Soft Credits

Sometimes a donor makes a gift via a third party. For example, a gift may come from a donor advised fund, the United Way, or from a company that the donor owns. The gift should be entered under the name of the organization that sent the check. This is considered a hard credit. But if you also want to recognize the donor behind the gift and show the gift in his giving history, you can use a soft credit.

Soft credits are not counted in the Total Giving that appear on the top of the Bio form. However, you can choose to include them in Gift Total and other user defined totals. You can view them on the Gift tab of the Bio screen by clicking on Include Soft Credits. You can include them in the Gift Manager list by using the filter to check Include Soft Credits.

You may create soft credit gifts, pledges, pledge payments and dues.

With the exception of pledges, one hard credit can be split into several soft credits. For example, if you receive a check from the United Way and it lists several names, you can soft credit each name with a part of the gift.

If you have a donor who consistently gives through a third party, you can set up the Relationship between the donor and third party so that a soft credit is created automatically whenever a hard credit is entered for the third party.

To add a soft credit, do the following:

1. Add the gift or pledge to the organization (or household) that sent the check or made the pledge.
2. On the Add Gift screen, click on the Soft Credit check box.
   1. This indicates that this gift should be soft credited to another donor or donors. After you save the gift, you can identify the soft credit recipients.
3. Save the gift.
4. After you save the gift, the Add Soft Credit screen appears.
5. Look up the name of the first donor for the soft credit.
6. Add the amount of the gift that should be soft credited to this donor.
7. You may soft credit a gift as a pledge payment if the donor has an outstanding pledge that this gift should apply to.
   1. Note that you should add the gift to the donor who sent the check as a "gift" even if you are going to soft credit it as a "pledge payment."
8. If you are soft crediting a pledge, certain restrictions apply:
   1. You may not split a soft pledge among several donors. You may, however, soft credit several donors with the full amount of the pledge.
   2. You may not make changes to the payment schedule from the soft credit gift side; all changes must be made on the hard credit pledge.
   3. Once you have saved your soft credit pledges, you cannot add another soft credit to that pledge.
   4. Pledge payments on a pledge that has soft credits are automatically made into soft credit pledge payments for all the soft credit donors.
9. Add any other information about the soft credit gift.
10. Click on Save and Add Another if you have additional soft credits to add for this gift.
11. Click on Save and Finish when you are done adding soft credits for this gift.