Donors adding 2 names in first name field from online donation forms

Allison Reville

Looking for best practices when donors enter multiple names in the first name field when making donations through online forms. For example: “Chris & Pat Smith" or “The Hernandez Family”. Our preference has been to have one constituent/record and add the applicable relationship and soft credit if applicable.

JoAnn Strommen

@Allison Reville I can relate! Our university president does a lot of his donations online and always adds his wife's name with his. It's sort of cute.

If new data add the second name as a relationship. When it's family name I try to find time to research and get a first name.

If the spouse/second name has their own record they are automatically set to soft-credit.

Austen Brown

@Allison Reville - You could try to add an additional (optional) text field to the form for “Recognition Name” this gives folks the space to put in the data you're seeing.

Aldera Chisholm

@Allison Reville, I have a maintenance query I run periodically to search for constituent names that contain “&,” and I will then add the “&” person as a relationship and update the Add/Sal to an editable format with the “Mike & Cathy Smith” information as entered by the donor. I prefer to set up as a relationship and adjust the primary constituent so that we don't end up with the Head of Household being “Mike & Cathy Smith”, who has a spouse of “Cathy Smith” which can result in an automatically updated addressee of “Mike & Cathy and Cathy Smith”