Donor Recogniton Name

Cary Burns

Is it possible to have a seperate Donor Recogniton name per gift instead of per record?  I have a faithful donor who has sent a check and wants two others listed as being reponsible for the gift as well as himself.  If I use the Donor Recogniton field on the Addressee/Salutation tab, won't that change the Donor Recognition name for the entire record?  I want to be sure that they are listed correctly in our Annual Report.

JoAnn Strommen

Cary Burns:

Is it possible to have a seperate Donor Recogniton name per gift instead of per record?  I have a faithful donor who has sent a check and wants two others listed as being reponsible for the gift as well as himself.  If I use the Donor Recogniton field on the Addressee/Salutation tab, won't that change the Donor Recognition name for the entire record?  I want to be sure that they are listed correctly in our Annual Report.

Some orgs record their donor  recognition as a gift attribute.  That does allow for a different listing for each gift they make. 

Other orgs use add/sal type.  That is what we do. (love auto fill vs. having to manually enter every name in attributes.)  And yes changing it will change it for the record.  RE seems to default to limiting one of each add/sal type per record.

Possible options:

• Add a second recognition add/sal like Donor recogntion 2 - use when needed and export for your donors lists
• Using editable option, put in an entry for donor recognition like SEE NOTE FIELD - SPECIAL LISTING.  Record donorr's requested recogntion listings as Note on record.
• Using editable option, put an "*" and list all desired listings.  Then when generating the list, separate the listings.  I've don't this for a constituent with personal gift and honorariums.  (We don't have tribute module)

There may be more options - that's just what came to mind now.

Cuyler Smith

Cary Burns:

Is it possible to have a seperate Donor Recogniton name per gift instead of per record?  I have a faithful donor who has sent a check and wants two others listed as being reponsible for the gift as well as himself.  If I use the Donor Recogniton field on the Addressee/Salutation tab, won't that change the Donor Recognition name for the entire record?  I want to be sure that they are listed correctly in our Annual Report.

We faced almost the exact same situation as you Cary, and chose to go with the gift attribute, rather than the add/sal type.  We were keeping an external Excel spreadsheet, outside of Raiser's Edge, as a workaround, and had to use this Excel spreadsheet whenever we printed donor recognition names in pamphlets or letters.  It was very error-prone, and it was a pain, to say the least! 

 

The gift attribute method has worked well for us, BUT...as a warning, there are compromises to both methods (Add/Sal vs. Gift Attribute), so spend the time to research each method thoroughly. While making my decision I used this forum to help figure out which way to proceed and some of the ramifications associated with choosing either method.

 

In an effort to help you out, I'll give you a quick idea of what we chose to do, and how we did it:  To create a gift attribute in Raiser's Edge that would be suitable for our organization I went into Configuration -> Attributes -> Gift and then created a new gift attribute called "Donor Name" of Data Type "Text".  This created a gift attribute that allows the user to enter the donor's recognition name (via free form text) on a per gift basis.  We enter the 'unique' donor's name in the description field, and enter the date that the name was entered into the Date field.  We typically leave the comments field blank on the gift attribute, but it is available, should it be necessary. 

Like you've noticed, a gift attribute is nice in that you can have one or more donor names linked to a specific gift.  The issue we have is that we have donors whose reference to themselves changes/morphs, depending on the gift.  For example, in a relatively short time span (months or years) we can get the same donor (let's call him John Smith for this example) wanting to refer to themselves as John Smith, John Smith and Family, John Smith and Friends, etc., even though the gift is from the same John Smith on each occasion.  With the Gift Attribute, we simply enter the atypical name(s) that the donor has used to refer to him/herself or the name they wish to be recognized with.  It is very, very important to note that we still use the Addr/Sal type for the donor's traditional name (aka John Smith)...the gift attribute is only used when a name is significantly different that what is found in the Addr/Sal type.  For example, John Smith and Friends, or John Smith and Family.  We don't want the gift attribute to be a dumping ground for all donor names, just the names that are out of the ordinary or the Addr/Salu type cannot handle in a straightforward manner.    

 

Some things to think about when choosing the gift attribute method are:

* How are my reports/letters going to be affected?  We found out the hard way that gift attributes are not available in the Donor Ack. Letters as a field when you are generating letters on a per tribute basis (we have the RE Tribute module).  I figured out a way around this (using some tricky Excel/Word workarounds) to generate Donor Ack. letters to get the gift attribute donor name field into the letters and functioning as expected.  However, you still have to make sure you go through the RE Mail Donor Ack. Letter merge process in order to be able to mark the acknowledgee's as acknowledged.  For us, the benefit outweighed the cost and the system has been working great.

 

* How will I be using these donor names?  You need to figure out how and where you will be using these donor names in Raiser's Edge.  This will determine what method (gift attribute vs. Addr/Sal type) you go with.

 

* Include/Exclude attributes does not work with gift attributes as we have them set up.  Because we are entering in the donor's name(s) as the Description field in the Donor Name gift attribute, many of the RE Reports' Include/Exclude by attribute to no function, because we are using Free form text.  If it was a dropdown/list, it would be fine, but then you would have a separate dropdown/list entry for each name variation, which is ridiculous and not recommended.

 

*Don't be afraid to try both methods and see which method works best.  

 

Hope this helps!

Nina Williams

Cary Burns:

Is it possible to have a seperate Donor Recogniton name per gift instead of per record?  I have a faithful donor who has sent a check and wants two others listed as being reponsible for the gift as well as himself.  If I use the Donor Recogniton field on the Addressee/Salutation tab, won't that change the Donor Recognition name for the entire record?  I want to be sure that they are listed correctly in our Annual Report.

We use the address/sal type.  However, we do have a couple of people who have different names for different gifts.  I actually make a note on their record but do something a bit old fashioned.   I have a manila folder with paper in it.  It is my donor recognition "Problem" folder.   I add these people there and after pulling the Annual Report Recognition List I double check this folder and make appropriate changes.  It works!  I haven't missed one in the 8 years I have been here.

Aldera Chisholm

Cary Burns:

Is it possible to have a seperate Donor Recogniton name per gift instead of per record?  I have a faithful donor who has sent a check and wants two others listed as being reponsible for the gift as well as himself.  If I use the Donor Recogniton field on the Addressee/Salutation tab, won't that change the Donor Recognition name for the entire record?  I want to be sure that they are listed correctly in our Annual Report.

We generally use soft credits for this purpose - hard credit to the actual donor, soft credit to the person who inspired the gift, for example when Bob gives in honour of Mary's birthday, we hard credit Bob and soft credit Mary.

Cary Burns

JoAnn Strommen:

Some orgs record their donor  recognition as a gift attribute.  That does allow for a different listing for each gift they make. 

Other orgs use add/sal type.  That is what we do. (love auto fill vs. having to manually enter every name in attributes.)  And yes changing it will change it for the record.  RE seems to default to limiting one of each add/sal type per record.

Possible options:

• Add a second recognition add/sal like Donor recogntion 2 - use when needed and export for your donors lists
• Using editable option, put in an entry for donor recognition like SEE NOTE FIELD - SPECIAL LISTING.  Record donorr's requested recogntion listings as Note on record.
• Using editable option, put an "*" and list all desired listings.  Then when generating the list, separate the listings.  I've don't this for a constituent with personal gift and honorariums.  (We don't have tribute module)

There may be more options - that's just what came to mind now.

Thank you for your suggestions!

Nicole S

Cary Burns:

Thank you for your suggestions!

 I do something a little similar to Nina, but instead of a folder of problems I make the AR listing "REFER TO NOTES" or something like that.