Soft Credit and Unmarried Couples

Moe Casey · June 2017

Hello all,

I'm a bit new at RE and gift processing and I'm hoping you can help me with a problem we've come across.

It builds on another problem we have. Right now, for gifts made through a charitable fund or a company, we hard-credit the company and soft credit the donor. This is what I understand to be best practices. We use the Reports module, and I click the box that lists the soft credit name, so If Bob gave us a gift through his company Bob Co., the gift would come up as Bob's gift in that report. However, I also understand it is best pratices to soft-credit a spouse? How does that then work with the report? We are a college, so we keep track of alumni giving, and typically if we receive a gift from a couple who share an account (so both are listed on the check), we will hard-credit the alumnus/ae. If I also soft-credited the spouse, then it would come up as a individual gift from the spouse in the report, rather than from the alumnus/ae. How can I make sure this doesn't create mistakes or misleading data?

One question we are facing at the moment is that we received a gift from an unmarried couple, who are both alumni with both of their names on the envelope and on the check. In this case, I'm not sure who to give the hard credit to and who to give the soft credit to. They also (I assume) file their taxes individually as they are not married. Should we send one acknowledgment and tax receipt with both their names and let them figure out the tax implications? If we send one to each, that would imply two seperate gifts., and if I spilt the gifts, it would effect our asks for next year as well as where they would fall in our giving levels. What would be best practices here?

Thank you.

JoAnn Strommen · June 2017

Yes, the SC structure in RE can get messy when you're looking at SC that you want to consider and then spouses that you want treated differently. (There are several ideas/suggestions with lots of votes to have BB address how spouse credits are handled. Vote if you haven't.) No immediate solution on the horizon that I've heard about. From what I've read in the forums some schools use an attribute or constit code to use to filter reports.

With alumni giving stats you get a whole additional set of issues. For you situation with the check received, I would enter the gift on the record of the person who signed the check and send the acknowledgment/receipt with both names on it. We include spouse names in the letters, so I don't see using both names as much different. It's definitely not your job to figure out the tax implications. As to your alumni giving stats, I guess I would handle it the same way it's handled for married alumni.

Just be sure you set your procedures for SC and are consistent or you'll end up with a bigger mess.

Christine Cooke 2 · June 2017

Moe Casey:

Hello all,

I'm a bit new at RE and gift processing and I'm hoping you can help me with a problem we've come across.

It builds on another problem we have. Right now, for gifts made through a charitable fund or a company, we hard-credit the company and soft credit the donor. This is what I understand to be best practices. We use the Reports module, and I click the box that lists the soft credit name, so If Bob gave us a gift through his company Bob Co., the gift would come up as Bob's gift in that report. However, I also understand it is best pratices to soft-credit a spouse? How does that then work with the report? We are a college, so we keep track of alumni giving, and typically if we receive a gift from a couple who share an account (so both are listed on the check), we will hard-credit the alumnus/ae. If I also soft-credited the spouse, then it would come up as a individual gift from the spouse in the report, rather than from the alumnus/ae. How can I make sure this doesn't create mistakes or misleading data?

One question we are facing at the moment is that we received a gift from an unmarried couple, who are both alumni with both of their names on the envelope and on the check. In this case, I'm not sure who to give the hard credit to and who to give the soft credit to. They also (I assume) file their taxes individually as they are not married. Should we send one acknowledgment and tax receipt with both their names and let them figure out the tax implications? If we send one to each, that would imply two seperate gifts., and if I spilt the gifts, it would effect our asks for next year as well as where they would fall in our giving levels. What would be best practices here?

Thank you.

You mention that your couples are sharing one record. So that means that the Alum has a record and the spouse is a NON-constituent (no record of their own). In that case Soft Credit does not even apply.

It is only when each of the individuals in a coupledom have their own constituent record that SC comes into play. When that is the case, and/or if your org decides to give all spouses their own records at some point, you will have to establish a protocol to follow for your org's records as far as who is Head of Household (HoH) and that all gifts should be recorded on the HoH record, with whatever exceptions to the rule their may be. I have found (working in schools for many years) that in a school setting the HoH rule exception number one is that an Alum should always be HoH no matter the gender. Every school I have been in has set the protocol that the husband is HoH, except when the spouse is the Alum. And if they are both Alums, then pick either the husband or whichever one the couple deems HoH if it is a same sex couple.

Karen Stuhlfeier · June 2017

We hard credit the person who signs the check and soft credit the other person when a couple gives us a gift. It's really not our business if they're married or not. If they're a couple residing together the other person is soft credited and they get one letter. Who knows who is or is not married? Many married couples don't have the same last name. We don't want to ever offend the donor so we soft credit whoever they want. Some people want their adult children soft credited for their gift so that's what we do.

JoAnn Strommen · June 2017

Thanks Karen, you added what I was thinking but hadn't figured out what I thought was a tactful way to say it.

Christing, I read Moe's post and assume each alum has their own record. To me, what Moe said is shared is their bank account. ?

Moe Casey · June 2017

Yes, that is correct, they have two different records, as they are both alumni. Typically, if two names are written on the envelope we will credit the person who's name is on the check itself, but because both of their names are on the check, it's hard to choose who to give the credit to. I hesitate to give soft credit, because we've been using soft credit for donor assisted funds, so in this case it would make a bit of a mess in our reporting, without a way to give credit to both. I only bring up that they are unmarried because I their records aren't formally connected.

Melissa S Graves · June 2017

This has been a BEAR of an issue in RE for so long and BB can't find a path to fixing it (for whatever reason). This has resorted to some orgs completely flipping soft crediting on it's head and putting gifts on the individual record (even if from a family foundation or DAF) and using attributes and letter codes to distinguish who the legal donor is and how to receipt. This takes a lot of planning and preparation to convert to such a method to be sure all your bases are covered but those doing it (we ar not...yet) state that their reporting on their donors is much simpler.

Jen Mackinder · June 2017

Christine Cooke:

Moe Casey:

Hello all,

I'm a bit new at RE and gift processing and I'm hoping you can help me with a problem we've come across.

It builds on another problem we have. Right now, for gifts made through a charitable fund or a company, we hard-credit the company and soft credit the donor. This is what I understand to be best practices. We use the Reports module, and I click the box that lists the soft credit name, so If Bob gave us a gift through his company Bob Co., the gift would come up as Bob's gift in that report. However, I also understand it is best pratices to soft-credit a spouse? How does that then work with the report? We are a college, so we keep track of alumni giving, and typically if we receive a gift from a couple who share an account (so both are listed on the check), we will hard-credit the alumnus/ae. If I also soft-credited the spouse, then it would come up as a individual gift from the spouse in the report, rather than from the alumnus/ae. How can I make sure this doesn't create mistakes or misleading data?

One question we are facing at the moment is that we received a gift from an unmarried couple, who are both alumni with both of their names on the envelope and on the check. In this case, I'm not sure who to give the hard credit to and who to give the soft credit to. They also (I assume) file their taxes individually as they are not married. Should we send one acknowledgment and tax receipt with both their names and let them figure out the tax implications? If we send one to each, that would imply two seperate gifts., and if I spilt the gifts, it would effect our asks for next year as well as where they would fall in our giving levels. What would be best practices here?

Thank you.

You mention that your couples are sharing one record. So that means that the Alum has a record and the spouse is a NON-constituent (no record of their own). In that case Soft Credit does not even apply.

It is only when each of the individuals in a coupledom have their own constituent record that SC comes into play. When that is the case, and/or if your org decides to give all spouses their own records at some point, you will have to establish a protocol to follow for your org's records as far as who is Head of Household (HoH) and that all gifts should be recorded on the HoH record, with whatever exceptions to the rule their may be. I have found (working in schools for many years) that in a school setting the HoH rule exception number one is that an Alum should always be HoH no matter the gender. Every school I have been in has set the protocol that the husband is HoH, except when the spouse is the Alum. And if they are both Alums, then pick either the husband or whichever one the couple deems HoH if it is a same sex couple.

An exception to this (at least at our organization) is if the Alumni's spouse receives a matching gift then the gift goes on the spouses record and the alumni is soft credited.

Soft Credit and Unmarried Couples

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