Hi there,

My director is thinking of changing how we handle head of household.  Can I hear from some people about how you handle HoH at your org?

Thanks,

Mary

We currently record the husband as HoH.  Because we are a university foundation, we are considering modifying the policy to flag the alumni as HoH.  If both are alumni, the husband's account will be marked.

We mark which ever spouse has a relationship to CIA as the HOH whether they are an alumni or "friend". If both are alums they each get a record.  If we receive a gift from new donors we enter the person who signed the check as HoH.  However, if an "add to mailing list" is received and their are both names, I too default to the male being the HOH. As to Board Members an such, if married, they each get a copy of everything so no HoH.

Since my constituent codes have a specific heirarchy (trustees are higher on the food chain than physicians, who rank higher than executive management staff, etc.), I use HOH for whichever spouse has the ranking constituent code.  When both spouses have the same code, the male is HOH.  Hope this helps,

Leslie

There is no such thing as No HOH.  All records linked together in a spousal relationship MUST have an HOH.  It defaults to one of them even though you may not see it.  Nina, for a board member mailing you may choose to use "mail to both" in your HOH processing but that is not the same as no HOH.  If you combine board members with Donors and mail only to HOH only one mailing is going to that board household.

"Which spouse" is typically highly dependent on your organization - many places have a few preferences, Alumni, volunteer status, etc. then default to either male (assuming it is a heterosexual couple) or check signer.  When I worked at a predominantly women's organization we did not ever use gender in our decision but used volunteer status only (we did not create separate records simply based on check signer - we kept only one record until/unless both people had a significant volunteer status such as active board member). 

The problem with check signer is what do you do as the check signer changes year over year - keep the original and not change OR change each time.  Depending on your other policies for HOH records (such as where you record notes, actions, prospect info, etc.) changing each time could make for very messy records.  We kept check signer unless a volunteer or other relationship became apparent and would switch.