, or anything, however, the donor does want to receive an acknowledgement of their gift.  Currently, we don't have a letter specifically for "soft credit" gifts that have no mention of $$ amount, irs language, etc...  I want to make sure I set this up correctly, where I am acknowledging the amount given to us by UW, as well as acknowledging the pledged/paid gift from the designated donor. 

Thanks for any insight you can provide.