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FYI: A member requested my soft credit policy so I have posted it to the shared documents section for all to use. I will say that I hate the part about the hard credit in couple gifts going to the check signer but that is the procedure I inherited. I hope to eventually change it to the hard credit going to the HOH.
from my understanding, the hard credit must, for tax purposes, go to the party from whom the funds are provided..the name on the check or the name on the account if you get a bank check. In this instance, spouses and partners are the same as family foundations, or corporations and corporate foundations. You have to issue a tax receipt to the legal entity that provided the money, but you can soft credit and steward with a great deal of latitude. Does anyone else documentation that would allow for something different?
__________________ things haven't been the same since that house fell on my sister.
I am not sure where my policy differs from that> Using the signer causes confusion and inconsistent data entry - but is not technically wrong.
If the gift is from a joint account both signers legaly give eachother permission to sign for eachother to release the joint funds. The donor is both of them OR either one of them in the eyes of the IRS. The signer means nothing unless the donor specifically tells you they do not want the other credited/recognized. Most couples file jointly but when they do file separately either can use the receipt but some donors may ask that you only put their name on the receipt and not credit the spouse for clarity.
Just FYI: Our policy is that the signer gets hard credit on the gift, regardless of whom we have the relationship with or HOH. We issue the receipt to that person, but if it gets a thank you letter (our policy is over $1,000 gets a "personal" thank you letter), we send that to both spouses.
You can technically soft credit all over the place without pause, because those will never get receipted etc...
Doug
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Doug Creek
RE Database Administrator
University of Alaska Foundation sndgc@email.alaska.edu
Last year John Smith signs the check
This year his wife Mary Johnson signs the check
In my reports
1) If I soft credit to donor I get them both listed (which my GOs do not want since they are a couple)
2) If I soft credit to recipient - I get them both listed in reverse for eachother's gifts
3) If I soft credit to both I not only get them both but each has the full amount of gifts - doubling the amount.
If I consistentlt soft credit the HOH for joint gifts
a) I will have to create fewer spouse records! WOO HOO
b) In reports I can choose either sc to donor or recipient and use a couple addressee and see them listed only once with all the giving together. WOO
I did it this way at my previous job for 4 years and it worked like a charm.
Hence why I had to script my annual recognition process RE simply can't handle it... And I never said mine was the perfect solution, but its what we've done for WAY more then 4 years...
But here's one catch for you... If they divorce during the year, and you are asked to produce a receipt for the lawyers, and Mary was the signer, but you put it on John's record, you are not going to be able to produce the receipt that the lawyers want... Obviously this doesn't happen often, but...
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Doug Creek
RE Database Administrator
University of Alaska Foundation sndgc@email.alaska.edu
If they were married when they made the gift it was a joint gift at the time they made it regardless of who was the signer. How joint gifts are handled on their tax returns or during the divorce settlement is not up to me. They have the copy of the check from their bank if they need to know who was the signer.
I just want to comment, in a non-judgmental way, that this points to an age-old question that as stewards of our organizations' databases we have to be consistent and diligent about. You must decide how to handle couples/families, and whether, as a policy that you enforce consistently across the org, you create a record for each person who has a relationship to the organization (even if that is as a spouse of donor) and link them via relationships or you have the requisite time and capability to enforce very specific and clearly defined protocol about when relationships become full constituent records. This is a basic question that I think should be decided before you get to how to handle hard and soft credits.
From my perspective and experience, it is much stronger and easier to enforce data integrity to have a simple policy of creating full constit records and linking them via relationships. Attempting to get ALL of your users to be able to understand the nuances, and more importantly, the Implications (such as how the programming of various reports work), of managing short relationships vs true relationships AND make a split second judgment call when they're doing data entry is impossible to manage successfully. I consider it part of my job to understand the nuances of how to report on gift data in the various ways my users need to see it.
We all have very different opinions on this, and that's GREAT!! and what makes it fun to ride the bus.
__________________ things haven't been the same since that house fell on my sister.
I just a check from AllState giving Campaign, they were hard credited and gave soft credit to all the people on their list who made the contributions. Is it possible to run a query or export to create thank you letters to the people that were soft credited? Knowledgebase told me NO, you can only send a thank you to AllState, is there any other way to go around this so i can create my thank you letters to my soft credited people?
if you use the Donor Acknowledgment Letters feature of mail module you can choose to credit Soft Credit gifts to the Soft Credit recipient and it will generate a letter to those people in addition to the letter to the hard credit donor.
__________________ things haven't been the same since that house fell on my sister.
Matthew - I think you may be solving a problem for us, but I still don't have it 100%. I get that you can use the mail function to send a thank you to the soft credit recipient. However, we would like to include in that letter mention of the ind/org that received the hard credit. EG, a large donor gave a gift from their family foundation, so the family foundation gets the hard credit and the donor gets a soft credt. We send a letter to the family foundation. We would also like to send a t.y. letter to the soft credit recipient, mentioning the family foundation name. How do I pull the family foundation name into the letter? Or another example -- workplace giving where we receive 1 check from and organization, with the names of all the employees who donated. We hard credit the corporation, soft credit the employees. In the employees' ty letter, we'd like to say "thanks to your contribution given through your employer, XYX Corp." Any help is appreciated!
RE simply can't handle it... And I never said mine was the perfect solution, but its what we've done for WAY more then 4 years...
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