A soft credit gives you the ability to track supporters who influenced a gift or secured a donation for your organization.
Using soft credits allows you more insight into how donations are secured and who was involved in making sure a donation was given to your organization. You can use this information to ensure you leverage these supporters in the future and it will help you send appropriate thank you messages for those who secured a gift on your behalf.
Here are a few ways you can use soft credits:
Give donors credit for donations they made to your organization through a different charitable organization such as a local foundation.
Give an employee credit for a matching gift from their employer.
Give board members a soft credit for a donation they solicited.
Give a business owner credit for a donation made by their company.
Give a peer-to-peer fundraiser a soft credit for the donations they brought in through their campaign page.
Give a committee member a soft credit for an event sponsorship gift.
Give credit for a donation to multiple members of the same household or family.
Give supporters credit for bringing in new donations through social media sharing.
Adding and tracking soft credits in donor management
You can add soft credits to any donation in your donor management system. Go to the donation details and you will see an option to add a soft credit. You can also add a soft credit from the Giving page or a donor's profile by clicking the drop down next to the donation.
For many of the soft credit scenarios listed above you will want to follow up with an acknowledgement for that soft credit. For example, if someone donated to your organization through a local foundation we recommend that you personally thank them for their gift. (You do not need to send a receipt since soft credits are not tax deductible gifts.) We make it simple for you to send a personalized acknowledgement for each soft credit you add and we even start you off with a template that you can tweak and use!
Once you add a soft credit for an individual you will see a new total called "Soft Credits (YTD)" next to the graph on their profile. Soft credits do not impact any other totals nor the donor's status (lapsed, active, etc) and will not display in the donation summary merge fields when sending communications.