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NXT Web Form Growing Pains--Best practice to attribute gifts?

Grant Withrow

My org recently started using NXT webforms. When the spouse of the HoH gives online, an account is created. We take that account and link it as the spouse to the HoH.

When I was running my year-end acknowledgment letters, I realized that my trusty query for these letters wouldn't work because now the HoH wasn't the only constituent, there was a spouse as well with her own constituent number. Some households are receiving two acknowledgement letters this year, but I'm looking for a way to remedy that.

Is the best way to only attribute gifts to one spouse to avoid this issue? How have you dealt with this issue, please?

TL;DR--NXT Webforms is creating spouse accounts. What is the best way to keep all gifts for a couple under one HoH?

Thank you,

G

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Gina Smith

I'd like to follow the answers to this post because we are just beginning to use NXT forms.

For now, we use OLX. Our procedure is to always attribute the gift to the HOH unless the donor has notified us otherwise. (We do have a couple of these instances, but maybe just 2 or 3 out of our entire donor base.) So, in processing, we would actually link the donor info submitted in the transaction grid to the HOH instead of the spouse who submitted the form. Then we "deny" any profile changes to the appropriate fields (Title, name, email, etc.). The spouse is always soft-credited.

Following this to see if NXT processing will be different as we move forward in that process.

Sarah Augenstein

We will merge the two accounts (HoH and Spouse) and add spouse as the spousal relationship if they are not already. The Salutation is "First name" and "Spouses First name" so when they get their acknowledgement letter it will say "Dear Jack and Sally" Instead of just the HoH. You will then have to delete the source record in Database Admin (the record that was merged) so there are not two of them. If you don't, it will stay "inactive" but will show up when searching. Hope that helps

Karen Diener

Let's back things up a little bit.

You are linking the spouses which is good. Are you also soft crediting them for each others' giving? The big question after that is whether or not you are generating your mailing list directly from Query results. That will definitely result in a letter for each donor. Query should never be used as the end point for a mailing list.* You start with a query to define your audience, but then use Export to create your mailing list. Export was designed to do Head of Household processing, so if spouse gifts are soft credited to each other, run the Export with the setting to export Head of Household only. You'll get one letter, addressed to the couple (if you've set up appropriate add/sals for them) that contains all of their giving.

I am 100% a fan of spouses having separate records when appropriate, and soft crediting giving between them. The "when appropriate" part will vary for every organization.

Hopefully everyone's responses will help you resolve the issue!

* I've worked with one organization that was able to run mailing lists from Query results because they were Draconian about having one record per household. I cringed every time it happened, but they had some poor database managers prior to that time and I'm not sure they knew any other way.

Grant Withrow

Karen Diener:

Let's back things up a little bit.

You are linking the spouses which is good. Are you also soft crediting them for each others' giving? The big question after that is whether or not you are generating your mailing list directly from Query results. That will definitely result in a letter for each donor. Query should never be used as the end point for a mailing list.* You start with a query to define your audience, but then use Export to create your mailing list. Export was designed to do Head of Household processing, so if spouse gifts are soft credited to each other, run the Export with the setting to export Head of Household only. You'll get one letter, addressed to the couple (if you've set up appropriate add/sals for them) that contains all of their giving.

I am 100% a fan of spouses having separate records when appropriate, and soft crediting giving between them. The "when appropriate" part will vary for every organization.

Hopefully everyone's responses will help you resolve the issue!

* I've worked with one organization that was able to run mailing lists from Query results because they were Draconian about having one record per household. I cringed every time it happened, but they had some poor database managers prior to that time and I'm not sure they knew any other way.

Thank you Karen,

We are soft crediting with each other's giving. I have ran it through export, but my numbers weren't accurate. I just realized that my issue with the export has been with the soft credit.

There have been times that a donor will bring someone to my organization who will become a donor, or someone will create a P2P fundraiser, and we will soft credit the person who helped bring in that money. Now that I'm talking through that problem, I'm understanding that those people need to be marked as solicitors or just mentioned as notes because those are not true soft credits. That would allow me to use the export function to include both the normal gifts and the soft credits under the HoH.

Do you include the credits and soft credits as one total in your acknowledgements?

Thank you for helping me talk through this!

Karen Diener

Hi Grant,

I was really happy to read that you worked your way through the issue of soft credits vs. gift solicitor. You're exactly right in your conclusion.

If I was sending a year-end statement to a couple, and the purpose of that statement was to acknowledge them for their donations during the year or even be a consolidated tax receipt, I would definitely include gifts from both of them. I would never include gifts that they helped solicit but were not actually theirs to give.

I have some pretty strong feelings on this! :-)

Karen