New Recurring Gift Donor or a Continuation?

Austen Brown
Austen Brown Community All-Star
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in Organizational Best Practices General Discussions

Tell me how you would handle this situation...

**Background Info on our System: Couples are stored on one record. When a spouse dies, the living spouse gets their own record with all previous giving soft-credited.**

A recurring gift couple had one spouse pass away. The living spouse has chosen to continue giving on a monthly basis. Would you count the living spouse as a new recurring gift donor or a continuation of previous recurring giving?

Comments

  • Dariel Dixon
    Dariel Dixon Community All-Star
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    I think I would create a new recurring gift for the living spouse, however I would recognize them for the deceased gifts as well.  I think I would want to start that just so that I don't inadvertently exclude these gifts based off a deceased flag.


    Also, if you do any type of grouping based on consecutive years, I'd also maintain those for the still living donor. 
  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
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    I agree with Dariel Dixon‍. I would definitely want gifts on living spouses record. That would make creating a new gift much easier/cleaner, IMO. 


    As to counting as a new donor or not, I'd consider it a continuation. But you could easily make a case for new as living spouse has made the decision to make the gift and may not have been involved in earlier decision to give.  
  • Chantel Stokes
    Chantel Stokes
    Fifth Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1
    we do a complete new recurring gift entry for the living spouse.
  • Faith Murray
    Faith Murray Community All-Star
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    We simply transfer all gifts over onto the new spouse's record using the Constituent Merge feature. After all, they are as much the living spouse's gifts as the deceased spouse's - so they should not be excluded from giving summaries or fiscal reports that may have the Soft Credit feature turned off.
  • Linda Burns
    Linda Burns
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    In most instances the living spouse maintains the active record and the deceased spouse is either in relationship tab or if there are particular attributes for that individual we would create a new record for the deceased and link them.

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