Tribute gifts from "Friends and Family"

Mary Kern 3

I am working through cleaning up our data. I find a number of individual records that are "Friends and Family of ...". They are tribute generally gifts.  Does anyone have a best practice for this kind of record? 

• Enter as Individual? or Organization?
• How do you handle addressee and salutation?
• Any other thoughts?

JoAnn Strommen

I can see where someone thought this might be a good way to enter tribute gifts but IMO not the best. Do you have address, names on the record?


For our memorial or tribute gifts we enter them on the record that will receive the receipt.  Don't know where a receipt would have gone in your example. If the family or someone has collected and give a cash amount to us, it goes on the family member's record. When they've given us a list of names of who gave them the money we've noted that on the gift record. Family member gets the receipt. Person's who gave them the money gets a thank you if we were given address info. If we receive memorial or tribute from unknown source, it goes on our 'unnamed donor' record.

Mary Kern 3

JoAnn Strommen:

I can see where someone thought this might be a good way to enter tribute gifts but IMO not the best. Do you have address, names on the record?


For our memorial or tribute gifts we enter them on the record that will receive the receipt.  Don't know where a receipt would have gone in your example. If the family or someone has collected and give a cash amount to us, it goes on the family member's record. When they've given us a list of names of who gave them the money we've noted that on the gift record. Family member gets the receipt. Person's who gave them the money gets a thank you if we were given address info. If we receive memorial or tribute from unknown source, it goes on our 'unnamed donor' record.

Most (if not all, I haven't gotten that far), don't have an addressoand are marked do not mail, etc. 

Jen Claudy

So long as there is no further information available, and if you expect more than one gift to this tribute, you might consider creating one Individual Record with a miscellaneous name.  Then put the "of..." part in the Tribute Description (via the Honor/Memorial Tab of this record).  If you expect that this will be the only gift to a tribute, you could put the Tribute Record on the donor's Constituent Record and include a thorough Tribute Description.


I'm not a fan of creating Constituent Records that have no other data on them if it's not necessary.