Hello,

 We are getting close to the end of our fiscal year and our parent participation numbers are starting to become more firm.  Our leadership volunteers are curious as to why we count divorcees as separate in our participation numbers.  That has always been our standard, but after thought, we've decided to ask the question.  Do separated families need to be counted as such, or if one of the parents gives, can we count the family as 100% in our numbers?  What are others' thought?  Obviously, this ends up being more like measuring participation per child, than per parent...  Any feedback/advice would be welcomed

For a divorced family, we soft credit the parent who did not directly give the gift. When running a participation report, we count soft credits. Therefore, our participation numbers are not punished for having a divorced family.  However, in published reports, etc., we do not list the soft credited parent. It is my understanding that the majority of schools practice this as well.

This is something I have never heard of before.  I have only heard of places using soft credit to be sure that people are INCLUDED in published recognition reports.   How does this help your participation numbers?  Does one gift get counted as two donors if you are divorced and as one donor if you are married?  Why would you want to count them as two donors when only one parent gave if you are not going to publicly recognize them? 

This confuses me.  I would like to hear more.