Introduction
CharityEngine offers contact management for households - allow you to easily and quickly create households and associate members within the household. Householding allows users to monitor and manage engagement of donors within the household. The feature will also allow you to easily see direct contributions of the household while also having quick access to donations made by all members of the household contributed at the individual level.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Prerequisites
- Instructions - How to Create a Household
- Instructions - How to Assign an Existing Person Record to a Household
- Instructions - How to Assign a New Person Record to a Household
- Instructions - Managing Transactions for Households and Their Members
- Instructions - Managing Members of Household
- Instructions - Reports & Analytics for Household Reporting
- FAQs & Additional Materials
Prerequisites
- Note: Households are considered contact records and will be considered as an additional contact count for your database. Contacts include people, organizations, and households.
- Business Decisions and Governance for Households
- It is important to note that your organization will need to determine the appropriate assignment of donations for households and associated members of a household.
- It is not necessary to create a soft credit of an individual/member donation to the household record as long as the member is connected to the household. Doing say will result in an inflated donation value for the household record.
- Through CharityEngine functionality, donations made by a member of a household will be rolled into the total household contributions (as available on the $ Donation History panel - Member column) or by leveraging query fields such as Contact: Giving History - Current Year Amount (direct household contributions) & Affiliated Giving History - Current Year Amount (member contributions).
Instructions - How to Create a Household
Step 1: Navigate to the People App > Quick Action > New Household
Step 2: Add household Name (required)
- From the General tab, also set status, priority, solicitor, Head of Household (select an existing or new person contact record), use Copy Address to leverage the Head of Household address on file, add Spouse, add the household address (if override not used above for head of household), add household phone number, and contact preferences.
- From the Groups, Tags, List tab, assign groups, tags, and/or communication Opt In Lists
- From the Communications tab establish communication and acknowledgment preferences
- From the Source tab, assign initiative or response channel for contact creation
- From the Sync tab, use for external ids if needed for importing from an external database
Instructions - How to Assign an Existing Person Record to a Household
Step 1: Navigate to the People App > Organizations & People > Contacts > locate household record > ACTIONS > Manage > Edit
Click on the plus sign to add Head or add spouse - use this flow if creating a new contract
Click on the pencil icon to add an existing contact to the household as a Spouse.
Step 2: Click on Head and/or Spouse hyper link to initiate contact lookup wizard and locate and assign contact to the household > SAVE to secure your changes
Instructions - How to Assign a New Person Record to a Household
Step 1: Navigate to the People App > Organizations & People > Contacts > locate household record > ACTIONS > Manage > Record Details > Members
Step 2: You will be navigated to create the contact.
Step 3: Scroll to the Household section where you can select the place within the household the member holds such as Head, Spouse, or Other.
Step 4: Once the new household member is created, you will be able to see the new member and the household they are attached to.
Step 5: You will also be able to see the household member on the Household contact record.
Instructions - Managing Transactions for Households and Their Members
When leveraging households, your organization will need to create business rules to determine if or how donations are attributed to households. If an individual of household makes a financial donation, it is not necessary to create a soft credit to the household as CharityEngine will automatically calculate giving totals for all members of the household. Creating a soft credit to the household will duplicate total household giving dollars, incorrectly inflating total household giving.
In this example, in 2023 The Williamson Household has:
- $500.00 in direct/hard credits made directly by The Williamson Household
- $165,688.00 in donations made by members of the household - this value represents direct/hard credits made by any member of the household
- $170,688.00 in total donations including direct/hard credits of the household and donations made by members of the household
Users can also click on the bar or graph - or toggle between Fiscal vs. Calendar.
By navigation to the Transactions panel of the contact record, users will be able to see all direct and indirect donations.
Instructions - Managing Members of Household
By navigating to the Members panel, users can quickly identify all members within a household. Head of Household and/or Spouse will also be identified as the top of the household contact record.
To remove members, navigate to ACTIONS > Manage. You will be navigated to the person contact record. Next select Edit (top right hand corner) >Household > Delete to remove from the household
Instructions - Reports & Analytics for Household Reporting
Leveraging the Reports & Analytics App, many reports will incorporate People, Organizations, and Household. In this example, the Top Donors report provides person contact Alex and Sam as a top donor within the elected timeframe. In addition, The The Household-Demo Household is reported as a top donor of $1,685 associated with 5 transaction. Within the Affiliated columns, a user can quickly see attributed donations of $1,500 which are associated within the household as made by directly by a donor(s)/contact(s) associated with this household.
FAQs & Additional Materials
Q. When an individual of a household makes a donation, do I need to create a soft credit to the household?
A. No. CharityEngine's householding functionality will automatically track financial giving actions of any associated household members. The total household giving can be located within the Donation History of the Household Contact Record. From this view, a user will be able to see Direct contributions of the household (hard credits of the household) vs. Members (donations made as hard credits by individual contacts who are members of the household). Creating a soft credit to the household will duplicate total household giving dollars, incorrectly inflating total household giving. See more detail above in the section title Instructions - Managing Transactions for Households and Their Members
Q. How do I de-dup household contact records?
A. Learn more about household de-dup functionality in our article Workflow & Automation: Data Governance – Contact Management (Merge, Delete, Inactive)
Q. How do I create organizational and/or people contact records?
A. Learn more about creating Organizations in our article Contacts: How to Create and Manage Organization Contact Records.Learn more about creating People contacts in our article Contacts: How to Create and Manage People Contact Records
