Alumni Spouses

Joanie Rogers

Hi all,


I would like to hear your best practices (and arguments) for constituents where the spouse is the alum.  How do you handle reporting? Soft credits? What are the pitfalls to have two records?  We currently do not have a record for both the spouse alum and for the spouse.  I am concerned about cost of the next level for RE:NXT. 


I have been running all scenarios through my head and trying to decide what is the best route.   We have had several people tied to the college for various reasons, who give as a couple, but the wife is the alum. 


Thanks!



 

JoAnn Strommen

Personal opinion - If I'm the alum of your school and mail came to our home addressed to my husband I would find that strange. Just as me receiving mail from his university addressed to me would be odd. 


Were I working for a school, my assumption would be that every alum have their own record. Spouses are linked and SCed if you use them.  Non-alum spouses who have their own relationship with the school for some reason could certainly have their own record.


To me, having separate records makes it much cleaner and easier for mailings to classes, alums of specific departments, reporting on giving by class, etc.  Yes, NXT costs can be a factor but find out exactly what your record count would be and what the cost difference would be.  It may be worth it.


Just one opinion...

Joanie Rogers

JoAnn Strommen:

Personal opinion - If I'm the alum of your school and mail came to our home addressed to my husband I would find that strange. Just as me receiving mail from his university addressed to me would be odd. 


Were I working for a school, my assumption would be that every alum have their own record. Spouses are linked and SCed if you use them.  Non-alum spouses who have their own relationship with the school for some reason could certainly have their own record.


To me, having separate records makes it much cleaner and easier for mailings to classes, alums of specific departments, reporting on giving by class, etc.  Yes, NXT costs can be a factor but find out exactly what your record count would be and what the cost difference would be.  It may be worth it.


Just one opinion...

Great point of view!  Thank you. 


So then, do you list the alumni spouse on the constituent's record for mailings that are not alumni related?  Then say you are mailing to all constituents, how do you ensure that two mailings are not going out to the same house?  (One to the Mrs. (alumni record) and one to Mr. and Mrs.)  If the records are linked and he is marked as Head of Household.....does that stop the two mailings?

 

JoAnn Strommen

Yes, using the HOH options will pull only one record per household. Some orgs use other coding in attributes or solicit codes to exclude records at the same address.


All our records have a joint addressee/saluation as one of their formats so we could actually pull a mailing to "Mr. & Mrs." from either record pulled by the criteria we're using.

Joanie Rogers

JoAnn Strommen:

Yes, using the HOH options will pull only one record per household. Some orgs use other coding in attributes or solicit codes to exclude records at the same address.


All our records have a joint addressee/saluation as one of their formats so we could actually pull a mailing to "Mr. & Mrs." from either record pulled by the criteria we're using.

Am I correct that it only removes the non-Head of Household when you are using the Mail feature out of RE.....not Query?

Anne Herbert

We do things a little differently.  We have a Const & Spouse Addr/Sal, but instead of Mr. and Mrs. we like to include both individuals names (e.g. Mr. John S. and Mrs. Jane P. Doe).  Depending on the mailing we will include both spouses names, even if one of them is not an alum, because the gift comes from the family budget and many non-alum spouses are engaged with our university.  It is really your call and knowing how engaged non-alum spouses are.


Personally I would love to do away with the Mr. and Mrs. part of the title.  We don't always know if they've become a Dr. or have other changes to that title.  We do have some that have told us to remove it because they don't like the title and want to be addressed as John and Jane Doe, but that will probably be more of a generational thing with the younger folks not wanting the title.

JoAnn Strommen

The HOH function is available in Export as well as Mail.  As query is a grouping tool, I use Export for actually pulling all the data and generating my lists.

Joanie Rogers

Anne Herbert:

We do things a little differently.  We have a Const & Spouse Addr/Sal, but instead of Mr. and Mrs. we like to include both individuals names (e.g. Mr. John S. and Mrs. Jane P. Doe).  Depending on the mailing we will include both spouses names, even if one of them is not an alum, because the gift comes from the family budget and many non-alum spouses are engaged with our university.  It is really your call and knowing how engaged non-alum spouses are.


Personally I would love to do away with the Mr. and Mrs. part of the title.  We don't always know if they've become a Dr. or have other changes to that title.  We do have some that have told us to remove it because they don't like the title and want to be addressed as John and Jane Doe, but that will probably be more of a generational thing with the younger folks not wanting the title.

Good thoughts.  We have many families who are engaged because of other non-alumni reasons, as well as someone in the family being an alum. And you are correct....in many cases it's a family budget!  I find they want to be recognized on the donor wall as a family unit, not just the alum.


I think it would be so much easier if Blackbaud would include either a separate Constituent Code for the Spouse and/or a comment box next to the Constituent Codes on Bio 2. 

Joanie Rogers

JoAnn Strommen:

The HOH function is available in Export as well as Mail.  As query is a grouping tool, I use Export for actually pulling all the data and generating my lists.

I primarily just use export the query and use Excel to make my edits. Maybe time to teach this ole dog some new habits!  :0)

Melissa S Graves

Here is what we do.

a) We do not have separate records for parents unless not together or for married alum unless they are both alum.

b) We have a practice to always list individuals separately. So addressing parents could look like this:


Sallly Jones

William Jones

123 Main St. etc.


c) 99% of the time we do not want to address the alum spouse so we have two different kinds of spouse addressees. A regular "spouse addressee" (for parents, friends, etc.) and an "alumni spouse addressee". We typically mail only to primary addressee and spouse addressee. the 1% of the time we do want to include alum spouse addressees is when we would pull in "alumni spouse addressee".

d) For alum married to eachother (we only have a few since we were primarily a girl's school for much of our history). we simply use the regular spouse addressee so they are both addressed every time (and select one to be HOH so they do not get 2 mailings unless we want that).


It was hard to get used to it here that they NEVER use titles, Mr., Mrs., etc. but the constituents never complain and it is SO MUCH EASIER. We use informal salutations (nickname or first name).