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Multiple Online Express Donations - Can I link to one master record

Heather Bell

Hello! A company recently asked their employees to make donations to my organization in order to participate in jeans day. Now all their employees are making donations online through our online express. But all of these donors are one and done. So, we don't want to make a record for each donor as they will likely not give again to us. How can we process the online express gifts but link to one master record - say the company's record?

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Comments

Karen Diener

@Heather Bell just because you can doesn't always mean you should.

In online express, you can link gifts to any record you want. But if people made donations - even if they are “one and done” - they made the donation and not the company. If there is a charge that is refuted it will be harder to find the original donor if you don't add them.

I understand your thought process, but I would strongly recommend adding records for the donors and marking them as “do not solicit" or whatever solicit codes apply. As an alternative, you COULD link them all to a company record, but I would store their information (address, phone, email, etc.) on the gift record itself. A Gift Note might be a good option. Regardless, it will be manual.

That's my gut reaction and about 78% thought out this morning, so there might be better options for storing the donor details. But those are not donations from the company.

Karen

Heather Bell

@Karen Diener I appreciate your feedback. However with our contract we pay per record. Its costly to have one and done donors take up valuable, costly records up. Our rep recently had us remove a lot of similar types of records to avoid from upgrading our contract.

Dariel Dixon

I agree with @Karen Diener. Is there another reason that you don't want to create records for these folks? Are you almost at the record allotment or some other reason?

You lose more than you gain with this method, because the expectation is that these people will never give to your organization ever again. That said, if you link them to the company record, how will you account for the fact that the company didn't actually make the donation? You could also attribute it to a anonymous or cash record for gifts you have no donor for. I just hope that this would be an avenue for stewardship of these (probably small) donations, and a way to create and increase affinity.

I understand record limits are a thing, but I think possibly removing older “one and done” gifts might be a better option @Heather Bell.

Faith Murray

@Heather Bell, I agree with Dariel and Karen. These donors may reach out next spring for a replacement tax receipt. How will you find them? If you absolutely cannot keep them in your system for at least a year, because you are within a few hundred donors of your tier cap, then you probably need a larger subscription plan anyway because you don't have room for long-term constituent growth.

I understand removing them if they have not responded to renewal mailings in 12-24 months. But then you will want to transfer them to an “Anonymous” record, or a dedicated “One-time Donor” record, NOT the company record. Always keep in mind the legal/tax angle and lifetime giving metrics - the company did not make the gifts and does not merit the tax deductions, although it might warrant a soft credit to the company. And as others have advised, keep the donor name and address tagged in Gift Notes, Reference, or other easy to find location. And, create an annual checks system (check against an excel spreadsheet, perhaps) to see if any new donors who came on this year through other channels are actually existing one-time donors that you have deleted, so you can replace their prior giving history.