Pledges are Coming!

I'm excited to report that a pretty full-featured 'phase 1' set of Pledge functionality is well on it's way to being completed and will be a part of the 2.1 release. This will fill in a significant hole in the overall CiviCRM feature-set. Phase 1 will include the following functionality:

• Record pledges received from contributors. This includes pledges for a one-time gift and pledges with regular payments spread out over a period of time.
• Send pledge acknowledgments with payment schedules.
• Generate payment schedules for multi-payment pledges.
• Automatically send one or more pledge payment reminders.
• Record payments received by check, EFT, etc. AND/OR submit payments via credit / debit card on behalf of contributors (if a payment processor is configured for your site).
• Pledge "Dashboard" provides a quick summary of expected and overdue pledge payments for various periods.

The above features are all focused on "back office" pledge management. We are also shooting to include some self-service pledge functionality - dependent on time and resources. I'll blog more about this later in the week. We're also considering the best approach to integrating the new "CiviPledge" component with CiviContribute. Should it have it's own top-level menu item? Should Pledges and Contributions be displayed on separate tabs when viewing a contact record? Or should both be listed under the Contributions tab? Want to learn more and then give us some feedback?

• Try out the "CiviPledge" features "in progress" on the public sandbox:
  • Review the Pledge Summary on the CiviPledge Dashboard to see the types of info you can get with one click.
  • Click the + Payments link for one of the "sample Pledges" in the Recent Pledges listing on the Dashboard. This is our first implementation of Ajax-driven drill-down listings - and it's pretty cool IMHO (claps for Kurund).
  • Check out Find Pledges (search feature).
• Check out the data model and an overview of features
• Read the issue tracker specifications:
  • Dashboard
  • Creating and editing pledges
  • Recording pledge payments
  • Updating pledge statuses and sending payment reminders

  Comments

  This is an essential feature for us to fully integrate all our membership management into CiviCRM. This is wonderful to find moved forward in the roadmap!!