One of our donors passed away and left some money for us in his will. I received half of the payment - should I attach it to his record even though he and his wife are dead and technically inactive? Or should I create a new constituent record associated with the lawyer's office? I'm also not sure if I should create a pledge or just wait for the 2nd payment since we're unsure of the total amount.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!Sarah
Thanks everyone for the insight. I can't seem to change the constituent type (and neither can our system administrator) to estate of so I'm thinking of creating a separate record of the attorneys office, coding the gift to them, setting up the association between the two and then soft crediting it as a bequest to the deceased individual's inactive record. This way it will still appear on individual giving reports as we don't have a planned giving program set up in Tessitura. Any thoughts?
Thanks again,Sarah
Sarah,
I think you should do what fits in best with your company's business practices. If you only have the two constituent types: Individual and Organization you could change the account to Organization but I would probably check to see what types of accounts in your database fall into that category first. If you do create a separate account for the attorney's office, I would be inclined to make that an Organziation account.
Also, you might want to check to see where your finance department wants the bequest to go. We have ours go to a specific GL which is different from our individual giving GL. For that reason we have all Planned Gifts like bequests go to their own fund and campaign.
Dale