Use of titles outdated?

Beth Muckler · February 18

Hi all! I've been with my organization for about a year. I'll admit I'm old school and have always used titles for Addressees. My new place is pretty anti-title and I'm adjusting (who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?!) but still have some questions.

1. Are other organizations still using titles?
2. What about earned titles - Dr., Judge, Reverend, etc.? ChatGPT is telling me not to use those titles unless a donor specifically requests we use them, but here in the office we have differing opinions. Curious as to what others think or do.
3. How do you decided who to list first for couples when you're not using titles?
4. Tangentially related: Do you still track gender? I'm all for not assuming anyone's gender, but I know it's a measure that is tracked in lots of giving analysis.

Thanks! Looking forward to seeing other's thoughts on this!

(I tried to post this under the Organizational Best Practices category but kept getting an error message. Apologies if this is in the wrong place!)

Joe Moretti · February 18

Here down in New Orleans, we still use Titles, Mr. Mrs. Ms., etc.. We do keep track of gender, but really do not report on that at all. Down yonder except for some rare occasions, the male is first and we still use the Primary Addressee for the most part as Mr. and Mrs. John Smith. We also use earned titles if that is how the donor wants to be called.

But that is us. But unless you are a very specific organization that caters to certain individuals, most places will still use the titles since most people actually use them. Again this is an organization's decision. But I really do not think that titles are outdated at all.

But if you do not use titles and then your organization leadership changes and the new leadership, states to use titles, you have a big clean-up job. I feel keep titles and just export the first and last name as opposed to not having titles at all. Just thinking way down the road if things change.

JoAnn Strommen · February 18

We only use titles for specific pieces such as a formal event invite and letter from scholarship recipient to the donor of that scholarship.

They were used in the past. Several factors for the change. More personal. Eliminates guessing with so many gender neutral/unique names. Online gift platform data that comes in without title field (not required / not available).

We've only a couple people who are fussy about using earned title.

We list our alum first for couples. When both alum, it's the donor first if related to a gift.

We don't do significant reporting on gender. We track when known, example data from registrar's office.

Elizabeth Johnson · February 19

Like @JoAnn Strommen - we are also a school. We stopped using titles about a decade ago. Our high schoolers call teachers by their first names - we are informal by nature.

We left titles for our older alumni (class of '58 and older) and before we made the change we reviewed our managed prospects and handled them based on our relationships and their preferences. We log their preference when known in an editable addr/sal that is always at the top so we can see their preferences with a glance from the web view.

One of the beauties of RE is that ability to take personal preferences into consideration.

We also list both our alumn first for couples in both addr/sal when the Alumni is a female, when both are alum the one with the earlier class comes first and if both in the same class female comes first. We almost always list the female first in salutations, unless other preferences are known. This is true for parents and grandparents too. For grandparents we almost always make the female the record holder. For parents we make the one who reads more email the record holder (my choice - saves me a lot time later on as they become more involved)

We track gender's when known, not making assumptions and seldom report on it. We love that we can edit this table now, but did keep it simple. Unknown simply wasn't good enough for other known options.

Karen Diener · February 19

Most of the organizations I work with are abandoning gendered titles like Mr., Mrs., Ms. but keeping professional titles. They aren't tracking gender either, simply because neither of these pieces of data are relevant to their work.

They are new to RE and came from a system where constituents did not have separate records, so nearly every record is has a primary record holder and a non-constituent spouse. They have not yet been able to make a general policy decision on who to list first, but have done some cleanup on records for important donors. For instance, sometimes listing the female of a hetero couple first if she has the strongest connection to the organization even when the primary record holder is her husband.

I'm also working with an organization that supports LGBTQIA+ individuals, where this information can matter, and they track title on about 60,000 of their 500,000+ constituents. I didn't check for the presence of gender.

Everything depends on your organization, your donor base, etc. Just know that many organizations are moving away from using them.

Beth Muckler · February 25

Thank you so much for the input, everyone! Sounds like my team is right and we're (mostly) all moving away from using titles, other than professional titles.

I've got some work to do on my end changing a lot of Addressees and Salutations!

Appreciate the opinions! 😊

Use of titles outdated?

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