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How to Add Soft Credits or Solicitors to a Donation: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1026767
No one fundraises alone - it's likely you have a network of board members, community advocates, and volunteers fundraising on your organization's behalf. It's important to properly credit this network for their hard work! Most organizations use soft credit or solicitor records for this purpose. In this article, we'll cover:
- The difference between soft credits and solicitors in PatronManager
- How to add a soft credit to a donation
- How to add a solicitor to a donation
We recommend choosing one or the other for each gift - you won't get much out of creating both a soft credit record and a solicitor record for the same gift.
Soft credits vs. solicitors - what's the difference?
Soft credit records are the best way to give benefits and recognition for help on bringing in a donation. You can decide whether or not to roll soft credit records up into donation totals (e.g. Amount Donated This Fiscal Year) for membership and benefit purposes. Report on soft credits like you would any another donation - great when you're prepping your program book.
If you only want to track who helped bring in a donation simply for anecdotal purposes, solicitor records are the way to go. You'll be able to look at a donation record and see who else was involved, but solicitor records cannot be rolled up into donation totals or reported on alongside donations.
Add a soft credit
A new donor, Audrey Horne, donated $500 dollars to our organization - hooray! Her good friend Kermit Frog asked her to donate; we want to be sure Kermit receives a soft credit for this donation, and that it counts towards his donation total for the year.
1. On the donation record, click New Soft Credit
Don't see the New Soft Credit button?
We added this new soft credit functionality in our October 2018 release. You'll need to activate this functionality before you can use it.
2. In the pop-up, type the soft creditor's name into the donor box, click their Contact record, then click Save
3. The soft credit has been created! Click the link in the green box to check out the new soft credit record
4. You can get back to the original donation by clicking the link in the Donation (Soft-credited) field
"I don't need to fill in anything else?"
Nope! We recommend keeping fields like General Ledger Code and Primary Campaign Source blank - it'll keep this soft credit record off your Campaign Hierarchy summaries and more financially-focused reports.
5. On the original donation, you'll see the new record in the Related tab, under Soft Credits
Add a solicitor
In this scenario, we know Kara Danvers helped bring in a donation from Clark Kent, but we don't want the donation to count towards Kara's total donations for the year - we'll add Kara as a solicitor.
1. On the donation record, go to the Related tab and click Edit Contact Roles
2. On the next blank line, search for the solicitor and click their Contact record
Have more than one solicitor? Click "+Add 1 More Row" and add as many as you want!
3. Choose "Solicitor" from the drop-down menu and click "Save"
The solicitor record will be listed on the original donation record...
...and the donation will be listed on the solicitor's Contact record!
