Gift entry: Soft credits and other related gifts
In this article:
Overview of related gifts
Soft credits and other related gifts show that a person is the primary reason a gift was given, even when they were not the actual donor. If a tribute has a related gift, that related gift will inherit the tribute.
All related gifts, except tributes, are entered in the Related Gifts section of the gift entry page.
Common examples of related gifts include:
- Soft credit: To credit the individual behind a donation from a family foundation or donor-advised fund, or to credit a spouse
- Peer credit: To indicate that someone inspired their peer to give. This is a separate category from the soft credit, and its purpose is to provide a separate assignation for "walkathon" and other "peer"-type inspired giving
- Matching: To credit the employee for a matching gift contributed by their employer (read more on working with Matching Gifts)
The fields displayed in the form can vary a bit, depending on whether the constituent who made the donation has relationships with other constituents.
In cases where a relationship is defined (for instance, between a constituent and their spouse or partner), you can select that person from a dropdown. Or, you can choose the Any constituent (find or add new) option to select any constituent in the database, or create a new one.
If you haven't defined any relationships for constituents, you can click on the Add related gift button and then select any constituent in the database or create a new one.
LGL also provides the ability to trigger automatic soft-crediting based on Relationship Type. This is most likely something you'll use if you have separate records for spouses and want to track their household giving on both spouse's records. Read about enabling soft credit by relationship type for more details.
Matching gifts
Please read about matching gifts in Matching gifts: Understanding and working with them in LGL.
Searching and reporting on related gifts
You can search for gifts that contain related gift data by going to the Fundraising tab and searching on "Has related gift", as shown here:
Given that you can search on related gifts, you can also report on them, as described in the following example.
Example: Export soft credits on related gifts
In cases where you want to report on related gifts and the soft credits attached to them, it is possible to export this data.
Search for “Related gifts” in the Fundraising tab and choose the related gifts you want to see by related gift type:
Export your results, including them as a report column by selecting the “Related Gifts” field, as shown here:
The Related Gifts field can then be further modified by using the custom options, accessible by clicking the "Customize" link within the Related Gifts report field:
NOTE: If a gift has more than one related gift, you will need to update the number in the Count dropdown menu within the custom options for the Related Gifts field to return that number of related gift records.