Head of Household in Education Sector

Roma Sharma

Hi  one question please..... in the context of Higher Education, could you share how you manage spouses in Raiser’s Edge generally, and with particular regard to addressees and salutations for joint accounts, how do you handle these matters?

At the moment we don't use ‘Head of Household ’, although historical constituent attributes have been used, which I think is a very complex way. Would you be able to share how you are tackling all this please?

 

Thanks so much in advance!

 

 

 

#dadce0;color:rgb(26,115,232);font-weight:500;letter-spacing:.25px;line-height:20px;margin-bottom:8px;margin-right:8px;padding-bottom:6px;padding-left:16px;padding-right:16px;padding-top:6px;">Thank you!

Jahna Balk

Hi Roma Sharma‍,


Where we have two constituents who might both be actively engaged (i.e. - parents of current/past students, alumni who are married to one another, trustees, etc.) we have one record for each and have gifts automatically soft-credit the spouse. We also back-credited for past gifts on all spouses to ensure accurate historical reporting.


We mark the one with the greater level of engagement or higher level constituency code as the HoH (i.e. - a trustee who is married to an alumnus is the HoH, regardless of how engaged the alumnus is.). If there is an equal level of engagement and equal constituency code, we assign the HoH status to the record with the longest record of participation. (The one with the older date added.)


To make this work for reporting, you need to make sure your queries and reports are adjusted to filter to include all soft-credits fully to both soft-credit and donor (in the query settings) and then report only on the HoH participation. This also means that if you are reporting by constituency, or donor gender, or age grouping or any individual characteristic, you will have the more accurate picture of which donor gave for your report. This way, you can also more accurately track donor engagement, volunteerism, etc. 


I found it very helpful to make sure that the Addressee and Salutation were the exactly the same on both spouse records. I had to go into all the queries, exports, and reports and check them and make adjustments when I made the switch. 


If we have a record where only one household member has a relationship with the school, the spouse will remain as a non-constituent until they engage by attending an event, volunteering, or making a gift. Those records still show up accurately in the reporting and it does not have an impact on the records where we have chosen to split spouses.


I think this method is more equitable and more accurate  and gives a clearer picture of who is supporting your institution.



Hope this helps!


Jahna

Roma Sharma

Hi Jahna - Thanks so much for sharing such detailed information. This is very helpful, as at the moment we are using Constituent Attributes to capture details if they are spouse,  yes/No. if divorced or widowed then they are all captured in attributes and this makes it very hard to keep up to date and run reports. Thanks so much for sharing this with me . It was very kind of you.

With best wishes.

Roma

Katherine Mannion

Hi Roma-


I'm curious why you would keep such information on the Attributes tab.  Marital status has a spot right on the Bio 1 tab for you to keep info like Widowed, Divorced, Married/Partnered or Single.