When a tribute gift is made to a tribute that I have set up already it is creating a new tribute how do I prevent this

Heidi Ball

Rose Lamphere

I am having the same issue, did you ever get resolution?

Heidi Ball

No and it is still happening! It's very frustrating to have to delete the new tribute/memorial and then link the gift to the original one. It should just go to the one that I created!

Steve MacLaughlin

Heidi tmp:
No and it is still happening! It's very frustrating to have to delete the new tribute/memorial and then link the gift to the original one. It should just go to the one that I created!

I'll look into this and will follow-up with some additional information.

Rose Lamphere

Heidi, I hear you! Steve, thank you for looking into this.

Amy Stubbings

I have this issue as well. It seems to be happening (limited experience with Online Express - started 10/23/14 and it's still ongoing) because I have a description in my tributes and there isn't one online that they can choose - or they aren't choosing it. Even when I go back, edit the new one that's created, and go back to process the gift, it creates an additional tribute.



Do we have any updates since May 2014?

Chris Martin

Hi Amy. I went ahead and created a support case and an analyst will be reaching out to you directly to get to the bottom of why this is happening. If it's just a workflow or procedural thing that you need to do differently (or a product update we need to make), I'll update this thread so others can benefit from the info.



Thanks Amy.

Melody Esposito

We are researching moving from NC to OLX. Was this issue ever resolved in OLX?

Chris Martin

I just tested this and I'm not seeing what was reported. Here's how my test went:


1. Start with a constituent with an existing tribute on his/her constit record

2. Configure an OLX form to allow a few choices for types of honor/memorial gift

3. Make a gift in honor of the constituent noted above

4. When processing the gift, press F7 in the tribute linking section

5. Choose the honoree in the "Linked Tribute Information" section and choose the existing tribute from the drop-down

6. Save, process the gift, and commit the batch


This did not create a new tribute on the constituent's record. Is anyone seeing different behavior here?

Heidi Ball

This email made me look at some gifts that have been received in honor of someone in the last month and low and behold I found a second tribute on his record. This has been going on for a few years now with nothing corrected and it is still happening here. 

Nicki Rix

We are dealing with this same issue. - If you have anything in the tribute's description field, a new tribute will be created and you don't know this has happened until after-the-fact. To prevent this duplication from occuring in the future, we are going to delete all tribute descriptions and hope this works.

In the meantime, does anyone know how to merge these duplicate tribute types? 

Steph Williams

We are also still experiencing duplication issues.

Chris Martin

Hopefully this clarification helps some. I think what is happening is that when you are in the Link Tribute Information screen in RE:




when you type a new description as seen above (the "Here is a new description" field), you're effectively telling RE to create a new tribute with that description. I don't believe you can simultaneously tell RE to use a pre-existing tribute for the gift you're in the middle of processing and also change the description of that pre-existing tribute.


This illustrates it further. If I have an honor/memorial constituent who has these tributes on her record in RE:




and then if I receive a gift honoring this constituent, in the OLX transaction grid I click the Find Tributes button. In the Link Tribute Information screen, if I type in a new description (item #1 below), then in the middle section, when I choose the person being honored/memorialized and then look in the Tribute drop-down list (item #2):




Notice how a new tribute with my new description is added as a choice in the list. Here, my choices are:


A. Choose the new tribute with my new description, in which case a new tribute will be added to the honoree's record

B. Choose the pre-existing tribute (with whatever tribute description it already had), in which case no new tribute will be added


Hopefully that helps!