I'm dealing with the issue of when it is appropriate to create a separate record for a spouse.  For the most part, our policy is to keep the husband and wife together on one record.  Of course, this becomes tricky when dealing with information that is unique to one or the other.  For instance, the area this issue seems to come up the most for us is in the relationships tab.  We've been adding a lot of non-profit board relationships to our constituent records.  For now, if the relationship is for the spouse, we simply create a relationship record on the main consituent's relationship tab and add a note saying that the spouse is in fact the "trustee" or whatever the relationship may be.  This of course requires the person to look at the details of the relationship record to clarify.

I'm not opposed to creating separate records for spouses, and I know the "head of household" and "automatic soft credit" options solve the mailing and gift issues.  But certainly there will be other information that is shared between the two individuals.  For instance, actions, events, proposals, etc.  In those circumstances, do you simply choose one record to add the info to, or do you have to do double work and add it to both records. 

 I'm interested in hearing other people's experiences with this problem and some possible solutions.

Thanks.

Keith Tramantano

Assistant Manager, Development Operations, The Jewish Museum

Once there are separate relationships to be added we would create a separate record for the spouse. 

By default one of them is coded as the Head of Hosuehold.  You can change who is the head of household anytime you want.  The head of household is the record where we keep all "couple information" such as actions, proposals, etc. I have a business rule searching for spouse records not coded HOH and a popup comes up warning users not to add such information on that non-HOH record.

 If an event and both attended - each would have a participant record.

I have been asked to share the query criteria for my Non-HOH query.  It is not difficult; It is a constituent (or individual) query

Criteria: Relationships - Individual - This Individual is HOH = YES

If they have a relationship to another individual which is coded as the HOH then they can not be the HOH.

On a related note... how do you handle honorariums for one spouse but not the other?  We have a Doc's appreciation mailer where patients and families can honor their favorite Dr.  During the holiday seasons, several people honor both Doc's and their spouse.  We currently have the married Doc's set up on our system as Dr. and Mrs. - When printing the Honor/Memorial reports we can't tell if these gifts are just for Dr. John Doe or Dr. and Mrs. John Doe???  We currently run several queries to determine who is being honored, however this is very labor intensive and not always clear.  Any suggestions?

We have a salutation set up 'In Memory/Honor of' that we pull into these things and use for our donor book

In our tribute module we put in the description field In honor of (singular) if it is for only one of them and then we make notes so then when we print report it is there.

I can see how this would work in normal circumstances, however we have our records set up as Dr. and Mrs. John Doe, some gifts come in honoring both Dr. and Mrs. Doe, which is fine..but then we have a mailer where donors honor just Dr. John Doe.  If I set up two honor saluations, how would it know which to pull or would it just pull both?  What if someone gives one year honoring both and the next year one person honors just one, if I don't delete one of the salutations would it pull both again?  Sorry I'm just confused!

I agree that I do not see how an honor/memorial salutation would help if one record has multiple possibilities.

The only way I can see this automatically working for you is if you have a salutation set up for each (individual, spouse and couple) then you have tribute letter codes to match and you have three separate letter pulls to match.  This way the individual tribute letter code only pulls the individual salutation.  And when you run the couple tribute letter or the spouse tribute letter pull the matching salutations get pulled. 

The unfortunate thing is that each letter has to be pulled separately and can not be done in any kind of conditional pull because BB set up Mail to pull the add/sal as only one option for all letters in the setup.

The way I handle this is to create a constituent record for the spouse with a constiuency of Second Account (which is excluded from all solicitations and gift entry personnel know not to put gifts on these records - they go on the Primary 'couple' account)

The Spouse then has their own salutation field to use for In Memory/honor of situations.

The issue that occurs is this - There would be 2 Tribute reports one for each person

Dr. John Doe & Mrs. Jane Doe as opposed to Dr & Mrs. John Doe on one.

This may not work for you, but it works well for us.

Hey Melissa, you are all over the place on these forums.. how long have you been a user and do you work undercover for BB???  :)

We export our tribute thank you and acknowlement notes to Word to merge, so that isn't really an issue.  I am trying to find a way to print the correct information in our annual report.  We download info into a word merge file and tweek as we go, however these Dr. appeciations make it very complicated and we have to run several different report and compare by hand/eye...room for lot's of errors!  My main goal is to get the tribute reports to print correctly so we can do as few exports and comparisoms as possible.

I really appreciate everyone's tips!  Hopefully, something will click.  Thanks!

For our annual report we use the a combination of the type description field from the tribute. 

Our tribute types are:

• in memory of
• in honor of
• in tribute to

In description we fill in what would come after that

• Ms. Martha Johnson
• Dr. Betsy Wilson's 75th birthday 
• James and Joan Smith on their 50th wedding anniversary

So then we export each gift and the tribute type and description and we get a list that says:

• in memory of Ms. Martha Johnson
• in honor of Dr. Betsy Wilson's 75th birthday
• in tribute to James and Joan Smith on their 50th wedding anniversary

So even if there are multiple tributes on one record the description fields are different so they appear correctly even if the addressee's are the same.

Hey Melissa, this looks like it would work great!

I set up my tribute types to be simular, however, my description field (under type) is a drop down (?-is yours?) So each time I add the "Dr. Betsy Wilson's 75th birthday" or "James and Joan Smith 50th wedding anniversary", it add to the table.  Am I using the wrong field?

My description field is a free text field.  I believe (but i could be wrong) that the default is free text.  Someone may have gone into Config and changed your field to be table driven.  Do you know how to go in and check and change it in Config - Fields?

Got it!  Woo Hoo!  Works great!  Thanks for your help! 

Great - glad I could help.