The User's Edge : soft credits

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Query Qualities: Soft Credit Options

Douglas Clinton — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:10:00 GMT

Soft credits allow more than one constituent to share credit for a single gift without adding duplicate gift records to the database. Because soft credits are not the same as a standalone gifts, they are treated differently in Query.

In a query, soft credits can be credited to the original donor, the soft credit recipient (or recipients), or both. The default option is to soft credit the donor. Because you can give partial soft credit for a gift, if you select Recipients or Both, you can further define how to handle the gifts. Select Use amount in grid to credit each constituent with only the part of the gift for which they received soft credit. Select Full amount to all to give each constituent full credit for the gift—potentially skewing your totals. Or select Split Evenly to split the gift evenly among all recipients.

To choose how to credit soft credits, select Tools, Query Options from your query's menu bar and click the Gift Processing tab. Under the Credit Soft Credits to frame, select Donor, Recipient, or Both and click OK. How you use this option can drastically change your query results, so checking the Gift Processing tab is a good first troubleshooting step for incorrect or unexpected query results.

The answer to the Brain Buster in this month's edition of The User's Edge is the match!

Import Ingisht: Soft Credits (Part II)

Kevin Brunson — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:47:00 GMT

In my last post, I discussed how to add new soft credits to existing gifts. Now, let’s look at using import to update the soft credit gift amount on gifts that already have soft credits.

In addition to the fields necessary to add a new soft credit (Recipient Import ID, Gift Link, Soft Credit Amount), the Soft Credit Import ID is required. This tells The Raiser’s Edge which soft credit amount to update. The column header for the Soft Credit Import ID is SoftCreditImpID.

In Admin, Import, select Soft Credit from the Gift node. Click New and select the following parameters.
On the General Tab select:
• What do you want to do? Update existing records
• What file to you wish to import? Browse to the import file
• How do you want the system to identify existing constituents? Use the Import ID*
• What is the format of this import file? Delimited

On the File Layout Tab select :
• Field Separators and Text Qualifiers: Comma, Quotation
• Import Field Names: Field names are on the first line of the import file
• Sample Import Format: Verify the first few rows of the import file

On the Fields Tab:
• Ensure all rows in the Field to Import column are mapped to the correct field in the Raiser's Edge column.
On the Summary Tab select:

• Create control report. This report lists the criteria fields and operators selected for the import. The report also shows the import name and the directory path where you saved the import.

For more information on importing soft credits see Knowledgebase solution BB53726. This solution also contains a sample soft credit import file.

If there is a specific type of import you would like to see discussed next, please leave a comment and I’ll add it to my list of topics.

Import Insight: Soft Credits (Part I)

Kevin Brunson — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:41:00 GMT

In the comments section of my post on the basics of importing, Mary Ellen asked about importing soft credits. You can both add new soft credits and update existing soft credits in import. I will discuss the first option in this post.

Importing new soft credits

In this scenario gifts are already in the database and we want to soft credit existing constituents for these gifts. Before starting we’ll need to know the following:

• Recipient Import ID - This is the import ID of the constituent being soft credited. When importing, it tells The Raiser's Edge whose record to add the soft credit to.
• Gift Link – This is the gift import ID of the hard credit gift. It tells The Raiser's Edge which gift to use as the hard credit when importing soft credits.
• Soft Credit Amount – This is the amount to soft credit to the recipient (whole or fraction of the actual gift).

Once this information is in an Excel file you can begin.
The column header for the Recipient Import ID is SoftCredRecip, Gift Link is GFTLink, and Gift Amount is SoftCredAmt. Save the file in .CSV format.

In Admin, Import, select Soft Credit from the Gift node. Click New and select the following parameters.
On the General Tab select:
• What do you want to do? Import new records
• What file to you wish to import? Browse to the import file
• How do you want the system to identify existing constituents? Use the Import ID*
• What is the format of this import file? Delimited

On the Fields Tab:
• Ensure all rows in the Field to Import column are mapped to the correct field in the Raiser's Edge column.

On the Summary Tab select:
• Create control report. This report lists the criteria fields and operators selected for the import. The report also shows the import name and the directory path where you saved the import.

Stay tuned for Part II, where I’ll go over updating existing soft credits.

Sarah's Shortcuts: Giving Credit Where Credit's Due

Sarah McBride — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:21:00 GMT

When two become one, it might be sufficient to credit their gifts to one record. However, you may also find it's beneficial to keep track of donations from constituent couples (had to squeeze alliteration in somewhere ) on both of their records so you can easily identify their gift history, regardless of whose record you're viewing.

If the latter approach floats your boat, be sure to make the most of RE's ability to automate the process of generating soft credits. As long as both spouses have constituent records, you can take the following steps to set soft credits in motion:

Open the constituent record of the spouse who is hard credited for gifts.
Click the Spouse button on the Bio 1 tab to open the spouse's relationship record.
On the General 2 tab, mark the Automatically soft credit this individual for gifts checkbox.

Note: This will create soft credits for new gifts that are added going forward, rather than gifts that may already be on the first spouse's record. If you need to, you can manually add soft credits for the existing gifts.

Similarly, if you receive gifts from an organization that originated from an employee (e.g., matching gifts), consider setting your business rules to soft credit the employee:

In Configuration, click Business Rules.
Under Gift options, highlight Activity options and mark the Automatically apply soft credit to matching gift pledge checkbox.

Once soft credits are configured on the records, you can adjust your soft credit options in Query, Reports, and Mail to include or exclude soft credits as needed. For more info, check out How to use soft credits (BB152), which also includes an article from Peg Strodtbeck of Wheeler Mission Ministries on "Adventures in Soft Crediting."