Relationships, soft credit and donors count

Julia Kalinkina · April 2016

Our development team wants to count major donors and their gifts, but we do not want to double count spouses, associated businesses and other relationships which a major donor can have. It is not a problem for the individuals, but if there is an organisation...

For example, we have Foundation A, which is considered one of our major donors and therefore should be counted only once with the total amount of gifts equal the sum of all the gifts "under" this organisation.

Mr B is a director of Foundation A. Mr B also has a spouse (Mrs

. Mr B and Mrs B soft credit each other for their gifts. Foundation A is soft credited for the gifts from Mr B. But we don't have any relationship between Mrs B and Foundation A, and can't automatically soft credit Foundation A for the gifts from Mrs B.

Mr C is a chairman in Foundation A, and Foundation A is also soft credited with his gifts. But - the same - he has a wife who donates, but Foundation A is not soft credited for her gifts. Sometimes we even have couple constituent records (from the past) for "Mr & Mrs C" with their gifts recorded (which also should be soft credited to Foundation A), and separate constituents for one or both of them (with their gifts).

We tried to implement an attribute "Primary/Secondary donor", but it doesn't allow us to determine who is the primary donor when we are looking on a secondary one. The problem with SC is described above. The only other way I can think of is to create a new relationship for this purpose (Primary donor/Secondary donor) - it will allow to select all the constituents with "Primary donor" relation reciprocal, and it will allow to SC this primary donor with all the gifts from its secondary donors. Does anybody know a better way of doing it?

Regards,

Julia

Matt Page · April 2016

I'd agree that having a special type of relationship would probably be the best way, Just make sure your "soft credit" options are set up correctly in the query options.

Sorry not to be of more help.

Matt

Tami Ramaker · April 2016

When applying soft credits, you can soft credit the gift but with $0 in the value field. I would recommend you check how your soft credits are actually being applied.

Bob Wiebe · April 2016

Julia, your plight with soft credits echoes ours, with a twist. When we want to count givers for our annual reports, we want only donors, not soft credits. Since in our system we have gifts from seveal third party foundations which in turn include numerous donors, or “hide” them, by soft crediting them, I have made some queries which go in and dig those soft credited donors out of those foundations. I then add the number of individual donors to the “formerly hidden” donors from the organizations.

Unfortunately it is a time consuming process. And I realize that you are coming at it from the other direction: you want to count only the Foundation, not the donors.

Perhaps one solution would be to create a relationship between MRs B and Foundation A, as you state. We have examples of couples who are both constituents who can give to us, and we soft credit each for the others’ gifts.

It is not clear to me whether your Foundation A is internal to your organization or a third party through which gifts flow to your organization. If it is the latter, the spouse like Mrs. B has just as much a relationship with you as Mr. B.

If Foundation A is internal to your organization, what kind of relationship structure do MR B and Mr C have with the Foudation? And again, could their spouses have the same?

To me it seems that having both members of the couple be constituents could be helpful.

For what its’ worth…

Tami Ramaker · April 2016

Consider soft credits that are either $0 or have an amount in them. $0 establishes the relationship only, won't pull as an amount when you pull a query with soft credits included.

Gina Gerhard · April 2016

It's been a long-standing request that Blackbaud provide the ability to 'categorize' the soft crediting -- so you could distinguish between spousal soft credits, institituional soft credits, etc. This would potentially solve a lot of our continual heart-burn issues around filtering and reporting out on soft credit gifts.

Jessica Kraybill · April 2018

Gina Gerhard:

It's been a long-standing request that Blackbaud provide the ability to 'categorize' the soft crediting -- so you could distinguish between spousal soft credits, institituional soft credits, etc. This would potentially solve a lot of our continual heart-burn issues around filtering and reporting out on soft credit gifts.

YES Gina!!!! That would solve hours and hours and hours of manual work on gift reporting, recognition, and so much more. I will find that suggestion and add my vote. I hope others will do the same!

Merrianne McGill · April 2018

I agree, it would solve a lot of our reporting issues as well.

Jessica Kraybill:

Gina Gerhard:

It's been a long-standing request that Blackbaud provide the ability to 'categorize' the soft crediting -- so you could distinguish between spousal soft credits, institituional soft credits, etc. This would potentially solve a lot of our continual heart-burn issues around filtering and reporting out on soft credit gifts.

YES Gina!!!! That would solve hours and hours and hours of manual work on gift reporting, recognition, and so much more. I will find that suggestion and add my vote. I hope others will do the same!

Relationships, soft credit and donors count

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