Portfolios by Household in NXT

Elizabeth Anders 2

We are actively moving from a Membership focus to a Donor focus. To that end, we're setting up an Institutional Advancement office with lots of new employees. Some of the senior staff already hired for IA come from a higher education background and speak in terms of households instead of individuals. Because our business model cannot/will not get rid of separate records for spouses, I'm trying to find a way in NXT to determine the Portfolio Household counts. Suggestions anyone?

Kathleen Eastman

Elizabeth Anders:

We are actively moving from a Membership focus to a Donor focus. To that end, we're setting up an Institutional Advancement office with lots of new employees. Some of the senior staff already hired for IA come from a higher education background and speak in terms of households instead of individuals. Because our business model cannot/will not get rid of separate records for spouses, I'm trying to find a way in NXT to determine the Portfolio Household counts. Suggestions anyone?

Hi Elizabeth, we have a constituency group where both spouses are considered individual relationships to the organization and so must have their own record. In order to keep from pulling both records into a list, query, or double counting their giving, I have created Attributes/Custom Fields indicating they are a spouse. This allows me to include/exclude from a query as needed. However, in NXT, I'm not able to exclude based on a custom field, but can exclude a list that I've already created, so I have a list of those with the spouse attribute to be used to exclude from a list created in NXT. (just a note, my colleague has noticed that this method has not always been completely accurate, so you might want to compare what you get in both NXT and database view to check your totals)


We also utilize this attribute to create an auto popup reminding those entering data, or actions, that it is a spouse record and to use the primary, head of household record for tracking purposes. If the data you use for your "household" portfolio is only entered in the primary record, that will alleviate pulling both spouses. But, if the data resides in both records, you can exclude using the Spouse list in NXT, or if in the database view, exclude using that field. Likewise if you are just doing a record count of households.


We also make sure that the primary record has an Addressee/Salutation type that includes both spouses, so mail pieces can go to both through the primary record when needed. This is an additional addressee/sal. We keep the primary addressee/sal for the individual so they can be addressed alone if necessary.


In order to use the Head of Household feature in RE:Export or RE:Mail, the spouse records need to be linked, and the one identified as the Head of Household is the primary record and the other I give the spouse attribute. Not sure if your current system/procedure was linking the spouses.


I hope this helps!


Kathy

Elizabeth Anders

Thank you, Kathy. This is helpful. I wouldn't have thought to go the attribute route.


I did some further poking around after posing the question and came up with an additional answer. We now have solicitor types of "Prospect Manager" and "Prospect Manager, Related Record." There are a couple of NXT enhancement requests that will allow you to view portfolios in NXT based on solicitor type which would do exactly what I needed.


For the time being, if they want to know their household count, the gift officers come to me and I run a query in database view that gives me the number. Once the enhancement goes through they'll be able to get that information without going through me.


An added benefit is that you can tie in family foundations and businesses using the "Prospect Manager, Related Record" solicitor type which will better define who should be managing those relationships but doesn't increase the portfolio household count. I didn't realize this was something they wanted until I was showing them the solution I'd chosen.