Memberships After A Donor Passes Away

Antanella Tirone
Antanella Tirone
Second Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Blackbaud Certified
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

I recently stumbled upon a strange issue, and I was hoping I could get some insight.

Our memberships are comprised of tiers based on cumulative giving, and all but the lowest tier is a lifetime membership. When one of our donors passes away, we automatically create a new constituent record for any surviving spouses, and it carries over the membership record as well. However, on the widow's record, I cannot make any changes to the membership, including linking gifts. The buttons are just all grayed out. But, on the deceased constituent's record, I can still make changes like normal. Since we do often receive gifts from widows, we want those gifts to be appropriately linked in case they reach a new tier, but I can't see a way to do that currently.

As of right now, my solution has been to create a ‘new’ membership in the widow's record and change the dates to reflect the membership history and then re-link all of the gifts. We've also considered doing this, and then marking the deceased donor's membership as ‘dropped’ so that it doesn't pull in queries anymore. But I'm not sure if this is the right answer, or if there's a solution that I'm missing.

I'd love to hear if anyone else has dealt with this and how they proceeded! Thank you so much.

Comments

  • Dana Burton
    Dana Burton
    Kudos 5 Third Anniversary Name Dropper Participant

    @Antanella Tirone, welcome to the community! We do much the same things but I've not had this instance come up. A couple of things I religiously do when a constituent passes (not sure if this affects these things - but could be over-looked by accident) is uncheck Spouse on the surviving donor's record (or the spouse shows up in the salutation and addressee) and mark them as head of household.

    If these were done, I'll keep thinking!!

  • Antanella Tirone
    Antanella Tirone
    Second Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1 Blackbaud Certified

    @Dana Burton Thank you! I haven't done in the past, so I'll be sure to do so going forward. I did make sure to take one of our more recent examples of this and mark the widow as head of household, but it didn't seem to change anything with the membership ):

  • Dariel Dixon
    Dariel Dixon Community All-Star
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply PowerUp Challenge #3 Gift Management

    @Antanella Tirone It sounds like the spouse was a set up as part of the deceased's membership. I don't know if you can move a membership in any way, but because the membership didn't originate with that donor and they are only a relational member, that's why the options are grayed out. I think your workaround of adding a new membership for the remainder of the term is probably a good idea.

    EDIT: Upon a second read, it sounds like these might be a lifetime giving based membership. I don't know if relinking the gifts is necessary. You need to be able to see the history and I'm not sure if relinking the gifts is great way to achieve that. Do you have to show every gift on her record? Was she already soft credited on those gifts? I think this is where proper notation comes into play as I think you may be doing extra work.

  • Anne Smith
    Anne Smith
    Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Antanella Tirone I just had to this recently. I went on chat they told me to drop the membership for the deceased person and a new membership for the spouse. All of the membership information will stay on both records.

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