Policies
Paid Plan Required: This Gift Processing feature is only available to organizations on Chariot Growth and Enterprise plans
Donation Policies allow your organization to automate repetitive gift processing workflows inside Chariot. Instead of manually coding every incoming donation, Policies can automatically apply:
Constituents
Campaigns
Funds
Appeals
Sources
Assignments
Workflow Statuses
Custom Properties
As your organization processes more gifts across more payment sources, Policies help standardize operations, reduce manual review work, and keep donation data consistently formatted for downstream systems like your CRM and ERP.
Step 1: Create A New Policy
Go to Policies → New Policy
Policies start as Drafts, allowing your team to safely prepare and test changes before publishing them live. Only one Policy can be Active at a time. Your Active Policy automatically runs on all newly arriving donations.
Step 2: Describe Your Workflow
Use the Policy editor to describe (in plain language) the operational logic you want Chariot to apply.
“If @purpose contains scholarship, set @fund to SCHOLAR”
“If Payment Source is Benevity, set @gift_type to Workplace Giving”
“If amount is greater than $10,000, set @review_status to Needs Review”
Policies work best when instructions are specific and clearly define:
The condition or trigger
The action to apply
Avoid broad instructions like "code gifts appropriately"
Use @ to reference donation fields, deposit fields, and custom Properties directly inside your instructions. The Reference Panel shows all available fields your Policy can reference.
Step 3: Add Custom Properties
Policies can automatically update custom Properties. If you want a Policy to update a new Property:
Create the Property from the Donations page
The Property will appear in the Reference Panel
You can reference and update it inside your Policy logic
Step 4: Upload Reference Files
Policies can reference uploaded files during processing. This is useful for workflows like:
Constituent matching
Internal code mapping
Campaign lookups
Keyword matching against large datasets
For example:
“Using CRM_Constituents.csv, match incoming donors by name, address, or city. If there is a match, set Constituent ID using the Constituent ID column.”
Step 5: Connect Your CRM
If your organization uses Salesforce or Raiser’s Edge NXT, reach out to Chariot to learn about direct CRM integrations. Instead of uploading reference files manually, Chariot’s Policy engine can securely pull context directly from your CRM to support.
These integrations are read-only and used exclusively to improve Policy-based coding and enrichment workflows. Chariot does not write or sync data back into your CRM through these integrations.
Step 6: Publish Your Policy
Once your rules are ready, publish the Policy to make it active for all new incoming donations.
Step 7: Test Using Enrichment
After publishing, you can select historical donations and run Enrichment to test how the Policy behaves on existing records.
While your Active Policy automatically runs on new incoming donations, Enrichment is used when you want to retroactively apply new logic, update historical records, or backfill workflow data.
Manual Values Are Protected: Enrichment does not overwrite values entered manually by your team. However, Enrichment may replace values that were previously applied by another Policy run. This helps organizations safely update automated workflows without losing manual review work.
Step 8: Reviewing Policy Results
Every donation in Chariot includes an Activity Log that shows how Policies interacted with the record over time. The Activity Log helps teams:
Understand why coding was applied
Troubleshoot unexpected workflow behavior
Validate enrichment runs
Audit operational changes over time
This creates a detailed operational history for every donation processed through Chariot.
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