Karen Diener:I think there is a lot more to splitting couples than "who made the gift".I've almost always worked in organizations that split records when necessary. And each had their own set of guidelines on when it was necessary. Databases have ranged from 60,000 to 600,000 constituents. Pretty much all records started off as combined, but the non-constituent spouse was often split off if: they pass and a tribute record is needed, they begin to have their own separate relationship with the organization such as a board or committee membership, event related reasons (more on that in a second), email systems that will send only to constituents (such as OLX), website integrations where it is helpful for each user to have an account (BBNC and the "On" suite which was alluded to in the original post).One of the organizations I worked at had a very male-centric record setup. The man was always the primary record holder and his spouse was a non-constituent. Yet they held many events over a single year that were for women only. There was an inordinate amount of time spent constructing queries and mailing lists to the spouse only, and to adding the husband the event record with their wife as a "guest" but then trying to run accurate event lists. I calculated at one point and they were doing something like three times the amount of work in all of these workarounds.I've never, in any of these organizations, had issues with reporting involving soft credits. Spouses would always automatically get soft credit for each other's gift unless we knew / understood otherwise. They were always recognized as a couple. I never heard complaints, or they were so few that I don't even remember them now.So I think you can all see where I stand on this. ? I know there are often good reasons for NOT splitting spouses. But once you start building in a lot of extra steps because there is a refusal to split spouse records, you really need to examine the situation. It isn't always worth your time to jump through all of the hoops.☮Karen
Karen Diener I can't agree with this statement more. I added emphasis to your statement, because I really think the key part is determining when you need to create a constituent record for the spouse. And honestly, I think it's great to have a guideline when this is done. I also believe that we as the database managers and admins will develop a sense about when this needs to happen. Each constituent base is different, and I think it's hard to say definitively as a general rule. In this example, the issue is getting an accurate count for an event using the event module. Iff the spouse is only coming in as a guest of the main constituent, then I don't think that is really enough of a reason to create a new record. There still hasn't been anything done that separates one spouse from the other. Both are attending the event. They are still of the same household. I don't know if I see the point just to be able to get an accurate count, primarily because I don't believe they came into your database organically. I hope I don't have to define what I mean by that. But, like Karen stated earlier, I think you'll know if creating a spousal record is worth the time and effort or not.
Previously (on a different system - Ellucian's Advance), we had spouses with their own separate records. This allowed us to track the spouse as an individual, which as someone pointed out, is greatly beneficial since, in the real world, they are their own person. Many things we may be interested in tracking are relevant only to the spouse and not to the “primary” record, and it is confusing to put that information on the wrong record. Especially since, in RE, there is often no place to track source codes or comments related to a piece of information (in order to record that it pertains to the spouse instead).
A few years ago, we had a new ED of Adv. Svcs. join us, and he felt strongly that we should not have separate records for spouses. When we decided to convert from Advance to BB's RENXT, we took that opportunity to convert spouses as non-constituent relationship records instead of full constit records. The main argument for doing this was that it would allow us to total household giving much more simply, without having to worry about exporting giving for both spouses and then summing it. As it happens, this did not hold up consistently, b/c we then decided that payroll deduction gifts needed to be hard-credited to the spouse whose check they were coming out of (making an exception to our own rule of hard-crediting only the HOH for gifts). So we still have to make sure to look at both spouses' giving if we want to be sure we have an accurate hard credit household total.
Also, the conversion was not nearly as clean as we hoped. I'm guessing no one on this thread is likely to be considering that as an approach, but just know that there were a lot of associated cleanups and snarls in converting them from constituents to non-constituents. I have no idea how you'd best go about promoting existing non-constituents en masse.
Our fundraisers were not happy with this change. As mentioned, many pieces of info which pertain to the spouse are now on the HOH record, which is often confusing and sometimes not labeled well (or at all). This can cause fundraisers to think Actions occured with the HOH when they actually happened with the spouse. The same can happen with Notes which were added to the spouse. If not clearly labeled, it can be very confusing what applies to which spouse. And when you go to separate info for whatever reason (divorce, death, etc.), it's often hard to tell which cell phones or emails belong to who.
Personally, I think separate records were easier, but getting there might not be worth the trouble. Also, it's a mixed bag, and my view may be a bit myopic from a data management and end-user standpoint. Not sure what's best for all the types of reporting needed in a fundraising database.
