Mail Musings: Head of Household Processing

Imagine that you are Mr. Belding, principal of Bayside High. It's time for you to send out the Class of 1993 alumni newsletter, and you want to make sure that it goes to each alumnus's address only once. For some of your alumni, that's easy - Jesse Spano, A.C. Slater, and Lisa Turtle all married non-Bayside alums, while Samuel "Screech" Powers unaccountably single. There are some exceptions, such as Zack Morris and Kelly Kapowski, who married each other. Zack and Kelly aren't the only members of the Class of 1993 who married each other, and you want to make sure that alumni households receive only one copy of the newsletter without sorting the mailing by hand.

The way you can do this with The Raiser's Edge is by using Head of Household Processing, which excludes duplicate spouses from a mailing. Zack and Kelly and other constituents linked on the Spouse button will receive only one copy of the newsletter as long as you choose the correct option in Head of Household processing.

The default head of household is the constituent on which the spouse was added. For example, you added Zack and Kelly as constituents when they graduated from Bayside High. When they got married in Las Vegas, you opened Zack's record, clicked the Spouse button and linked to Kelly's record. As a result Zack defaulted as the head of household. Had you added Zack as the spouse from Kelly's record, she would have been the default head of household. The option 'This individual is the Head of Household' is only available if two constituents are linked on the Spouse button. If the spouse on the Spouse button is not a constituent, the option is not available.

Where the Head of Household settings pay off is in Mail. The options in the Head of Household panel on the General tab of Mail functions break down like this:

• Mail only to constituents marked 'Head of Household': Selecting this option mails only to the record marked as head of household. In this case, the mailing would go to Zack.



• Mail to first constituent found: Selecting this option mails to the first spouse it processes and skips the linked spouse. Because the Class of 1993 query is sorted alphabetically, Kelly's record is processed first, Mail includes her record and skips Zack.



• Mail to both constituents separately: Selecting this option includes both spouses, for those time you want both Zack and Kelly to receive a mailing.

Head of household processing only applies if both spouses are selected for the mailing. In other words, even though Zack is the head of household, if your query only contains Kelly, head of household processing doesn't apply and Kelly gets the mailing.

An important consideration for mailings like this is to assign an addressee or salutation that includes both constituents, such as "Mr. Zack Morris and Mrs. Kelly Kapowski, Class of 1993". For more on that topic, check out our past posts on addressees/salutations.

This information is also in Knowledgebase solution BB520345.