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
Hi Sarah,
We enter the gift in the donor's account with a source that lists the honor (such as Doe, John 75th birthday) and also note in the custom tab who is being honored. We do not soft credit or extend membership benefits to the tributee. Instead we add a hard association (when possible) with an enddate and have the following recipricol association types:
Tributee-Hon and Tributor-Hon
Tributee-Mem and Tributor-Mem
This assists us when we get a lot of gifts for one person and want to notify the family of the donors who gave in memory or honor; it also makes it easier to look at an account to see a history of hon/mem gifts.
T.C.