Couples with different last names

Perfect use case for co-donors: 

We made the decision early on to treat couples as a single donor unit, unless specifically requested otherwise or if we only receive donations from one spouse/partner. We may choose to address one person at times over the other, but our records show both of them as a single individual contact. For couples with different last names, they typically are in as follows:

• First Name field: ‘Partner 1 First Name’
• Last Name field: ‘Partner 1 Last Name & Partner 2 First and Last Name’

Which would look like:

• First Name field: ‘Joe’
• Last Name field: Smith & Sally White’

Where a couple with the same last name would be entered as:

• First Name field: Joe & Sally
• Last Name field: Smith

We use a custom field, ‘Salutation’, for our greetings, which helps with this approach.

Hi ​@Suzanne Hoban and ​@Amelia Leggett! Amelia did a great job explaining the most common workaround we’ve used in the past for couples giving together. However, with software updates I think households and co-donors makes this a more natural workflow in NFG. The basic idea is:

• Each couple has their own individual contact. This allows you to grow your relationship with each person differently based on their interests/involvement in your organization. Joe is in these groups and has these custom fields answered, while Sally is in these other groups and has different custom fields answered.
• The two are linked via a Household which shows their shared giving history and lets you set communication preferences. You have access to Formal Greeting and Informal Greeting, as well as a Preferred Greeting choice between the two. These three are available as merge fields for your communications.
• Households also allow you to utilize co-donor functionality. Every gift that Sally makes could automatically be attributed to Joe and vice versa (for both offline and online gifts). The co-donor functionality gives both people the hard credit for the gift. This is a huge improvement from using soft credits because it does impact donor status. So if Sally was lapsed and Joe made a donation, her donor status would update to Active.

One other negative to having two contacts share one profile: When someone makes an online donation, if the name doesn’t match the unique identifier, the software will create a duplicate contact and flag them for you to resolve. Because they are sharing the name field, it would most certainly cause this duplicate contact to be created. 

Just something to think on here!

I personally use the co-donor option. Not only does it give credit to the spouse, but it also helps me with donor relationships. 

Hi,

I still don’t understand co-donors. Do I have to turn something on to get it to show up? Thanks!

Hi ​@KellyGrud! Once you’re in the Household area like you are now, select the blue Edit button in the top right corner. That’ll allow you to make other changes, including the co-donors checkboxes.

AHA. Thanks Charles! Done.

Kelly

This is helpful - thanks.  But do you put every couple down as co-donors? That seems like a lot of work to have a record for each one.  For example, if I put a note in record saying “Martha had a baby in April”, do I then have to add that same note in her partner’s record? It seems like there would be a lot of duplication of info, particularly as you jot down details of the household.

​@Suzanne Hoban Fair question! I do think all contacts should have their own unique contact record. So I would recommend taking advantage of co-donors. But! Very fair that adding notes only applies to one record, not both. For important info tied to one person, I might recommend pinning the note to the contact record so it shows up at the top. You’d still need to go look at the record, but that’s easier than digging for it or doing double entry.

I think adding an idea in our portal for “Household Notes” is a great idea! You can find the Ideas portal via the ? bubble in the bottom right of your software under “Share your feedback”