Overview:
Donor challenges are giving "challenges" that are designed to encourage potential donors to give, as there are incentives such as recognition from the donor challenge, and matching donations so their original donation goes farther. Donor challenges actually refer to two different scenarios:
1. An external donor challenge is when a donor pledges (in the form of a Conditional Pledge) to match other donors' giving up to a specified amount. For example, a donor pledges to give a certain amount, but also conditionally pledges to match 1:1 any other donors until an additional specified amount is raised.
2. The university can also set up its own internal donor challenge to incentivize donors to give. A common example would be the Presidential Match. The Office of the President sets aside funds to match donors when they meet certain criteria such as matching 1:2 for first-time donors to student support.
In BusinessObjects, the donor challenge giving information is all located in the "Donor Challenge" table. Below is an example pulling general information about a donor challenge using the fields.
Note: Most of the donor challenge processes are manually maintained in DART. Which gifts qualify and for how much is done manually. This may make it difficult to build reports on the process that consistently match the numbers in the Donor Challenge section of DART.
The top level folder of Donor Challenge contains the information related to the various donor challenges. Below is the data relating to the Michigan Matching Initiative for Student Support. Starting in FY14 through FY20, $25,000,000 has been set aside to match donations from $100,000 to $1,000,000 at 25% (Ie. Donation of $100,000 will be matched with $25,000, donation of $1,000,000 or more will receive a maximum of $250,000.) University policy is that the match-maximum is based on the constituent. A single donor giving a $750,000 gift and then a $500,000 will gift will receive a maximum of $250,000. Pledges will be matched, but must be paid off within 5years.
There are two gift statuses that are important in differentiating whether the donor challenge fund has actually matched a donation:
Encumbered: Gifts that are pledges cause the donor challenge fund to set aside enough money to match. This set-aside amount is considered "Encumbered". Once the pledge payments are made, the amount switches to being officially "Matched.
Matched: Gifts that are straight payments are automatically matched by the donor challenge. Also, as previously mentioned, pledge payments cause encumbered funds to change into being matched.
Report Location:
Public Folders\UM-Maintained\Development\DART Development Reports by Category\Revenue Reports\
Donor Challenge Information