Soft Credit for friends' gifts

Carolyn Quoma
Carolyn Quoma
Second Anniversary June 2023 Monthly Challenge
in Organizational Best Practices General Discussions

Hello- I recently learned we can apply soft credit for gifts made by a donor's friends. Until now I have limited soft credit to gifts from a donor's employer or a foundation.

Any thoughts on applying it to friends' gifts? Like when they encourage friends to attend a fundraiser, and the friends then donate? I'm inclined to think this will get “messy,” especially if/when friends become regular donors in their own right, but I am curious to hear how this works for others. Thanks.

Comments

  • Rachel Cavalier
    Rachel Cavalier Community All-Star
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 5 December 2025 Monthly Challenge bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge

    @Carolyn Quoma
    We do this mainly for in celebration gifts - the constituents celebrating their birthday or anniversary etc get a soft-credit and it's been helpful as while we do update celebrants on a weekly basis, once in a while one will call up on the phone to check if we'd received something in particular. Their celebration is the reason these gifts are made and it makes sense to us to soft credit them.

    Once in a while, someone might warrant receiving a soft credit for a gift they were particularly instrumental in helping us to receive but this is a rare occurrence. As you say, I think it could get messy done widescale.

  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
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    @Carolyn Quoma Welcome to the BB Community forums.

    A few things to consider. First what is your organization's definition of “soft credit”? For the places I have worked SC is only used when the person receiving the SC has some control of the funds received. Ex: spouse/the business owner. So, friend, employer etc. are not SC'ed. You need to make that decision and then be consistent.

    Next consideration is reporting. Do you include SC amounts in giving reports? In lifetime giving? If so, do you want those items included? It is not really their $.

    IMO, you would be better served to use a general assigned solicitor/fundraiser and credit the friend this way. You can track and report. Doing this may depend on how your org uses solicitor assignments but I would rather have a bit of a mess here than in gifts/giving reports. Solicitor type could be “Influencer," “Natural partner," or something along those lines.

  • Faith Murray
    Faith Murray
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    @Carolyn Quoma, seconding what @JoAnn Strommen suggests. If you include SC at all in your reports and lifetime giving (such as spousal and foundation giving), you don't want that messying up your financial reports. Lots of donors solicit gifts from others - it's one of the fundamental roles of your capital campaign cabinet or Board of Directors (or should be). This is the natural function of the Solicitor field (which need not be entered as a Relationship unless you want to, as Gift Assigned Solicitors and Constituent Solicitor Relationships have different impacts on NXT functionality.) You can assign gifts to specific Solicitors while posting the gift, and then you can run reports, or view NXT dashboards to measure Solicitor fundraising.

  • Christine Robertson
    Christine Robertson Community All-Star
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    @Carolyn Quoma I think the big question regarding soft credits is always how will adding them affect your processes for reports and queries. Far too often, I see organizations over using the options for soft crediting and complicating their processes in the end.

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