Deceased spouse best practice

Jane Van Ingen · August 2020

Hello.

Thanks to this discussion, I got some of my questions answered about dealing with deceased donors. https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/420/32544?post_id=120130#p120130

But I have a related question. If the spouse of a constituent is deceased, why keep that information in the record? I'm curious as to the "best practices" reason behind it. I find it confusing to search for a donor, he comes up in a search result, only to find out he/she is the deceased spouse of a donor. I also worry that it can lead to addressee and salutation errors.

Thanks,

Jane

JoAnn Strommen · August 2020

I've always kept the info on records for historical info. Person contacting them may not know spouse is deceased. If constituent refers to the person by name, you know who it is and that they are deceased. Ex. "My wife and I have always supported the music program...."

If you use joint addressee/salutation formats, unchecking the "spouse" box updates those formats (not checked as editable) if formatted correctly using smart format. The relationship/reciprocal can document the late spouse/widow status.

Lisa Saneda · August 2020

This may be overkill (no pun intended) but when I decease a person I delete their name format and check the spouse's format at the same time. Can't tell you how many times that has needed corrected. When you mark them deceased with the info, it should automatically make them inactive. I also delete the constituencies. Then I move over to the Household and make sure that the living spouse is clicked to primary. Finally, I check to see if there is anyone else living in that household. If not, I dissolve the household.

If you do all of this, it should automatically change the spouse to widow. But double check. You just never know...

Suzanne Haggerty · September 2020

I would keep them on the database so that you would not share their name in an acquisition or exchange file. The usual best practices is those deceased donors would be sent as an overall suppression for Acquisition, Co-op and Exchange. I also suggest keeping that name with the proper deceased termination codes on the account and updated salutations as not to offend anyone that might still be receiving mail or email at that residence.

Jane Van Ingen · September 2020

JoAnn, Lisa and Suzanne:

Thank you all for your answers! This all makes sense.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Blackbaud did not notify me that folks had responded to my post.

Thanks,

Jane

Elizabeth Perron · September 2020

Hi Jane Van Ingen‍

First thank you so much for creating an engaging conversation post for others to share their knowledge! 500 pts on your profile.

Secondly, thank you for spreading a positive vibe and thanking your fellow members another 500 pts for your profile!

I was concerned that you were not getting notifications. I checked your Community Dashboard Notifications and they are set up for you to get notifications from everyone so that is right. Then I checked your subscriptions and see you are set up to get instant notifications for this post. Would you please check your spam folder to see if your organization might have a firewall that is sending the Blackbaud Community notifications to your spam?

Feel free to reach out to me personally to continue troubleshooting. I definitely want you to get your notifications.

In harmony and inclusion,

Elizabeth

Blackbaud Community Team

JoAnn Strommen · September 2020

Many of the 'auto' things you mentioned Lisa Saneda‍ are set up in business rules - such as marking as widow. We chose not to mark as inactive. Too many "this record inactive" pop-ups when looking at records.

I will throw out a caution about deleting constituencies. At some point you may want that historical data. As a university, we want to know that even though deceased they are an alum. I actually recently completed a clean up project of changing constit code from "deceased" to "Alum" - they are in db because they are an alum. We enter the 'date to' field and keep constituencies.

Heather Pauli · September 2020

We keep deceased constituents on record because many surviving spouses or other relatives make tribute gifts on the anniversary of their death, or on their birthdays--the designation is noted as a tribute type on the record and these gifts then get attributed to the deceased record under the Honor/Memorial tab. In addition to the aforementioned record adjustments such as checking "Is Inactive", I also tweak the deceased address to read "Memorial" in front of the street address so it jumps out as a deceased record when doing a constituent search. Lastly, checking "Has no valid addresses" on a deceased record will hopefully prevent any mail inadvertently getting sent to a deceased's household if someone else generates a mailing using a query that doesn't exclude deceased constituents.

Jane Van Ingen · September 2020

Thanks, Heather. It's always interesting to hear how other organizations handle these things.

Jane

Deceased spouse best practice

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