This is very good news, but would be even better if recurring gifts to churches aren’t automatically recorded as a pledge and can be posted to reduce the balance of an annual pledge already entered.

Thanks Jordan,

We recognize additional Portal features (like household info, Small Groups, Events etc) are key areas of opportunity to drive additional functional and usability improvements. As you stated, those will not be capabilities included in the initial Portal release. At this time, we are unable to commit to certain timeframes for additional portal features beyond what has been communicated in the initial Portal release.

I'm not sure where expectations formed that we would have a "fully featured portal" already, as you described. We've tried to be very clear through the course of the Portal EAP and in our Product Update Briefings what you can expect to be included and what we plan to be focused on in the quarter and "next up" beyond that. Details beyond what we've shared in those forums we will communicate as we can but we try to stay agile and adapt to continued feedback from all of our customers.

Thanks,

Christopher Anderson
Senior Product Manager, Faith Solutions
Blackbaud

Thanks Christopher. Nancy has sent me information that she's been provided, however, the updates mentioned and visible are still very basic, lacking many of the necessary features in a congregant portal, such as being able to see household info (parents being able to see and update children's information), having access to small group information, classes and events they're registered for, etc.

I'd be happy to discuss this further with you either by phone, or directly over email. Essentially though, we'd just like to know when we can expect the portal to have all of the necessary features we had been led to believe would already be available.

Jordan and DeAnna,

As part of our Congregant Portal EAP I've been sending updates to Nancy Shippy (and the EAP Community) regarding the features we are working on finishing and including in our next phase, which is a Limited Availability rollout of the Congregant Portal. As was communicated in our last Product Update Briefing and in follow up EAP updates, this remains a top priority for us for Q1 of this year. Feel free to reach out to me via email if it would be helpful to set up a time to discuss in more detail.

Thanks!

Christopher Anderson
Senior Product Manager, Blackbaud
christopher.anderson@blackbaud.com

Yes, an ETA would be very helpful in knowing that it truly is a priority and not just part of a future bucket list.

Thanks Christopher. What is the timeline for rolling out a full featured Congregant Portal? That is a huge need for us!

Hey Jordan,

Thanks for the message. The ability for a congregant to create or cancel a recurring gift is part of the features that have been undergoing testing and feedback for the Congregant Portal EAP! So it is not that this feature request has been ignored, it is just part of a much bigger initial release of the Congregant Portal we are working on right now.

Thanks!

Christopher Anderson
Senior Product Manager, Blackbaud

Can we please get an update on this? Not having a place for users to log in to see this information without needing to download a separate app is a major issue. Per Luke's comment from February, this was supposed to be addressed no later than Q3 of 2020, but still nothing, and no further updates from BB. Please advise.

After nearly a year of promised updates on this, Blackbaud has yet to make improvements in this area and continues to ignore the request of the community to address this urgent need. Please take a moment to participate in this community topic related to a recent announcement that no changes will be made to giving until well into 2021. https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/535/52970

This is a little complicated. Mission Mobile creates a batch in web view. If it is a recurring transaction, it is posted to the gifts batch as a recurring transaction (which cannot be changed to cash) when the intention is to satisfy the pledge. Since pledge contributions need to be posted in data view this causes a real problem. The recurring transaction from web view, once approved, posts to the gifts database as a "recurring gift" that cannot be changed. The transaction needs to be "cash" to be applied to the pledge.

For all intended purposes, for recurring pledges, the whole Mobile Mission -> Batches -> Database cannot be used since there is no way to apply it as a pledge. Leaving them as recurring transactions doesn't reduce the pledge amount and converting the pledge to a recurring transaction (which is not what is it is) invalidates the purpose of tracking pledges.

This is a serious deficiency that didn't exist in Seraphim and IMHO need to be addressed ASAP. Furthermore, it is delaying our conversion from PushPay to BB Merchant Services.

Thank you in advance for looking at this.

Another great question. You can already access and control this information in the MobileMission app, and we are working on the online portal piece right now that enables users to login and manage that giving online.

May I ask what the plan will provide?  Will there be a constituent app or portal?

Great question! We are planning to have something available by the 3rd quarter of this year at the latest!

Thank you so much for responding. When you say it���s in the plan, do you anticipate that will happen in the next couple of months? Trying to figure out how we need to work around this for now.

Thanks!
Renee

We completely agree that there is a big need to allow users to be able to login online to view and manage their giving! This is on our road-map and we have a team dedicated to building this out.
We will update this idea when we have more information on timing.