Best Practice of Linking Relationship

Leon Manning

We had a situation where a donor gave $350K through his business recently and he had given 3 years ago individually. In our recent calling efforts to lapsed donors we call him at home and he was very upset that we had not recognized his $350K given via his business. We get the request all the time from the development team that "certain records should be linked."


To avoid this situation in the future is it best to do the following:

• Set up a seperate record for each entity (business and individual)
• Input on the Relationship tab
  • Business (list individual as owner, partner, associated, etc.)
  • Individual (list business)

What is the "Best Practice" in relation to linking of relationships in order for queries to be pulled that would show the entire relationship of a donor?  Softs credits when a gift is present?  What about prospects that are in the pipeline but have not given to the organization?

Ryan Hyde

I think your proposed system here works, but I'd add one thing. On the business record, open the relationship to the individual and go to the General 2 tab. Look at the very bottom and you'll see a checkbox called "Automatically soft credit this individual for gifts." This will ensure that you'll be able to see the business gifts from the individual's record, and assuming you are taking soft credits into consideration in your lapsed donor data pulls, this sort of mistake won't happen in the future.


BUT, unless you know that the donor owns said business and tends to give through the business, you should not make a habit of doing this for every individual constituent related to a business. But your MG officers should let you know if there are these kinds of setups, and you can link them appropriately. But some mistakes will be made - that's the nature of the beast - and that's what your MG officer is for, to smooth things over. 

Cait McGrath

Overall, I think it can only benefit your org and the health of the database to link records when you know a relationship exists between consitituents. Not only will it benefit your fundraising team, but also may help down the line within the database for things like tribute notification acknowledgees. I also agree with Ryan Hyde that for those donors who you KNOW give via the organizations they own, it's best to set up an automatic soft credit. Soft crediting would also allow these donations to be visible when pulling reports for donors like this if you ever need to, because you can adjust yoru report settings to include soft credits.