Etiquette for recognition of deceased donors on donor walls/lists

Dawn Brenner-Plonski:

I am wondering how other organizations list a deceased donor on their donor panels or walls. For an example, a couple, while they are alive, makes a large donation which gives them recognition on our donor wall as "The Hon. and Mrs. John B. Doe". The husband then passes away. Should the donor listing now read "The Hon.* and Mrs. John B. Doe"; "The Hon. John* and Mrs. Jane Doe" or do you not even make a reference to whether a donor is alive or deceased and keep the recognition the same as it was when they first gave their gift?

 

For us every appeal has a place for the donor to list how they would like to be recognized, so we recognize them based on what they tell us. If they wrote down "The Hon. and Mrs. John B. Doe" we would list it as "The Hon.* and Mrs. John B. Doe". We do add an * if one of them is deceased. Most of our donors ask to be listed as "John and Jane Doe" and in that instance it's easy to change it to "John* and Jane Doe". If appropriate we always contact the donor to confirm any names we are questioning. In your example we would call to confirm how they wanted to be listed and offer the option of "The Hon. John and Mrs. Jane Doe" and see which one Jane prefers. Then we would insert the * accordingly.