Estate Gift - best practice?

Nicole Leyder:

**Sorry if this posted twice - my first post isn't showing up on my screen for some reason** 

"Jane Doe" was a donor, but not at a level where she was recognized in our honor roll.  She passed away and we have now received a gift from her estate which puts her at honor roll level.  We want to make sure she is recognized appropriately.  Do we...

A)  Enter the estate gift onto her current individual record and change the "honor roll display name" (a field added on Addressee/Salutation tab) to "Estate of Jane Doe"...

  Create an "organization" record with the name of "Estate of Jane Doe."  We're then unable to soft credit for the gifts she made while living, but can add the individual on the relationships tab, because the estate gift alone is enough to be recognized in the honor roll...

C)  Create a new "individual" record with the last name field saying "Jane Doe," add a prefix of "Estate of," and then soft credit for the original individual record's gifts, so when pulling the record 'addressee' it will say "Estate of Jane Doe"?

...Or do you have another suggestion as best practice?  Thanks for your help!

A or B are the more common practices. Never heard of anyone doing C.

A technically is more "correct" since estate gifts are legally from the individual however I prefer to use B and consider it an extension of the individual's record. B. allows you to add addresses and contact names of the estate trustees, lawyers etc and keep them in mailings should that be appropriate. Once you mark the individual record as deceased they will no longer be in mailings, etc. and individual records can not have "contact" relationships. You would not need to soft credit the esate for all the living gifts - you can and should, however, set up the estate record to always auto-soft credit the individual so you can always go to the individual record for the full giving history.

Josh Bekerman:

We do B.  We create an org record for the estate and soft credit the individual record. 

 B here as well.  I have a colleague who is baffled by this, but I've tried to explain that in the interest of consistency and keeping up with contacts and anyone else named or involved with the estate we like to do it this way.  We also auto-soft credit.

Nicole Leyder:

How do I set up the Estate record so it always automatically soft credits the individual record?  I'm not seeing a soft credit option on the record gift tab.  I only see it when I go into the actual gift and then I don't see an "always" type of option...

Youneed to set up a relationship with the individual and then it is on General 2 at the bottom; a small check box that says "automatically credit .....)

Joshua Bekerman bCRE:

Decedent?