Splitting couples into separate constituents

Hi Robert Brown‍,


This will not be the answer you are looking for - just a quick thought since this may end up being a summer project for you.


What if you split 5 or so of your active constituents now until you get to the project and see if splitting the records really benefits your organization's efficiency or not.


I say this because at one point I thought splitting the records would make my life easier (didn't have event module at the time - I do now but no events to speak of at the moment). It didn't, for my organization, it turned out to be less efficient.


I'm looking forward to seeing how others answer your actual question. 

Was talking to person who works with events, she confirmed they do not have to have their own record but there are some tricks to getting correct participant counts/lists.  Send me a private message with your contact info and I can ask Sarah to reach out to you. 


To get to non-constit in NXT just click 'search relationship records' at the bottom of the search list. Not that hard, IMO. You don't have to go to main record unless you didn't enter any contact info on the relationship record. 


 

Hi Elizabeth! What was your reasoning to split them up in prior years? I have never even thought about splitting them up. I think it would cause more confusion but maybe I am just not diverse in this enough. 

Happy New Year to you also!

How does your organization determine if just one of the couple is a donor?

I think there is a lot more to splitting couples than "who made the gift".


I've almost always worked in organizations that split records when necessary.  And each had their own set of guidelines on when it was necessary.  Databases have ranged from 60,000 to 600,000 constituents.  Pretty much all records started off as combined, but the non-constituent spouse was often split off if:  they pass and a tribute record is needed, they begin to have their own separate relationship with the organization such as a board or committee membership, event related reasons (more on that in a second), email systems that will send only to constituents (such as OLX), website integrations where it is helpful for each user to have an account (BBNC and the "On" suite which was alluded to in the original post).


One of the organizations I worked at had a very male-centric record setup.  The man was always the primary record holder and his spouse was a non-constituent.  Yet they held many events over a single year that were for women only.  There was an inordinate amount of time spent constructing queries and mailing lists to the spouse only, and to adding the husband the event record with their wife as a "guest" but then trying to run accurate event lists.  I calculated at one point and they were doing something like three times the amount of work in all of these workarounds.


I've never, in any of these organizations, had issues with reporting involving soft credits.  Spouses would always automatically get soft credit for each other's gift unless we knew / understood otherwise.  They were always recognized as a couple.  I never heard complaints, or they were so few that I don't even remember them now.


So I think you can all see where I stand on this.  ?  I know there are often good reasons for NOT splitting spouses.  But once you start building in a lot of extra steps because there is a refusal to split spouse records, you really need to examine the situation.  It isn't always worth your time to jump through all of the hoops.


☮


Karen

Karen Diener:

I think there is a lot more to splitting couples than "who made the gift".


I've almost always worked in organizations that split records when necessary.  And each had their own set of guidelines on when it was necessary.  Databases have ranged from 60,000 to 600,000 constituents.  Pretty much all records started off as combined, but the non-constituent spouse was often split off if:  they pass and a tribute record is needed, they begin to have their own separate relationship with the organization such as a board or committee membership, event related reasons (more on that in a second), email systems that will send only to constituents (such as OLX), website integrations where it is helpful for each user to have an account (BBNC and the "On" suite which was alluded to in the original post).


One of the organizations I worked at had a very male-centric record setup.  The man was always the primary record holder and his spouse was a non-constituent.  Yet they held many events over a single year that were for women only.  There was an inordinate amount of time spent constructing queries and mailing lists to the spouse only, and to adding the husband the event record with their wife as a "guest" but then trying to run accurate event lists.  I calculated at one point and they were doing something like three times the amount of work in all of these workarounds.


I've never, in any of these organizations, had issues with reporting involving soft credits.  Spouses would always automatically get soft credit for each other's gift unless we knew / understood otherwise.  They were always recognized as a couple.  I never heard complaints, or they were so few that I don't even remember them now.


So I think you can all see where I stand on this.  ?  I know there are often good reasons for NOT splitting spouses.  But once you start building in a lot of extra steps because there is a refusal to split spouse records, you really need to examine the situation.  It isn't always worth your time to jump through all of the hoops.


☮


Karen

Karen Diener‍ I can't agree with this statement more.  I added emphasis to your statement, because I really think the key part is determining when you need to create a constituent record for the spouse.  And honestly, I think it's great to have a guideline when this is done.  I also believe that we as the database managers and admins will develop a sense about when this needs to happen.  Each constituent base is different, and I think it's hard to say definitively as a general rule.  In this example, the issue is getting an accurate count for an event using the event module.  Iff the spouse is only coming in as a guest of the main constituent, then I don't think that is really enough of a reason to create a new record.  There still hasn't been anything done that separates one spouse from the other.  Both are attending the event.  They are still of the same household.  I don't know if I see the point just to be able to get an accurate count, primarily because I don't believe they came into your database organically.  I hope I don't have to define what I mean by that.  But, like Karen stated earlier, I think you'll know if creating a spousal record is worth the time and effort or not.  

The upsides of splitting records are pretty clear to me and our team (Event and volunteer management, wealth screening, email flexibility etc.). But I have a hard time picturing how to begin splitting 6,000+ household records. There apparently was a plugin for time, something called "NonConstituent Promotion Update", though I understand it's discontinued. Any thoughts?


I can see doing some type of large scale export and global delete scheme, but then how to soft credit years of giving, establish good address sharing and relationships? As a K-12 we depend heavily on parent and sibling relationships, multi-generational even.


Thanks very much!