Best Practices Donor and "Spouse Alum"

Joanie Rogers · January 2017

Hi all,

I want to pick your brains on how you handle donor records for donors who the spouse is an alum, but the donor is not. Here goes:

Traditionally, we always put the husband as the main constituent (except employees).
The wife's information is listed as the spouse. If the wife is the alum, I put her education information on her bio page.
Then since RE doesn't include constituency codes for spouses, I mark the husband as alumni so I can get them in alumni queries.
The husband is getting an email blast from the alumni association even though he isn't the alum.
RE tells me to make the wife a separate constituent. I don't know if we want to do that.
A co-worker said to make the wife the primary, and add secondary addressee and salutations coded appropriately to include Mr. and Mrs. on certian mailings.
I was looking at our donors....we have one in particular who has a named scholarship and I think it would be weird for his wife (she is an alum) to be the primary constituent, when clearly it is him who gives and he is a retiree.

How do you handle spouse alums? What is your reasoning?

Thank you.

Rachel Slager 2 · January 2017

We always give the alumni a record, I actually think the husband as main is shortsighted - a third of your alumni are going to get divorced (statistically speaking) and it's the real alumni who will remain loyal donors when the dust settles. They are the ones whose professional life is a detail we want to track, their cell, their email, and when we invite them to alumni events we want their first name printed first on the letter. Though we generally don't create constituent records for both partners, as a rule we do give both a record when one is the alumni and married to someone equally valuable to our organization: other alumni, major donor who signs all the checks, employees, board members, etc. Again, just thinking long term, you also cannot realistically analyze your donors demographically. Like if women alumni are more likely to give to liberal arts designations, or male alumni more likely to give to athletics, because all of your alumni are "men". And what about same gender couples? Women are extreme active in philanthropy, and choosing to address their husbands first could and will be perceived unfavorably.

Karen Stuhlfeier · January 2017

Why does the husband have to be the main constituent? That seems very archaic.

We always make both spouses constituents and the head of household is the person who has the relationship with us.

Carolyn Moatz · January 2017

We use husband as primary record unless the wife has another affiliation with the school, which can mean faculty, staff, alum, honorary alum, or trustee. If the wife's affiliation predates the husband's (either as donor, or as a parent of a child at the school), we do not add a full record for the husband. If necessary, we'll have records for both spouses, and we use an attribute called "Omit from family tallies" to exclude the secondary person from reports where we would want just one record per household showing.

JoAnn Strommen · January 2017

Don't work at a school but quite surprised by procedure that alum is not the constituent but husband is. Sorry, but I don't follow the logic. The alum is the one with the relationship to the school.

In your situation, I'd give the donating spouse his own record.

In my opinion, alum has the constituent record and if your procedures are relationship records for spouses, then that's where non-alum spouse are. Shouldn't matter their gender - addressee formats can accomodate your naming preferences/rules like listing wife or husband's name first. Can't imagine my husband getting mail from my U addressed to him and I really don't want the mail from his U addressed to me.

Joanie Rogers · January 2017

Karen Stuhlfeier:

Why does the husband have to be the main constituent? That seems very archaic.

We always make both spouses constituents and the head of household is the person who has the relationship with us.

Just to be clear.....you only give them EACH a record when one or both spouses are alums? You don't give every husband & wife donation separate records, correct? I am just saying on husband and wife donations, we list the male as the primary donor.

Joanie Rogers · January 2017

JoAnn Strommen:

Don't work at a school but quite surprised by procedure that alum is not the constituent but husband is. Sorry, but I don't follow the logic. The alum is the one with the relationship to the school.

In your situation, I'd give the donating spouse his own record.

In my opinion, alum has the constituent record and if your procedures are relationship records for spouses, then that's where non-alum spouse are. Shouldn't matter their gender - addressee formats can accomodate your naming preferences/rules like listing wife or husband's name first. Can't imagine my husband getting mail from my U addressed to him and I really don't want the mail from his U addressed to me.

I'm not saying what has been done in the database is accurate, but we are looking at the best way to move forward. The example I gave in my original post. Major donor with a scholarship named after himself, he also is a retiree. He is not an alum, but his wife is. She does not have her own record. Many of our records are old and the alums were not identified. We are cleaning that up and trying to consider how it will change our database and how we proceed.

Rachel Slager 2 · January 2017

In the specific case that you cited, yes, he should have a record and later on when all alumni have their own records, he should probably be listed as head of household since he is so committed to the school and appears to be the one driving the gifts. I don't recommend giving every spouse their own record, just as you said, alumni married to alumni or other major affiliations that will last regardless of the spouse's affiliation. That limits the records you'll need to maintain.

Christine Cooke 2 · January 2017

Joanie Rogers:

Hi all,

I want to pick your brains on how you handle donor records for donors who the spouse is an alum, but the donor is not. Here goes:

Traditionally, we always put the husband as the main constituent (except employees).

The wife's information is listed as the spouse. If the wife is the alum, I put her education information on her bio page.

Then since RE doesn't include constituency codes for spouses, I mark the husband as alumni so I can get them in alumni queries.

The husband is getting an email blast from the alumni association even though he isn't the alum.

RE tells me to make the wife a separate constituent. I don't know if we want to do that.

A co-worker said to make the wife the primary, and add secondary addressee and salutations coded appropriately to include Mr. and Mrs. on certian mailings.

I was looking at our donors....we have one in particular who has a named scholarship and I think it would be weird for his wife (she is an alum) to be the primary constituent, when clearly it is him who gives and he is a retiree.
How do you handle spouse alums? What is your reasoning?

Thank you.

The Alum is ALWAYS Head of Household when you are a school. How can you even pull lists or reports for your alums if they do not have their own record? They were an Alum before they were married to someone, at that time they would have been HoH....?

Alums are Hoh, their spouse can or cannot have their own record in RE depending on your preference. Though these days separate records that are linked seem to be the way to go, otherwise you can end up with some very muddy data. My two cents after working in 4 schools.

Best Practices Donor and "Spouse Alum"

Comments

Categories