Gifts from Deceased

Damon Rosenthal · April 2020

A difficult subject, but I am relatively new to Fundraising and I need to know the industry standard on crediting a Constituent for gifts post death.

My point of view is accuracy and representation. If a Constituent's Trust or other gives, whether planned or unexpected, to our organization, it seems to me that we would want to know/see that on that Constituent's record even if soft credited and even after death to make LifeTime giving accurate. This way we know the complete benefit of a Donor in any analysis.

Currently our organization has a standard that we only Soft Credit the living. If a Trust gift is received it is hard credited to the Trust only.

Thanks in advance for feedback.

Candy Reichert · April 2020

We process gifts from deceased as gifts post humus. The money belonged to the deceased constituent. We would have not received the funds if it were not for the deceased constituent. We might soft credit the organization that sent it, but it truly belonged to the the deceased donor. I agree with your point of view.

Dariel Dixon 2 · April 2020

I think you make a good point about a soft credit to the deceased. However, if the gift is made from a trust, is there already a relationship link between the records?

I do think it's ironic that we are speaking of counting posthumous gifts in lifetime giving numbers. I guess it's a contradiction by definition, but I think we all understand.

I also think it's different if there was a written directive for your organization to get this gift, or if it was done at the request of the executor.

Susan Fountain · April 2020

We create an Organization record with cons code Estate/Trust, link the constituent record (Ind) and soft credit the constituent

Damon Rosenthal · April 2020

Such gifts are coming in per directive of the Donor and/or Trust. It may have been solicited and planned pledge in advance, but sometimes its an unsolicited blessing that we were unaware of. That is something I didn't consider if it is a directive of the Executor of the Estate/Trust. Thank you Dariel and everyone else for your responses!

Karen Hartt · April 2020

We too create an Estate of record, link the estate to the donor and soft credit. If the bequest is know the appeal is Realized Bequest, if it is unknown and the donor isn't coded as such the appeal is Unknown Realized Bequest. This allows us to track the lovely surprise gifts separate from the known and recorded bequests.

Heidi Bichler · April 2020

We also create a record for the Estate and SC the deceased donor.

This also helps the metrics for Planned Giving.

Some administrators still don't see the benefits of Planned Giving and tracking gifts AFTER a person is deceased is a great way to be able to demonstrate the importance of stewarding those gifts.

Other than demonstrating giving (#years and $$) vs posthumous giving, how do others report out these numbers?

Damon Rosenthal · April 2020

Thank you Heidi and Karen all others for your responses here!

This has been most helpful to our organization being relatively new on RE and reconsidering our SOPs, policy, procedures - some of which relate to functions in RE that are different than what we had previously.

Sincerely,

Damon

Crystal Bruce · April 2020

Discussion moved to Raiser's Edge. Thanks!

Gifts from Deceased

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