Deceased Records and recurring (membership) gifts

Matt Hanifin

Hi all - we share our database with a partner organization. Same roof - two families type approach, where each entity has its own way of managing data.

My question is more about checking one practice to see how others handle it, and using the feedback to update our SOP. Our partner org is primarily membership-based, with monthly recurring dues that are imported. How does your organization handle the management of recurring gifts for deceased records (real cash in) - whether or not they have a relative relationship? Would most agree that you should create a new constituent from the existing relationship (if it doesn't already exist) and that is where all hard credit should go from there on out for those recurring gifts?

JoAnn Strommen

@Matt Hanifin Welcome to the BB Community forums

Yes, I would expect that any gifts, recurring, membership or other, would go on the record of a living person. (Exception would be gifts from an estate which is a separate record.)

Dariel Dixon

I'm not so sure @JoAnn Strommen. If the gift was made by the deceased before their untimely demise, then why would the gift not be credited to that constituent? Even if it is something that is set up where the donation was scheduled, I believe it to be more prudent to show who was responsible for that gift, and it may not be a relative. Like you mentioned, estate gifts are a completely different thing, but I don't know if I would create a new record for a tangential relationship that may or may not be directly related to the gift in question.

@Matt Hanifin, I'm hoping that you don't have a bunch of these deceased gifts arriving. It can take some time for accounts to be closed and things like that. I once received a gift from a donor who passed away almost 3 months before his last monthly donation came in.

Faith Murray

@Matt Hanifin
I'm going to agree with both JoAnn and Dariel, and say here that it depends on who is managing the account where the donation originated.

So, as in Dariel's case, if the gift is auto-processing from a deceased person's bank account, it should still go to the deceased person's record. I'm going to add that if gifts are auto-generated in Raiser's Edge, it will not process a gift for a person marked deceased – however, it sounds like that is not how your gifts are handled since they are being imported.

JoAnn's suggestion about applying gifts to a living donor would be most appropriate if the donor had a spouse, for example, who also jointly owns or inherits said accounts. In such cases, a continued gift would actually be coming from the surviving spouse rather than the deceased donor. I don't think I would carry this so far as to apply it to extended relatives or children, however.

Matt Hanifin

Thank you @Faith Murray (and @Dariel Dixon and @JoAnn Strommen). I would absolutely agree that if we can confirm gifts were originated by the deceased, they should be credited. I would also agree that there is likely to be a few months where scheduled gifts could arrive. My concern is when it gets beyond that few months, a decision needs to be made that the deceased no longer gets credit and the gifts get attributed to a living relative (whom we have contacted).