Spouses Saved on Primary Constituent Record

Daniel Altenau · July 2018

When our RE database was originally set up, we saved spouses on the head of household constituent record, so they shared a constituent record, rather than each having their own constituent record. We are now utilizing Luminate Online, and this set up is causing challenges with many of the personalization features offered through Luminate. Has anyone else encountered this challenge? If so, how did you address it?

Lisa Slawinski · July 2018

Daniel Altenau:

When our RE database was originally set up, we saved spouses on the head of household constituent record, so they shared a constituent record, rather than each having their own constituent record. We are now utilizing Luminate Online, and this set up is causing challenges with many of the personalization features offered through Luminate. Has anyone else encountered this challenge? If so, how did you address it?

Daniel,

I'm not completely sure what issues you are encountering. Can you elaborate? We have some constituents linked the way you described, but don't think we experienced any issues. I will admit though, our Head of Household practice is weak.

Lisa

Daniel Altenau · July 2018

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for responding. The two issues we have faced if John Smith is the constituent and Jane Smith is saved as his spouse are:

Donations - Jane Smith makes a donation. The email thank you goes to her husband, John Smith's email account and thanks John for the donation.
Memorial Gift E-Cards - When Jane Smith makes a memorial donation and sends an e-card through Luminate Online, it says the donation was made by John Smith, it doesn't recognize that Jane Smith was actually the one to complete the donation.

Thanks,

Dan

Xep Campbell · July 2018

Hi Daniel,

Our database was set up the same way as yours. We dealt with it by creating a constituent code for non-head-of-household records called "Luminate Online Only" and make sure no gifts/notes/actions etc are ever saved to those records. We use the security by constituency feature, a business rule, and a monthly integrity query to make sure everything stays clean. Those records are not included in mailings lists/invitations/etc.

-Xep

Xep Campbell · July 2018

One other thing - we also have a "Gift initiated by" gift attribute to indicate if it was the spouse that initiated the gift.

Lisa Slawinski · August 2018

Daniel Altenau:

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for responding. The two issues we have faced if John Smith is the constituent and Jane Smith is saved as his spouse are:

Donations - Jane Smith makes a donation. The email thank you goes to her husband, John Smith's email account and thanks John for the donation.

Memorial Gift E-Cards - When Jane Smith makes a memorial donation and sends an e-card through Luminate Online, it says the donation was made by John Smith, it doesn't recognize that Jane Smith was actually the one to complete the donation.
Thanks,

Dan

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the details. We deal with the spouses' gifts differently and create a constituent record for the spouse as it easily allows us to see who is making the donation. I think it's too convoluted to create other notes and attributes indicating the non-constituent spouse made the gift on the constituent spouse's record. I wonder how Mrs. Smith feels if the acknowledgment letter is sent to her husband? If it were me, I'd wonder why the organization is not giving me recognition for the donation.

Lisa

Tonya Higgins · August 2018

Daniel Altenau:

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for responding. The two issues we have faced if John Smith is the constituent and Jane Smith is saved as his spouse are:

Donations - Jane Smith makes a donation. The email thank you goes to her husband, John Smith's email account and thanks John for the donation.

Memorial Gift E-Cards - When Jane Smith makes a memorial donation and sends an e-card through Luminate Online, it says the donation was made by John Smith, it doesn't recognize that Jane Smith was actually the one to complete the donation.
Thanks,

Dan

Hi Dan,

We make spouses a spouse relationship, make the addressee and salutation on the head of household the both of them, and promote the spouse to a full constituent once they make their own gift. Spouses are soft credited for all gifts and both get the acknowledgment letter and receipt unless they have told us they want that differently.

Curious - What would you do if Jane Smith make an in honor of donation, in honor of her husband John Smith? Is there a reason you would not want them to have their own records?

Xep Campbell · August 2018

We try to keep the records together for tax letter purposes because donors have indicated they prefer a single tax letter. It would be great if you could do Household gift summaries in export.

Daniel Altenau · August 2018

Hi Xep,

Thank you for your response, that is very helpful and something we will explore. Just to clarify, when a spouse makes a donation, are they created as their own constituent? So when the auto-responder is sent, it goes to the spouse, and not the head of household.

If that is how things happen, when decided to start doing that, did you go back and create this new kind of constituent for everyone who had a spouse at once, or did you just do it as spouses made their own donations?

Thanks,

Dan

Daniel Altenau · August 2018

Tonya,

The decision to place spouses on the primary constituent's record was made before I joined my organization, so I'm not sure why it was done that way. Although as Xep pointed out, one of the benefits that has been explained to me is that each household only receives one tax letter at the end of the year and one copy of mailings that we send out.

Thanks,

Dan

Xep Campbell · August 2018

I believe the auto-responder will go to the spouse (I actually never work on the Luminate side of things so I'm not positive about this), but the more formal acknowledgement will go to the couple. The gift is moved from the spouse to the HOH record in batch after it comes through the connector. We did one big cleanup project when we initiated the plan and now just do it as we go along.

Spouses Saved on Primary Constituent Record

Comments

Categories