How to Track Planned Giving

1. Create a Contact Group to identify legacy donors. You can name it whatever you like, such as Planned Giver, Legacy Donor, or Bequestor.

Once created, go to the contact record and scroll down to the Groups, Interests, and Prospect Information section. In the Contact Groups subsection, click the pencil icon. A popup will appear displaying all active Contact Groups. Toggle on the Contact Groups you want to assign to that contact record, then Save your changes.

If you need help creating the Contact Group, please refer to the guide How to Create a Contact Group.

2. Use the Documents section of the contact record to upload important materials, such as signed agreements related to the legacy gift.

If you need help creating the adding a document, please refer to the guide How to Add a Document to a Contact Record.

3. Record the date the donor signed the agreement committing to leave a charitable contribution to your nonprofit, along with any other important details, in the contact record. There are three ways your nonprofit can choose to do this; we just strongly suggest staying consistent.

   
   
   1. Enter the information in the Summary section.
   2. Add it as a Note in the History tab.
   3. Store it in a custom field.

How to add information to the Summary section:

How to add a Note to the History tab:

4. If you know the estimated value of the planned gift, consider creating a custom text field or custom numeric field to track it. If the amount is unknown, you can leave this field blank or omit this step.

5. Create a drop-down custom field in the contact record to identify the type of financial vehicle used for the legacy gift.

If you need guidance with creating the custom field, please visit our guide Creating and Managing Custom Fields or How to Add a Dropdown Custom Field.

6. When a planned gift reaches maturity, record the gift in Eleo. When entering the gift, we recommend using the Gift Source field to track this by adding a custom option in settings. Many nonprofits create a "Recognized Planned Gift Received" option for this purpose.

If you need help adding a custom option, refer to the guide Setting Up and Using Gift Source.

7. Reporting on Planned Giving

• Filter by Contact Group: Retrieve a list of all legacy donors by filtering on the Contact Group you created. This filter can be applied in Contact, Donor, and Gift Reports.
• Filter by Gift Source: Use Gift Reports to track which planned gifts have been realized by filtering on the Gift Source field.
• Filter by custom fields: Use the Contact Report Writer to report on and filter by any custom fields you have added to contact records.
• Pull Contact and Gift Information: If you need to see both contact and gift details in a single report, use the Gift Report Writer.