We do not create a constituent record for the people listed on the check unless they sign it. If the person on the appeal is listed on the check and signed the check they are the only ones that have a record created.
It might be easier if you would add the other people listed on the check into the donor's record in their relationships just so you know they are connected to each other in some way and you could leave the Relationship/Reciprocal information blank or you could have a special name for ones you are not sure how they are related (we have a drop down called Affiliation that might work). In these cases I would not change the Addressee/Salutations on the donor's record I would just leave everything addressed to that one person.
Having the people on the check listed in the relationships might also help if you are doing research on the donor to be able to pull more information about them in by knowing people they are connected to well enough to have them listed on their checks.
Thank you,
Cynthia Hornbeck
[cid:
image001.png@01D4BA04.46A019C0]
University Advancement
940-898-3894
CHornbeck1@twu.edu<mailto:
CHornbeck1@twu.edu>
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From: Advancement Services Discussion List [mailto:
FUNDSVCS@LISTSERV.FUNDSVCS.ORG] On Behalf Of Tracey Mullane
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2019 4:34 PM
To:
FUNDSVCS@LISTSERV.FUNDSVCS.ORG
Subject: [FUNDSVCS] Tracking names from check in database and addressee/salutations
A working group I'm organizing is reviewing and updating our Raiser's Edge documentation to make sure key stakeholders agree on our standards and general business processes, so we can then disseminate it across the team.
One item that just came up was what to when you send an appeal addressed to a single individual and the slip comes back with a check with more than one name on it, especially when there's more than 2 names on it. This primarily comes up when we receive donations from an acquisition mailing - and we don't know the people and we don't have unlimited resources to research everyone to try to figure out the relationships.
We have been practicing, and plan to still do the following: if two names on check, assume they are spouses and add them to our database so that the Addressee and Salutation include both people. We then people would let us know when they receive their acknowledgment if they don't want us to do this. I'm sure this happens now and then but it's not a common reason donors reach out to our donor services team so it has never surfaced as a practice we might need to change.
However, we receive a decent amount of checks with more than three people's names on them. Currently we'll only put in the one person solicited/who signed the check. However, the working group feels all three names should be added to the addressee/salutation, that future mailings should go to all three and that basically we should consider all three the legal donor regardless of who received the solicitation and who signed the check (usually, but not always, the same person). We then started talking about all the complicated ways we could track this in Raiser's Edge- add them as relationships, add them as an Org Record and then the three names as contacts, etc. I then said that I would need another FTE to do all this extra complicated gift processing data entry!
I'd love to know what other orgs do in situations with multiple names on the check where the relationships aren't known. Seems safer to leave it with the one donor's name who received the appeal and signed the check, it would less time consuming and I'm not sure what the return on the time investment would be.
Thanks!
-t