Is there a household id that can be exported?

Dan Kirk

A household id would allow me to create a report writer's database export per hard credit split gift that would then allow me to group the results based on the household.


However, I'm not seeing an indicator that can be exported, which marks each household with a unique id. I hope I just missed it!


Thanks,

Dan 

Ryan Hyde

Unfortunately, no. Households aren't a concrete unit in RE. The existence of a household is determined solely by the existence of a relationship with the "spouse" checkbox checked. 


RE is a per-individual system, not a per-household system. There are pros and cons to each model, but when you're used to one, trying to figure out how to deal with the other can be a pretty big pain.


You could try running whatever query you have through an export, checking the "export only head of household" box, and then making sure you set any gift information outputs such that soft credits are counted on 'both' records and that it defaults to the distribution on the gift record. This would group all gifts hard credited to either spouse on a single export line, assuming that you are automatically soft crediting spouses for each gift. However, by the sounds of what you're trying to do, this doesn't seem like a perfect solution. 


The only complication comes in cases where other kinds of gifts are soft credited only to one spouse or the other, which is why some experts suggest not to use soft credits at all unless they are spousal soft credits. 


Another thought - you could potentially use primary address line 1 + zip code as a key. It seems likely that almost every household will share a unique address, though you'll certainly want to check for duplicates once you've generated this combined value in Excel.

Dan Kirk

Ryan Hyde:

Unfortunately, no. Households aren't a concrete unit in RE. The existence of a household is determined solely by the existence of a relationship with the "spouse" checkbox checked. 


RE is a per-individual system, not a per-household system. There are pros and cons to each model, but when you're used to one, trying to figure out how to deal with the other can be a pretty big pain.


You could try running whatever query you have through an export, checking the "export only head of household" box, and then making sure you set any gift information outputs such that soft credits are counted on 'both' records and that it defaults to the distribution on the gift record. This would group all gifts hard credited to either spouse on a single export line, assuming that you are automatically soft crediting spouses for each gift. However, by the sounds of what you're trying to do, this doesn't seem like a perfect solution. 


The only complication comes in cases where other kinds of gifts are soft credited only to one spouse or the other, which is why some experts suggest not to use soft credits at all unless they are spousal soft credits. 


Another thought - you could potentially use primary address line 1 + zip code as a key. It seems likely that almost every household will share a unique address, though you'll certainly want to check for duplicates once you've generated this combined value in Excel.

Thanks for the reply Ryan. Unfortuntely, I can't use soft credit for the reason you stated, as it won't be accurate enough. The workaround I am going to try is to export all hard credit gifts with a column for constituent ID and a column for spouse ID. Then work to get the results into a single spreadsheet, and then use a formula that selects the lower (or higher) of the two numbers and inserts that number into a 'househol id' column on the spreadsheet. Then I can move on from there. But... it will be a lot of extra work each time I need to generate this data becasue of the manual steps. 


Thanks,

Dan

Ryan Hyde

Yeah, I've attempted to do something similar before. I got results, and I could verify the accuracy in spot checks, but I always felt iffy about whether or not their were major errors hidden in the resulting data.


Godspeed. 

Sammy Darren

@Ryan Hyde Yes, a household ID can often be exported from systems like CRM or census databases. This allows for easier data management and analysis across different platforms or for reporting purposes. <!--td {border: 1px solid #cccccc;}br {mso-data-placement:same-cell;}-->First EGP

Karen Diener 2

@Sammy Darren:

@Ryan Hyde Yes, a household ID can often be exported from systems like CRM or census databases. This allows for easier data management and analysis across different platforms or for reporting purposes. <!--td {border: 1px solid #cccccc;}br {mso-data-placement:same-cell;}-->First EGP

While the bold statement is true, it is only true if it exists. Raiser's Edge does NOT have a household object so there is no ID field available I'm only adding that here for future readers of this thread.

Alan French

@Karen Diener I think Sammy may be a bot - very generic answer from a new account with a link to an external website

Karen Diener 2

@Alan French:

@Karen Diener I think Sammy may be a bot - very generic answer from a new account with a link to an external website

Good point! Also picking up on an old thread. Real live people sometimes do that too, but this definitely lines up with your two observations.