How to list donors in the annual report

Nicole S.:

About a year ago we began including a blank on our forms for annual report listing.  Many donors responded to this by telling us they wanted to be list by first name or with/without a spouse, etc.  We have a perfectly fine system of tracking in place, but we are now encountering 2 headaches...

1. We have the constant struggle of listing EXACTLY as the donor has requested or trying to keep things uniform and consistent with etiquette.   For instance, if convention dictates that you keep the man's first and last name together, then do you list as John and Mary Smith anyway?  I tend to want to list as Mary and John Smith for the sake of consistency (and because 95% of people put it this way).  But I'm not sure.  I also find that I can end up having to make a lot of edits when lists are pulled because the person proofing the list wants to follow the etiquette rules.

2. Many of the donors give multiple times a year, or are giving for the second time annually.  And then list their name a different way each time.  I kind of feel like we're going back and forth.

 I think that the point of this is to see if they want to be listed formally or informally and individually or as a couple.

How do you handle it?

I guess we don't worry about convention/consistency for Mary and John vs. John and Mary.  Each of our recognition listings are pulled from an addressee listing on their RE record.  Because we have separate spouse records, if Mary made donation her name is listed first unless response/pledge card indicates otherwise.  Over the past 15+ years we've run into a few couples where it does matter the order.  The names are listed as formatted from RE. Others working on report do not have permission to change any of the listings. 

For multiple gifts, I tend to go with last one received.  If difference was significant I'd contact donor.  What I run into is one gift is names, another gift to same fund is checked for "anonymous".   (Sometimes wonder if they even remember what they marked for listing.)

Just my 2 cents...

 

 

Nicole S.:

About a year ago we began including a blank on our forms for annual report listing.  Many donors responded to this by telling us they wanted to be list by first name or with/without a spouse, etc.  We have a perfectly fine system of tracking in place, but we are now encountering 2 headaches...

1. We have the constant struggle of listing EXACTLY as the donor has requested or trying to keep things uniform and consistent with etiquette.   For instance, if convention dictates that you keep the man's first and last name together, then do you list as John and Mary Smith anyway?  I tend to want to list as Mary and John Smith for the sake of consistency (and because 95% of people put it this way).  But I'm not sure.  I also find that I can end up having to make a lot of edits when lists are pulled because the person proofing the list wants to follow the etiquette rules.

2. Many of the donors give multiple times a year, or are giving for the second time annually.  And then list their name a different way each time.  I kind of feel like we're going back and forth.

 I think that the point of this is to see if they want to be listed formally or informally and individually or as a couple.

How do you handle it?

Donor Recognition is such a challenge. We to offer our donors the option of telling us exactly how they wish to be listed in the report via a line on the response card. We do a specific addressee/salutation which pulls to our donor report. Thus our final listing of names matches exactly as the donor last notified us (aka last time of gift). For those that do not inform us of a preference we revert to the formal "Mr. and Mrs." and that has seemed acceptable to our donor base. It does take extra time when keying in gifts to enter and review all the publication names but overall we have found that donors are more satisfied and that calls due to "errors" in the annual report have gone done greatly. (Last year we didn't even get one call).