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Adding Gift Credits

Paige Freeman
  • Updated

Using the Gift Credits & Acknowledgements option from the contextual menu on the Order Summary screen, you can define soft credits for a constituent. Typically, the constituent here is a customer that the organization feels played some role in encouraging the donor to make the donation.

The top part of the screen allows you to add soft credits related to the gift. The bottom part of the screen is read-only and displays the donors receiving tax credit (hard credit) for the gift. Soft credits can be given to a constituent for Cash and Pledge fundraising products. All other fundraising products (including credits entered manually) are considered soft credits.

Hard and soft credits are available for the donation types of Cash, Pledge, Matching Gift, Asset, Stock, and In-Kind.

Hard Credits vs. Soft Credits

Hard credits are who the gift or pledge actually belongs to. Soft credits are who you also want to acknowledge for the credit. So if a person gives a gift, that person would receive the hard credit, get any benefits, and be the recipient of the tax letters and acknowledgements for the gift, but the spouse, the solicitor, and maybe the employer can be listed as soft credits, so it will show on their records, but they didn’t give the actual gift or pledge, they are just getting credit for them.

To add gift credits:

  1. From the Order Summary screen, select the Gift Credits & Acknowledgements option from the contextual menu, as shown below.
    OR from the Donation Summary screen, select the Gift Credits & Acknowledgements option from the contextual menu.

    The Gift Credits screen displays.
  2. Click the +New Soft Credit link to add a constituent who receives soft credit for the gift.
    The Add Soft Credit screen displays, as shown below.
  3. Search for and select the appropriate constituent in the Credit Recipient field.
  4. Enter the Credit Amount.
    If the credit amount is greater than the gift amount, the system will display a warning message in order to proceed.
  5. Select the Credit Role from the drop-down.
    The system does not validate the role selected since the soft credit is manually entered. Values in the drop-down are populated based on the non-fixed codes defined for the FND "CREDIT_ROLE" system type.
  6. Select the Letter Template from the drop-down.
    The letter is generated from a Word Merge file setup in the Standard Letters Maintenance screen.
  7. Select the Salutation from the drop-down.
    Values in the drop-down are populated based on the non-fixed codes defined for the CUS "CUS_SALUTATION" system type.
  8. Select the Signor from the drop-down.
    Values in the drop-down are populated based on the non-fixed codes defined for the FND "ACK_LETTER_SIGNOR" system type.
  9. Click Save to return to the Gift Credits screen.
  10. Once you have added your gift credits, you can view or email the acknowledgement by selecting the View or Email Acknowledgement option from the contextual menu.