New Recurring Gift Donor or a Continuation?

Austen Brown

Tell me how you would handle this situation...

**Background Info on our System: Couples are stored on one record. When a spouse dies, the living spouse gets their own record with all previous giving soft-credited.**

A recurring gift couple had one spouse pass away. The living spouse has chosen to continue giving on a monthly basis. Would you count the living spouse as a new recurring gift donor or a continuation of previous recurring giving?

Dariel Dixon

I think I would create a new recurring gift for the living spouse, however I would recognize them for the deceased gifts as well.  I think I would want to start that just so that I don't inadvertently exclude these gifts based off a deceased flag.


Also, if you do any type of grouping based on consecutive years, I'd also maintain those for the still living donor. 

JoAnn Strommen

I agree with Dariel Dixon‍. I would definitely want gifts on living spouses record. That would make creating a new gift much easier/cleaner, IMO. 


As to counting as a new donor or not, I'd consider it a continuation. But you could easily make a case for new as living spouse has made the decision to make the gift and may not have been involved in earlier decision to give.  

Chantel Stokes

we do a complete new recurring gift entry for the living spouse.

Faith Murray

We simply transfer all gifts over onto the new spouse's record using the Constituent Merge feature. After all, they are as much the living spouse's gifts as the deceased spouse's - so they should not be excluded from giving summaries or fiscal reports that may have the Soft Credit feature turned off.

Linda Burns

In most instances the living spouse maintains the active record and the deceased spouse is either in relationship tab or if there are particular attributes for that individual we would create a new record for the deceased and link them.