Any best practices recommendations?

Wade Barren · June 26

Starting a new CRM and noticing many names without titles (Mr., Ms., etc.).

Do you make “Title” a required field on donation forms? What are your best practices for collecting this info, especially for gender-neutral names?

Dariel Dixon · June 26

Welcome to the community @Wade Barren. Let me tell you this is a highly contentious subject. I think it really depends on your audience. I've worked at organizations that are very formal, and some that were extremely casual. You better know your audience before making a decision. And if you decide to make it required, consider having some gender neutral options available.

JoAnn Strommen · June 26

@Wade Barren Yes, as @Dariel Dixon said - widely debated subject.

While some donation forms allow you to have the field and make it required, it doesn't seem to be a popular item on many crowdfunding platforms.

I would love to say that we have it on all records so can use if formal add/sal is needed but we don't. Not having the title does require special attention when you have a default format for primary that uses titles.

So, we don't require it but do include it on all our alumni records as we get that info from university grad files. For a lot of crowdfunding donors, we don't have it and there are so many names that are gender-neutral - more all the time.

Faith Murray · June 26

@Wade Barren
While most of our records have one, we also have some donors who prefer no title or have ambiguous names. And while you will hear much debate in certain circles about donors objecting to titles, I'll point out that this is not a modern issue: we have had one elderly donor that passionately objected to the "Ms." title because she believed it contributed to the decay of the traditional family structure. So while title is an an available field on forms, and we may at times apply an assumed title, we do not require it. When titles are missing, we simply revert to first name salutation.

Sunshine Reinken Watson · June 27

@Wade Barren

I encourage organizations to drop titles from addressees and salutations, if their donor/local culture will allow for it. There is just too much room for mistakes that upset donors (like assuming someone's gender by their first name, or accidentally labeling a doctor Mr. or Ms.).

Lucy Ruiz · June 27

@Wade Barren The short answer is Yes, make it a required field if this is what your organization needs to have your addressee/salutations work. I do echo what @Sunshine Reinken Watson and others have said which is perhaps this is a good time to have a broader conversation about titles and if it still makes sense to your organization. This is a great survey question to ask for donor feedback.

Spring Velazquez · June 28

Unearned Titles Summary & Response-DRG.pdf @Wade Barren

EDIT: Apologies-mobile attachments don't seem to work well with this. I've uploaded the file as an image and attached it as a PDF. The original can be found on the Donor Relations Group website (previously Donor Relations Guru). This is a treasure trove of resources I highly recommend.

We have chosen to eliminate all unearned titles in our system. We had been considering it and then utilized the following from Lynne Wester's group to really drive the conversation. The infographic is attached

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Karen Diener · June 30

@Wade Barren I cannot see an instance where this would need to be required. You could certainly configure your form to display the field so donors could select a value if they want. In either case, make sure that gender-neutral titles are available.

And, as others have already mentioned, you can select an addressee and salutation that works for that donor.

Christian Hill · July 4

@Spring Velazquez
I'd love to check this out, but can't seem to get a high enough res version that is readable. Are you able to upload it again?

Robin Kuehn · July 7

We have the field as non-required, so if the donor chooses to include one in their correspondence or filling out a form, it will get added. Then when we send formal letters, we can use a merge that includes it if it exists.
We do struggle with advocacy forms since they always require these, and align with a gender binary that not all of our donors will fit. We just try to be responsive to updating these and removing titles as requested.

Spring Velazquez · July 20

@Christian Hill
I attached the full-res PDF of the infographic. Were you able to download it?

Christian Hill · July 22

@Spring Velazquez

I was able to download, thank you!

Any best practices recommendations?

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