Hello All--
We are looking to standardize our methods of applying contributions across the myriad of ways to contribute to our organization. There are several ways we have shown these in the past, and they've made messy records. Does anyone know of a Tess training document, or can you lead us to a document that recommends certain actions for certain contributions?
Example:
- We have a donor who has contributed through the Smith Family Fund of the Blah Blah Family Foundation. In the past, we have credited the Family Fund, credited the Family Foundation, or credited the individual with no thought to the messy record.
- Ideally, we're looking for a document that tells us something like this for several contribution types: credit the Individual with a soft credit to the Fund within the Family Foundation.
Thanks very much for any and all feedback!
Hi Liz,
To address your specific question - we have a few donors who contribute via the XXX Family Fund within The Cleveland Foundation. In this case the contribution is entered on the Cleveland Foundation account (with a note that it's the XXX Family Fund) and soft-credited to the donor - we're ok with not having a separate account for the family fund within the CF. If it's payment of an existing pledge on the donor's account, that pledge is adjusted to zero.
We have other cases where a fund within the Cleveland Foundation gives as it's own entity, not on behalf of a specific individual or the Cleveland Foundation. In this case, the gift is entered on the Fund's separate account as a foundation gift and soft-credited to the Cleveland Foundation.
To answer your larger question - the Tessitura documentation covers the mechanics of gift entry, but I think the "who/how/why" of soft-crediting depends on your organization's business practices and tracking/reporting needs.
If it would help, I'd be happy to share the gift entry manual I compiled when I started here - previously every division was entering their own gifts and one of my responsibilities was to consolidate and standardize the process. It's specific to our way (not necessarily the "easy" or "right" way . . . ) of doing things, but it could still be useful.