Soft Credit best practices?

Heather Jacob

There are several discussions today about soft crediting, so I thought I'd start one going too. I work for the foundation of a not-for-profit health system. We have two main hospitals, 6 community hosptials, and many clinics and physician practices. Many of our physicians have formed into physician groups such as PG - Cardiology, PG - Family Medicine, PG - Urology, etc. At the beginning of the year, the health system gives each physician group a bucket of "marketing" money which the physicians in that group can decide what to do with. We have several events through the year, including golf outings in each of the 6 communties. Many of the doctors use that "marketing" money to pay for their golf event registrations or sponsorships. In raiser's Edge, we put the money under the appropriate physician group and then soft credit the physician because he directed that money to come to us. We just got a new foundation director who doesn't think this is right. He doesn't believe the physicians whould be soft credited because it's not their money.


Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Are there actually any industry best practices out there?

Joanne Felci 2

Hi Heather,

I would agree with your foundation director


From the scenerio you describe I would put the physican as the Solicitor on the gift instead of soft crediting him.


You can run gift solicitor reports to get running totals of what specific physicians bring in


As for best practices for soft crediting, I know that November RE community was all about the soft credit and I bet there is information there - I'll look to see if I can find a link and if I do I'll post another response


Joanne

Joanne Felci 2

Here is a link to the Stuff You Need to Know on Soft Credits