How to enter spouses, partners...

SheryAnne Wui

What is recommended and/or experienced in entering spouses and/or partners? Do you enter each individual as a constituent and create the relationship? Or do you combine both individuals into one constituent record.



Thank you!

Holly Herbert

Hi SherryAnne! Did you have a chance to check out this conversation about spouses/partners and constiuent records? I think it might help. 

Christine Robertson

Please, please, please do not enter more than one person in the name fields of an individual record.  Whether or not you want to enter two constituent records or a constituent with a non-constituent relationship, that is best decided based upon the needs of your organization.  But, creating a "double header" of Mr. & Mrs. John & Jane Smith is a HORRIBLE practice.  It will make running your dupliacte searches harder, it will make your addressee/salutations more complicated than they need to be and it will just plain end up messy.  Just my $.02.

Jairus Landolt

I split them, keeping them in the same file causes lots of problems I find, especially since most people donate only under one name, causes many more duplicates than necessary in the system.

SheryAnne Wui

Holly Herbert:

Hi SherryAnne! Did you have a chance to check out this conversation about spouses/partners and constiuent records? I think it might help. 

Thanks! had no idea... I'll definitely read this.

SheryAnne Wui

Christine McMinn:

Please, please, please do not enter more than one person in the name fields of an individual record.  Whether or not you want to enter two constituent records or a constituent with a non-constituent relationship, that is best decided based upon the needs of your organization.  But, creating a "double header" of Mr. & Mrs. John & Jane Smith is a HORRIBLE practice.  It will make running your dupliacte searches harder, it will make your addressee/salutations more complicated than they need to be and it will just plain end up messy.  Just my $.02.

I'm with the practice of single records per individual. But the dept. is split. so, I'm going to read the earlier thread and hopefully gain a better understanding. Thank you!

Jackie Cistaro

I think it depends on the needs of the organization, but for the one I'm currently in, we try to keep everyone in one record...so Mrs. Jane Smith has her record and Mr. John Smith is the non-constituent spouse.  We typically don't add a lot of new constituents, but we need to keep track of gifts for our annual appeal, so for us having less spouse records to deal with makes it's easier. In our situation, we get gifts per family or couple.(we're a private school),  That said if we do have some people split, we always assign a head-of-household.



--Jackie Cistaro

Golda Och Academy