Messy Tributes

Beth O'Grady · October 2015

For our tribute field, we often times have donors who will do a tribute on our online donation form for someone such as "our Savior" or "all the blind people" "all the people in Africa", that type of thing . For tributes like this, where there is not an opportunity to follow up with the tributee, and sometimes they're not even a real person, how do you handle it? I am debating just creating a tributee called "Miscellaneous". We have not required an address for the tribute, just the way things have been, although I'm considering instituting that change. I may have answered my own question there, but how does your organization handle these situations?

La Donna Borth · October 2015

Hello Beth,

We have the same types of tributes. I do have a Tribute-Misc set up, and I utilize the Description field in the tribute module (multiple tribute types). I use the tribute type and descrtiption in the merge for my thank you letters (and it works well). You're probably already aware that with online gifts from NetCommunity, the correct description has to be selected each time a tribute record is selected. It works well, except that there is a limit to how many tribute type/descriptions that will display at the time of entry (but, no limit exists in the constituent record in the tribute module). My suggestion would be to set up a process right away...maybe that only you are allowed to set up the miscellaneous tributes in that record.

Angie Stumpo · October 2015

I like your idea of adding a Misc tribute. We usually just don't attach it to a tribute at all and put it in the Reference field, which feeds into the thank you letter. We might consider adding the Misc now though - great idea!

La Donna Borth · October 2015

Some of our locations used the reference field in the past, too. When we brought our databases together, I found that the reference field was being used in too many different ways and felt a need to search out other areas to store different information. Of course, we had the tribute module, so I did what you're doing - research!

Hope it works well for you!

Beth O'Grady · October 2015

Thanks for the feedback, I will look into your suggestions! I just processed some more and had a donor give in honor of "jesus christ." i need to get on that stat!

Heather Heyd 2 · October 2015

LaDonna Borth, bCRE:

Some of our locations used the reference field in the past, too. When we brought our databases together, I found that the reference field was being used in too many different ways and felt a need to search out other areas to store different information. Of course, we had the tribute module, so I did what you're doing - research!

Hope it works well for you!

Hi - By creating a Misc Tributes record - do you mean a constituent record with all of the misc tributes assigned on the Honor/Memorial tab? Or do you have a constituent record, such as Unknown Donor, with the various tributes on that H/M tab?

Thanks!

La Donna Borth · October 2015

Hi Heather,

We actually have Tributes - Misc as the name of the record, and as you stated, we use the honor/memorial tab to set up each tribute, i.e. "in honor of our troops", "in honor of Jesus Christ", "in memory of all my teachers", etc.

It is meant to be used only for these types of honor/memorial requests.

Heather Heyd 2 · October 2015

Awesome thank you!

Messy Tributes

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