Giving, in depth

The Giving page is a read-only view. The parish takes gifts through its online giving provider, PushPay. The page shows a copy of those gift records, with a Last synced time and a Refresh button. A new or changed gift can take a day to appear. The page is not a tax record. The contribution statement in January is the official record.

A parishioner sees only their own family's giving. A guest account has no Giving page. When a staff member views the app as a parishioner, the Giving page stays hidden, so staff cannot read a family's gifts that way.

• Recorded giving: each gift with its fund, amount, date and payment type, and a total.
• Scheduled gifts: each recurring gift with its amount, frequency, payment type and next date.
• Pledge progress: the total pledged, the amount paid, and the balance that remains.

A family changes a recurring gift in PushPay, not in the parish app. Staff load gift records from a PushPay export. The loader reads each transaction once, so a second load of the same file does not duplicate a gift.

A capital campaign pledge is a promise, not a payment. The pledge form is open to anyone, signed in or not. A donor gives contact details, a total, a start date, a payment frequency and a term of one, two or three years. The donor can ask to stay anonymous and choose a recognition name. The donor must accept that a pledge is an estimate.

When the donor submits:

1. The server links the pledge to a parishioner record by email, then phone, then last name and ZIP code. A pledge always saves, even with no match.
2. The server sets a recognition tier from the total: Supporter, Provider, Benefactor, Patron or Leader.
3. The donor sees a confirmation reference and a link to PushPay, where the donor sets up the gifts.

A signed-in donor opens the form again and sees the current pledge. A new total cannot be lower than the amount already received. The parish keeps every older version. If the system cannot tell whether a submission is new or an update, it flags the pledge for staff.

Staff with the Giving role open a pledge queue. It lists pledges with no match or with a flag. For each pledge, staff can do one of three things:

• Link the pledge to a person record.
• Anonymize the pledge. This clears the donor's contact details and keeps the recognition name.
• Mark the pledge as fraud. The pledge leaves all totals, and the row stays for audit.

A second tab lists revised pledges. A third tab holds up to 20 alert addresses. Each address gets an email when a donor creates a pledge, revises one, or sends one that needs review. The parish keeps a record of every change to that list.