Soft Credits, Personal Campaign Pages, and "In honor of" donations

[sgladstone]

I have been thinking about how soft credits, personal campaign pages and "In honor of" are used, and came to the realization that they are all THE SAME.  They are just initiated in a slightly different way.   They can all be represented by a 3-leg relationship:

contact A <---> contribution <---> contact B

Some examples:

Bob and Mary are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary.   If they are tech-savy and active online, they create a personal campaign page asking people to donate in honor of their anniversary instead of regular gifts.   If they are not tech-savy, their friends and family may use the regular ( non-personal) CiviContribute page and make their donation "In honor of" Bob and Mary's anniversary.   Or both may happen: Bob and Mary have a personal campaign page, but Jane didn't realize it and used the regular CiviContribute page with the "in honor of"  filled in.

With personal campaign pages, the "honoree" is initiating the honor. With "In honor of" of donations, the donor is initiating the honor. But they are stored differently in the database.

Perhaps these 3 features (  soft credits, personal campaign pages and "In honor of" ) could be implemented in a consistent way.  Perhaps using a new 3-leg relationship type.

Side questions: If Bob and Mary are not tech-savy, could a staff member create a personal campaign page on their behalf? Or could Bob create a personal campaign page without donating money himself?

[TallDavid]

sgladstone,

  these items have also been requested by staff at a charity that I am assisting:

• Ability for a staff member to create Personal Campaign Page(s) on behalf of users.
• Ability for a user to create a Personal Campaign Page without donating.