Household

Why it matters

Couples often give from a joint account and think of the gift as theirs together. Thanking only one of them, mailing two appeals to the same kitchen table, or asking each spouse separately for the same project all tell donors you do not know them.

Households also give you a truer picture of giving. A couple who each give $500 is a $1,000 relationship, and seeing that combined figure can change who gets a personal visit. Keep each person's own giving too, so tax receipts stay with the person whose money it was.

How Steward shows it

Steward lets you group people into a household with a primary member. The household shows combined giving, each member's own giving and their household soft credit, all worked out from the same gifts, so nothing is ever counted twice and your totals do not change.

Only one open proposal per fund is allowed per household, so a couple is not asked twice for the same thing.

Related terms

• Soft credit A soft credit recognizes a person who influenced or arranged a gift that someone else legally made, such as a spouse, a peer-to-peer fundraiser, or the donor who recommended a donor-advised fund grant.
• Deduplication Deduplication is finding donors who appear more than once in your database and merging them into one profile, so each person has one giving history, one set of contact details and one total.
• Hard credit Hard credit is the credit for a gift given to the legal donor, the person or organization whose money it was. The hard credit donor is the one who receives the tax receipt.