Our organization currently creates two records for the husband and wife if their individual relationship with the organization is different.

 For example, say the husband is a Board Member and the wife is volunteer.  The husband will have a record that links to the wife, the husband is head of household.  His recorded is coded under attributes as a Board Member.  The wife has a separate record and is coded under attributes as a Volunteer.  All gifts are entered under the husband's record and soft credited to the wife.

 The downfall to this is that there appears to be several duplicate records and will, if not processed correctly, completely mess up reports.

 Are there other organizations who do it our way?  Is there a way to keep them both in one record but distinguish that the man is the board member and the wife is the volunteer?

 Any samples of how other organizations do this would be incredibly helpful.  Please feel free to respond to my e-mail listed below.

 Thanks,

Terra Depew

terra_depew@vnhs.org

This has been discussed a ton on this forum and on the Blackbaud User Society (www.blackbus.org).  I suggest you read through the past postings and see what people have said before.  There are pro's and con's to all options and once you've considered them all you'll have to decide on your own how you do it.  We all do it differently unfortunately and there are no true best practices in this area, IMHO.