Hi, everyone -
I'm curious about how other organizations handle memorial gifts. For a while we were entering these on the donor's account with a soft credit to the account of a surviving spouse or family member, which worked beautifully for acknowledgments, but we stopped doing the soft credit because of the clutter and confusion it created on the creditee's contribution history and membership record. (Not such a problem if we're talking about one or two gifts, but in some cases we receive dozens.) Current practice is a straight gift on the donor's account, with a note that includes information about who to send the family notification to. This keeps the records cleaner, but you lose the advantages of the soft credit for acknowledging and tracking. I'm not quite satisfied either way.
So... does anyone have a better way of handling these? What brilliant solution am I missing??
Thanks in advance for any and all ideas!
Sarah
We do basically the same here. We create a new source for each honoree under an ongoing "Endowment" campaign and appeal. The gift is entered on the donor's account with a soft credit to the honoree (and yes, we create a new account for the deceased if necessary), an honor/memorial designation, and in the note section record something like "In Memory of Mr X (id#) from Jim (id#)" with any special instructions for the person who sending the acknowledgment. This particular campaign isn't tied to any memberships.
We don't get them all that often, but when we do there's usually dozens for a particular person.