Possible Soft Credit Conundrum solution

Moe Casey · July 2017

Hello all,
As some of you are familiar, soft credits can get messy. I know there are many other threads on this topic, but I wanted to share my idea and see if it makes sense to you all.
It is best practice to hard-credit the entity the check last came from, so in cases of Donor advised funds, the foundation would be hard-credited and the donor soft credited. However, I want to be able to soft credit spouses, so we don't consider the spouse of a donor to be a non-donor. This can cause frustrations in my reporting, as I would like the foundation gift to be considered a gift from the constituency of the donor , while I'd want the gift of individual with the spouse to come up with the individual name.

So Bob Trustee gives through Bob Foundation, and I'd want his gift to come up on my report as Bob Trustee's gift. Meanwhile Sally Alumni gives and we soft credit her husband, Jim NonAlumni. However, now Sally's gift is coming up as a NonAlumni gift because of that soft credit.

I believe I have come up with a solution, at least for my organization. I would like to run it by you all in case I am missing something and this could end up causing more frustration and errors down the road. I believe my reports would come out correct if on Sally Alumni's record I soft credit Jim NonAlumni with 0$, so there is a gift on his record and he is considered a donor, and I soft credit Sally Alumni herself with the full amount of the gift, so when I pull soft credits on my reports, her gift comes up and it comes up as an alumni gift.
Does that make sense? I'm pretty new in the world of RE, so before I implement this, I wanted to see if there were any obvious downsides I'm missing, besides the slight extra time it takes to enter the gift.

Thanks,

JoAnn Strommen · July 2017

How you approach may depend on what report you're using and if that field is available in the report format. If Sally's primary constituency is Alumni and you use that as the gift constituency when you list out the gifts include the gift constituency field which would show "alumni". If you're querying and then Exporting the data, gift code would be an option also. Field just isn't a filter or option for all canned reports.

One reason I'd caution on the SC $0 would be possible mess if Sally dies and Jim continues to give, his record will not have complete giving history displayed. For us, if constituent turns down a personal ask we record a $0 pledge so we know they were contacted. This carries over as a $0 SC for spouses. It would get messy for us quickly.

Just wondering, what's your primary constituency code on Jim's record?

Amy Dana · August 2017

Are you reporting on the Gift Consituency? That might help if Jim NonAlumni's SC shows a Gift Constituency of "alumni" (or whatever you call them). Then even if his Primary Consituency is "non-alumni" or "alumni spouse" it will still count as an alumni gift.

Possible Soft Credit Conundrum solution

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