Constituent Records

Deborah Condon

As an organization we have always kept spouses housed in one constituent record, usually with the spouse being the non-constiuent.  When we implemented Luminate for some of our larger events we realized that Luminate houses each individual in their own record.  Now as an organization we are struggling with the decision of which way to house constituents for consistency.

For those of you that keep each constituent as an individual record, we are interested in how you handle direct solicitation mailings, invitations and stewardship recognition.  How do you figure out who the spouses are?  Do you use head of household?  Any other tips or tricks that you would be willing to offer.

Thank You

Sunshine Reinken Watson

Deborah Condon:

As an organization we have always kept spouses housed in one constituent record, usually with the spouse being the non-constiuent.  When we implemented Luminate for some of our larger events we realized that Luminate houses each individual in their own record.  Now as an organization we are struggling with the decision of which way to house constituents for consistency.

For those of you that keep each constituent as an individual record, we are interested in how you handle direct solicitation mailings, invitations and stewardship recognition.  How do you figure out who the spouses are?  Do you use head of household?  Any other tips or tricks that you would be willing to offer.

Thank You

We use Head of Household and filter when exporting for mailing lists or recognition lists. Gifts are always on the Head of Household record unless there is a special case. You can set up a business rule to alert when adding a gift to a record that is not Head of Household.

JoAnn Strommen

We have some spouses that have their own records.  And handle much like Sunshine.  For recognition listing we record preference as an addressee. It is recorded on one record and the record says " '***see spouse".  For mailings we utilize the Head of Household function which only chooses the HOH of the two.  For us gifts can be entered on either record.  And we also use business rules to alert to spouse has a pledge/spouse received the appeal/etc.


From other's posts I've read that others use attributes or solcit codes to code who gets mailings.