RE with individual constiuent vs spousal sub records?

Brian Hoyt · June 2016

4 years ago I started working on linking EE / FE to RE via integration and now at a different job I am linking Blackbaud K12 on* core to RE. In every system other than RE (and most development databases) spouses are handled as individuals. However in RE most of the systems like gift entry, query and reporting is setup assuming Primary / Spouse sub record. I am finding lots of gotchas due to the individual constiuent records. Today it was Matching Gifts showing on one side and not the other due to the way they are handled. In other things like Parent Analysis reports we get skewed results since there can be 1-4 parents per child rather than 1-2 households. There are some ok work arounds like filtering on head of household but that doesn't always give you true data due things like matching gifts not being on both records. A similar problem is giving levels, if you include both individuals you get too high of numbers but if you choose one side of relationship only it may be too low.

My question is how are others handling this? Is RE going to be updated to handle these new scenarios? I have seen this problem coming for years and I hope someone at BB did to. Thanks for any help.

Angela Bertrand 2 · June 2016

Hi Brian!

We *just* moved to putting all data on one head of household record (spouse may or may not be a constituent), so a lot of our reporting has to work around credits and soft credits being mixed between two records. How we dealt with this was in report parameters we would note to only include head of household and include both credits and soft credits. This isn't perfect (it still doesn't get to matching gifts that are only on one record), but it got enough for us.

That might be what you want to do as a stop-gap until you set up a Head of Household policy that works? Someone here suggested using business rules to back up your HoH policy and that has worked WONDERFULLY for us to keep all household information on one record.

Sorry I'm not more helpful! Following to see if anyone else has better advice!

Carolyn Moatz · June 2016

We try to just have one parent record per married couple, but, if both have a full record, we use an attribute "Omit from Family Tallies". The spouse (not head of household) record will get that attribute, then we exclude it from reports where we want to cound just one parent. Head of Household gets hard credit for gifts, with soft credit to the spouse. We still need to be diligent to make sure both records get credit for matching gifts and get proper relationships added. We generally track actions on the Head of Household, but include ask amounts and assign solicitors to both.

Faith Murray · June 2016

We also use one record per household/couple. Spouses are a sub-relationship (not a full constituent), and we avoid soft credits like the plague because they mess up reporting. Matching Gifts we track through Gift reference (although Gift attribute would be better), rather than posting to multiple records, to also avoid doubling up revenue on our reports. Generally, our rule of thumb is, whoever would get the tax deduction for the gift, gets the gift record - and nobody else. Too bad there isn't a better workaround, but RE is what it is for now.

Candace Chesler · June 2016

We also have our records linked from Core to RE - previously EE to RE. I much prefer having records for both constituents. Then I can track volunteer activities and event participation on the record of the correct constituent. Our Business Rule for donations is that all gifts go on the record of the Head of Household. Soft Credits are only used for times when a Family Foundation is making a donation and the gift needs to be reflected for the relted household(s) - or when grandparents make a gift that is intended to count as the Annual Fund donation for the parents of their grandchildren.

Matching gifts are entered on the record of the Head of Household - even when the match is for volunteer hours that the spouse contributed - the matching gift pledge and pledge payment are recorded on the Head of Household.

By being very limited with the places we use soft credits - we are able to run detailed reports that accurately reflect our giving totals.

Brian Hoyt · June 2016

Thanks for all the responses. I am reviewing them with our advancement people. (I am on tech side.) To see what they think.

Nicole S · June 2016

There has been a lot of discussion about this on the forums. Search around and I'm sure you can pull up some other threads with additional info.

Christine Cooke 2 · June 2016

in my humble opinion, it has really become almost impossible to have just one record for individual and spouse in a school setting. There are so many reasons to establish, especially the current parents with separate records for each. AND establish a protocol as to who is consistently Head of Household.

By establishing rules for HoH, you can then pull reports without having to wrestle with soft credits as much.

Karen Stuhlfeier · June 2016

We give spouses their own record at my school and it works very well. Soft credits are not a problem as long as you are consistent with what you do and mindful about the criteria used for your reports. Soft credits have never been a problem with our reports. Neither has deciding what record to assign as the head of household been a problem. We base the decision on who is more important to us. Are the a board member or an alum. Then they are the head of household. Otherwise, it doesn't really matter a whole lot. We have more and more same sex households every year. Deciding that the male is the head of household - or should be the head of household doesn't and shouldn't work anymore.

Once you understand what soft credits are and how to include or exclude them from reports you don't have problems with them.

RE with individual constiuent vs spousal sub records?

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