Couples and Records

Stephanie Soles

Hello - I am trying to figure out the best way to deal with couples in Raiser's Edge.



I have several constituent records with spouses having their own record. Most of this is due to the couple being board or committee members together and they get their own record (at least that is how its been done). But when creating mailing lists' we either need to know the couples or we will be mailing to the same household twice and its getting really old and takes waaaaay too much time.



So....I wanted to see what everyone else does for this issue if you have it. I was thinking of making one record inactive and changing the salutation to reflect the two of them but I am not sure how much that will work in the long run. Any tips/tricks or feedback would be greatly appreciated!!!



Thanks!



Stephanie

Connie Evans

we utilize head of household and just pull one donor in

Carolyn Moatz

If you have them linked as spouses, and use export, you can set it to only include head of household, or first constituent found, to avoid duplicates. You will have to have addressees that reflect both of them. We have a Joint Married Alums addressee to reflect that, and choose that as the first option, with primary addressee as the second when we run mailing lists.

Jenny Norton

We use a combined addressee and combined salutation down in the Additional Addresses and Salutations section for constituents married to constituents.  This is where it would be the Mr. and Mrs. So-in-So.  When you do your letters, you can click on the addressee and salutation options under fields to include and tell it to use the combined addressee otherwise primary addressee.  I've attached print screens if it works.



Jenny

Patti Hommes, bCRE-PRO

I swear by the Head of Household option in Export, using a couples addressee and salutation! 

Janices Brown

We use an Attribute "No mail -  receives with spouse" which we use to omit constituents from mailings.

John Heizer

Constituent Export to Excel also lets you choose how to treat coupled and Head of Household.

Jessica Taylor

Great question! This is how we do it: Only spouses who register for events or take classes are given a constituent record, otherwise they are just listed as a spouse and their Addressee and Salutation are adjusted. If they are made a constituent, we click make them a constituent and then open their record via the main record and click on the general tab and make sure "soft credit spouse for all gifts" is unmarked, as we want all the gifts on one record unless they register for an event themselves. We then use the arrow key at the top to go to their reocrd and mark them off all mailings (under solicit codes) including renewals, catalogs and events. When we pull files for mail, we do NOT use name under constituent (which only gives you the constituent name), but Primary Addressee, which gives us both names. We will also pull last name, and use the sort function for last name, primary addressee and go as far as to double check addresses, once in a while to make sure we are not duplicating. Not sure if this is all clear, but that's what we do. Love to hear how others are handling this!

Karen Stuhlfeier

Export and Mail do an excellent job of handling head of household records. When spouses are linked correctly there is no need to check for duplicate mailings. I really prefer that all spouses have their own records. For me it's easier than trying to decide who gets one and who doesn't. I've also never come across spouses at any of the organizations that I've worked at who want separate gift records so I automatically soft credit spouses for gifts and RE does a great job of handling those too. You just have to know what you're asking for and what you want when you run reports, exports or mailings.

Jessica Taylor

We don't spend the time and effort on adding every spouse, as there is just no reason to or to credit all the gifts when they are on their main record. Personally I'd love to see RE manage households and individuals, but alas you do what you can and work around it. I find mail works well with dups, but it doesn't always capture everything. We are fairly new to RE, only been using it since mid-2012 and our conversion was a nightmare. We have a limited staff too, and not a lot of time to invest in trainings, but these community posts have been vital to understanding the systems and how to use them better. It's nice to know when you are on track and also how you do things a little different. Thanks the nice thing, is it can be configured so many ways with various levels of success or downfall. Thanks everyone!

JoAnn Strommen

I agree with Patti, Karen and others that RE if used correctly, Export and HOH, do fine at pulling correct mailing list.  I can't imagine marking them as 'inactive'  or removing from mailing lists - to me that's a mess down the road as there's no notes with those solicit codes for why they are marked that way.



Jessica - for your consideration on adding spouses.  If your appeal comes to my husband and I write the check and respond to appeal, I would expect that my name be added to his for receipt and future correspondence.  You can also be losing potential gifts by not having spouse info with the name you have is deceased. We keep our communication and appeals going to the living spouse.  Just a couple things to consider.

Jessica Taylor

Ummm... I am not sure where you got that we don't add the spouses at all? We always list spouses and address both donors in their acknowledgements and soliciations. Was that not clear?  We do not make all spouses constituents, as there is no reason to unless they participate in said classes, or events. When we do make a spouse a constituent, we do mark them off mailers---it isn't a no mail ever, as we want them to get their event or class mail, but the household will be the only one that recieves catalogs, renewals, appeals.  As far as marking them off mail, it really is quite simple with no confusion as to why they are because they are linked to their spouses. Sounds like we are doing this like others on here too, but they use an attribute and we use the no mail types under our solicit codes. As far as deceased folks, I didn't comment on that, but of course the spouse becomes head of household and continues to be mailed. Just confused where you got that, but I am not following the thread closely either. Thanks for the feedback. Hope this clarifies this!

Jessica Taylor

Side note: Mail does well with HOH, but if your spouses are not linked, it will not work. So we always double check our files to make sure entry happened correctly --as some of it is manually entered, some through Importamatic, some through Netcommunity, Sphere...and those cross over platforms don't always catch everything, especially if it is a new address or if you have new people doing entry who just don't know the platform or the donors. Also when donors enter their info, it can present problems. We don't find a lot of mistakes, but we do find them when the entry is not correct, so I wouldn't rely on just the mail function.  

JoAnn Strommen

"We don't spend the time and effort on adding every spouse, as there is just no reason to..."



I didn't say you don't add any spouses.  By your posts on this thread it's obvious you do.  My comments were in response to the statement above that you made.  Each org is different but to me adding the spouse when I have the info is important.  That's just our procedure.  No offense intended.

Jessica Taylor

No offense taken at all....What I meant by that was we don't take the ime or effort to add them as constituents...that is where I was unclear. My bad.

Stephanie Soles

Thank you all so much for your helpful tips! I think I can manage it alot better now - at least better than it was!



Stephanie

Amanda Kostyk

Patti Hommes:

I swear by the Head of Household option in Export, using a couples addressee and salutation! 

Afternoon Patti,


How do you run your class participation reports properly as there is no head of household option in the reporting side of things??


I am running into this issue and am sure there's a way around it somehow - I am manually having to go through the lists and modify the numbers.


Thanks for any input in advance!

Amanda Kostyk

Balmoral Hall School