We migrated from GiftMaker to RE a little over a year ago and are not (yet) consistent with soft crediting.  We want to create a policy and implement it.... at this point, remaining spouses are soft-credited for gifts when the primary spouse dies, and we have soft-credited in cases of two donors, giving the hard credit to the check-signer and soft to the other person.  One question we have is whether anyone soft-credits the owner of a company/corporation which has made a gift (hard credit.)  Anyone willing to share their soft credit policies, please send them to me at jacksonk@alicepeckday.org.   Another aspect I have yet to think through is the reporting implications, so if anyone has advice on that, I'd appreciate it. thanks very much, in advance, for your advice!   

Regarding soft-crediting owner of a company/corporation...

We have many donors who are company owners and many companies that donate whose owners are constituents also.  Their gifts may come as a personal donation or from their business.  We try to soft credit all of these that we know.  We do run into questions from time to time for a business that's a partnership of several people.  Usually our donor states if the gift, even if it's a personal check, is on behalf of the company, and vice-versa (sp?).  We do not do this for corporations.

The two main reasons we do this.  

1. More realistic donor history records - if John Smith gave personally year 1, his company donated years 2, and 3,  he gave personally year 4, we want to know he's given every year.  Regardless of name on check, as the business owner money comes out of his pocket. (We hard credit account on check.)
2. When assigning out our prospects we try to assign John Smith individual and John Brown's company to the same solicitor so they are only contacted one time.  As a smaller community, we had heard back through solicitors when donors were approached by more than one solicitor.

We are in still process of creating our written policy statements.

Hi JoAnn - thanks for your response......  I am not quite clear on what you meant when you said: "Regardless of name on check, as the business owner money comes out of his pocket. (We hard credit account on check.)"  Are you saying that you credit the owner, not the business, since it all comes out of his/her pocket?  I have had a similar approach for similar reasons, to see gift history in one place.  What are the legalities involved?  Doesn't hard credit HAVE to go to the entity the check is from?  Is it truly discretionary?

Yes, we record gift on the record in RE  for enitity on the check. 

I'll try to clarify my off hand remark. The reason we soft credit all donations from companies to their owners is that if it comes from their business account it is still the owner making the decision to give us their money. 

Real life example, my parents own a business. Donations from them could be received in either of these ways:

• A donation as a personal gift - their personal check entered in RE on their individual record
• A donation from their business - company check entered in RE on company record

I just meant that in the end they are giving us their money, personal money or their business profits, so we soft credit either of these when we can for a more complete giving history.

Sorry I wasn't clearer..  Hope this clarifies - I'm having one of those day.