[Marbles13]

I am relatively new to using the Tribute module and would love some feedback on the following situation:

We receive a donation from a company with mutliple honorees listed. We enter the gift, set up the honor/memorial on each of the honorees' records and then set up a relationship between the donor and each of the honorees. We list the relationship as follows 'relationship: honoree', 'reciprocal: honored by' and 'date from: '.

Two weeks later we receive another gift from the same company with multiple honorees (some who were listed on the previous tribute and some who were not).

Do we set up multiple relationships to show each time that the honoree was honored by this same company? The relationships will have different 'date from' dates.

Do we set up multiple honor/memorials on the consituent records for each separate time a constituent is honored? In this case, the constituents being honored in both tributes are being honored for different things.

Your thoughts? How do others handle similar situations?

Thanks all!
~Marnie

[Melissa Siobhan]

I would not do multiple relationships. I see no need for that at all.

I would do different tributes if the tributes are truly for different things (Birthday, Anniversary, Christmas, etc.)

[DrewAllen]

I would go even further than Melissa. I don't see a need for ANY relationships in this case. You already know that the company made a tribute gift, because their gift is linked to the tribute, you know what kind of tribute it was from the tribute type, and you know all of the dates from the gift dates. The relationship is only duplicating information that you already have elsewhere in the database.

The other thing is that when you are duplicating the effort, there are more cases where you can have data entry errors and data integrity issues. For instance, there is nothing to prevent me from entering the relationship in the reverse order, which is much harder to do with a gift applied to a tribute. In fact, there is nothing to prevent me from entering complete nonsense like "relationship: honoree" and "reciprocal: business partner".

Part of ensuring data quality is removing possibilities for error. You don't need this relationship, so don't include it and remove the possibility that people will use it incorrectly.

Drew

[Melissa Siobhan]

I am going to elaborate as Drew pointed out something important. I would defineitely not put in multiple relationships and I would not even use the relationship type of Honoree/Honored By but I would encourage you to use relationships in any case where knowing about that relationship may be beneficial later.

If an individual gives a tribute to their neighbor then I would enter a relationship type of neighbor, friend or acquaintance. If the recipients of the tribute from the company are employees of the company then the relationship is employee/employer. A tribute to a mother/father or other relative - definitely add a relationship.

Think globally what is the relationship between the 2 constituents - most constituents who make tribute gifts have a relationship of some sort - that is why they made the gift. When donors make gifts in memory of or in tribute to celebrities did I not think it was worthwhile to create a relationship - but in many other cases it was worthwhile.

[Marbles13]

Good point about duplicating efforts and thus allowing more chance for error. I never thought about it that way. I appreciate your repsonses, they are both very helpful!

~Marnie