Two of our corporate donors merged companies, do I merge the constituents?

Rachel Perlman

Hi All,

I'm wondering if anyone has run into this issue before. I have two corporate donors who merged their companies and now I'm concerned about merging the constituent records, especially as the companies as two separate entities gave us money for two different programs.

Any thoughts/insight/advice?

Thanks!

JoAnn Strommen

@Rachel Perlman Welcome to the BB Forum Community!

It has been and can be done various ways: merge the 2, keep 2 old and create 1 new, keep 1/inactive 1.

When merging - you lose the detail of which org actually gave which gift. It will all appear as coming from the one entity. How important is that going forward? Do you need donor name as it is now for exports, an annual report?

Another option is to select one as the record to continue using or create a new record and soft credit that record with the gifts from the other donor(s). Then the ‘secondary’ record can be marked/annotated No longer in businesses / see the other company record. Does give you ‘dead’ records which isn't always the best option.

IMO, there isn't a wrong/right way - depends on your needs. You may want to keep both for this year - until all reporting is done and then merge. I always want to consider what I'll need the info for in the future.

Pat Phillips

@Rachel Perlman I would keep the 2 old entities and create a new one. Each company made gifts for different reasons from different people. And most importantly tax deductible gifts would be (will be) credited to each individual company.