Soft Crediting Question

Brandon Stein

Soft crediting question. My team is divided on how to handle this situation so I'm looking for some opinions on how you would handle it.

We have a matching challenge from donor John Smith. John wants to match all membership gifts. As part of the challenge, he wants those who renew or join to be able to select from a list of our schools for where to direct their matching gift.

For example, Jane Doe joins the alumni association with a $50 membership gift and chooses her matching challenge gift to go to the Honors College.

The question is, should Jane Doe get soft credited for the $50 matching challenge gift to the Honors College as well as the $50 membership gift and why should/shouldn't she receive the soft credit?

Dariel Dixon

@Brandon Stein I don't know if you gain anything by adding this soft credit. It was not initiated by the donor, and seems like it's going to be a lot of extra gift entry for not much gain. What do you see to be gained that is worth the time investment? I can see this soft credit being very confusing to understand, as there is no relationship between the challenge donor and the membership donor outside of the timing of the gift. I wouldn't add a soft credit.

JoAnn Strommen

@Brandon Stein We would not SC Jane for the $50 to the Honors College. This does not fit our definition of SC as she is not the owner/donor of the funds. The funds are John's and unless the challenge was that she could personally receive the $50 in cash, we do not consider her to truly have ownership/control of the gift. John is still making the decision to fund the Honors College.

Down the road, would you want these challenge matches to be part of Jane's lifetime giving totals? We would not, and IMO it would create a mess for reporting.

Rose Dixon

@Brandon Stein in all my years doing this (since 1988) I have never soft credit a donor for a Match Challenge gift. We have an annual $10 million challenge for anyone who donates - I wouldn't dream of soft crediting the people who donate during that match period.

Dariel Dixon

Let us know what your team decided @Brandon Stein.

Keleigh Allen

@Brandon Stein
We would not soft credit Jane on John's match challenge gift. We would use an appeal and package on Jane's gift to track that it was done as part of the matching challenge.