Enabling automatic soft crediting by relationship types

Overview

This article reviews how to customize constituent relationships and enable automatic soft crediting of gifts for certain relationship types.

Setting up automatic soft crediting

Menu option types in Little Green Light are customizable from Settings > Menu Items.

Adding or updating the constituent relationship types

Relationship types allow you to assign possible relationship values and their reciprocal relationship value (i.e., brother/sister, husband/wife, and so on) to records in LGL. A few sample relationship values are provided with your LGL account, but you can also update or add custom values by navigating to Settings > Menu Items > Constituent Relationships. From here, you can edit existing values or click on the Add value button at the top of the Relationship Type section to add a new value.

The available types are shown in the left column of the screenshot below, under "Constituent categories".

Enabling soft crediting requires updating the relevant relationship type/s. You can add automatic soft crediting to any relationship, as long as the relationship is reciprocal. Add or edit the relationship type, select the category of relationship (family, relative, work, other), name the value, and set the reciprocal type:

Selecting the automatic soft crediting option

Once you've selected the reciprocal type, the option to set up automatic soft crediting of gifts for that relationship type will display. Select "Yes", and then click "Save".

The screenshots below show what the gift record will look like once the setting is enabled and you're entering a gift for a constituent who has a reciprocal relationship with a "spouse"-type record:

Because we enabled the constituent relationship type of "Spouse" to automatically soft credit a record with a reciprocal relationship type of "Spouse", Carol Brady's soft credit has been automatically populated in the Related gifts section of Mike Brady's gift record.

NOTE: If you do not want to soft credit the gift to the spouse, click the "Remove" button to remove it.

Once you have followed these instructions, all imported gifts that come into your LGL account via the Flex Importer, LGL Forms, or integrations with third-party software applications will be soft-credited automatically.

Retroactively apply an automatic soft credit

Once you have turned automatic soft crediting on in your LGL account, you may find that certain gifts that were entered prior to turning the setting on should have the soft credit applied but do not. To update these gifts so that the soft credit is applied, follow these instructions:

Search for the constituents you think might have gifts that could get updated (or instance, donors who have a spouse/partner relationship). Then use that search to create a constituent list
Search Fundraising > Giving for gifts from the list you just created by searching for it using the "Lists" criteria
Export the LGL Constituent ID and LGL Gift ID for those search results.
Once the export is complete, import that same spreadsheet file directly back into LGL

The fields will map automatically, and when the import is complete the soft credits will have been generated in the applicable records.

If many of your gift records need to be updated with soft credits, we recommend testing the process laid out above with five constituents to begin with, to ensure all is working smoothly before proceeding with a large import. If the data is coming in correctly in your test, you can be assured the rest of the import will also come in correctly.