Donor Retention - Include Soft Credits?

Heather Loebe

This might seem like a given, but I am continually stumped when it comes to the philosophy around soft credits and doing basically any reporting in RE.


When calculating Donor Retention Rates, do you include soft credits? I feel like the soft credits should be set to "Both" because we would want to include people who give through employee giving and other such circumstances where a donor would not have any hard credits. 


Any thoughts are appreciated! 

JoAnn Strommen

If you are using soft-credits strictly for crediting when it is the constituent has control/influence of the money - spouse, employee giving, possibly DAF, etc. then "yes" for donor retention rates I would use HC and SC. 


If your org uses it for all kinds of other things like a board member who asked for the gift, then no. From what I've read on the forums there are some 'unique' uses of SC that would really mess up accuracy of true donor retention. 


My opinion...

Heather Loebe

Thank you. For the most part, we have a typical use of SCs. We have been giving some SCs lately to trustees of Family Foundations and Donors that give through their companies. For the most part, however, we've SC people that give through employee giving.

Heather Loebe

I have another question in this vein...what about calculating Median Gift Size for a year? We get huge checks from employee giving campaigns that include several gifts, as I'm sure we all do. I don't think we would want to count the large check in the median. When calculating the median, how do you set the SC option? Thank you for your help!

Melissa S Graves

If you have huge checks from employee giving campaigns that are coming straight from the employer (and not via a corporate foundation, united way or other charity) then there is no reason to soft credit. Each of those gifts should be hard credited to the individuals. They are the ones getting the tax deduction so hard credit and receipt.

Faith Murray

Seconding Melissa's post. Cash from employee givng campaigns isn't like a matching gift - it comes from the employees directly, not from the employer.

Jeffrey Starrett

Thanks Krystian. I appreciate the time you took to get back to me. This helps a bit.

But we aren't looking for Retained Revenue in all cases. In fact, I would bet that most schools (and organizations maybe?) are looking for Retained Donors first vs Retained Revenue numbers.

Your graph in NXT under Retention lists Retained Donors as well as Retained LYBUNT Donors prominently in fact. Those numbers are incorrect


Any reference to retained donor HAS TO include soft-credited donors. By IRS law, we have to hard credit the household member who actually makes the gift via cash, check, online, credit card, etc and soft-credit the spouse or other partners. What if that household alternates each year who actually goes online to give to our school? This happens a lot especially with households where both are alumni who married after graduation. I have to believe that happens A LOT at Ohio State, Penn State, etc. With no soft-credits, the donor numbers are wrong.



Thoughts?