Adding spouses as constituents vs relationships

Laura Neidhold

My organization is exploring creating a documented procedure for adding spouses into NXT. We are weighing the positives and negatives of adding all spouses as a constituent record over having some spouses as a constituent and some as a relationship record. The primary negative of adding all spouses as a constituent record is the increase in record count and therefore increase in cost. On the flip side, a team member voiced the negative of having a mixture of spouse constituent records and relationship records being that this creates an inconsistency across the database.

I’m curious if any organizations have a process for this issue and what their reasoning is?

Karen Diener

I will start by saying that I've never had an issue, or heard of issues, about some spouses being constituents and others not being constituents. I wouldn't worry about that.

In general, all new donors start off with one record. The primary record holder should be the person who gave the gift - they signed the check or used their credit card - and if a spouse is identified, they are a non-constituent relationship. But your organization should also establish a policy about when a spouse should have a separate record. Reasons I've seen include:

• Having a separate and distinct relationship to your organization, such as becoming a board member or committee member
• Making a gift. This can be sticky, and like I said, each organization will vary.
• Event attendance, though this will vary depending on the tool you use to track event attendance.
• Being named in a tribute gift as an individual, and not as a couple. For example, asking for gifts in honor of my birthday.
• Emailing: If you use RE tools for email communication, know that emails can only be sent to constituents. So if you have a non-constituent spouse, their email will need to be listed in the primary record holder's contact information.
• Schools will often have separate records for both parents if they have access to an online portal for their child's grades and attendance. These systems are often integrated which means parents need separate records so they can have distinct usernames and passwords for the portal.

There certainly may be other reasons but these are the ones I hear most often.

JoAnn Strommen

@Laura Neidhold Welcome to the BB community forums.

Ditto what @Karen Diener said, having been at several orgs who did not require spouses to have their own record unless there was a reason like she cited.

What negative is the team member citing? What would be the benefit / usefulness of each having their own record?

IMO, addressee/salutation formats can easily be inclusive of spouses who have their own record or are a relationship. That shouldn't be the issue.

The only negative I've experienced was when both did have a record at previous small community based org and dealing with solicitor assignments. We only wanted one person making the ask so we developed coding on the non-HOH record to ‘see spouse for solicitor.'

Faith Murray

@Laura Neidhold
I agree with @Karen Diener and @JoAnn Strommen. I do not see a downside to having both constituent and non-constituent spouses, as long as your organizational policies are clear and well-enforced. For example, we keep spouses as non-constituent records always, unless the spouse is an alumnus. In that case, we want the education record to attach to the person who attended college. So our policy is that spouses are always non-constituent unless the spouse is an alum and needs a separate education record.

Yes, there's a little bit of learning curve with new staffers… our student worker this month recently generated several female seminarians when he deceased the main alumnus/constituent incorrectly. But our quality control queries catch that pretty instantly, as well as any errors in spousal salutation. And experienced staffers shouldn't have any trouble once they understand the policy.

Joe Moretti

@Laura Neidhold Agree 100% with the others. Every organization has at least one team member who is never satisfied. As a Database Manager, you just have to say, “And this is the way it is going to be going forward” because you are never going to please everyone but have to do what's best for the database and the organization.

Alex Wong

@Laura Neidhold
my 2cents on this is:

Spouse as constituent PRO - ability to solicit (MAINLY email) individually and recognize them individually. (i.e. being able to send email and directly address Dear Jane, vs Dear Jane and John)

Spouse as constituent CON - reporting becomes more difficult and head of household and soft crediting is not the solve a solve for this.