CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

When someone makes an "In memory of" Contribution, CiviCRM will create a new contact record for the person being memorialized, or update an existing contact if there is a match.   This is using the regular dedupe rule for individuals, which currently is set to use email, first and last name.  (This is needed because of event registrations from multiple people who share an email address.)

Unfortunately, whenever someone passes away( eg John Smith) and there are a lot of "in memory of" contributions the result is that each contribution triggers the creation of a new John Smith contact.   50 contributions == 50 John Smiths.

Any suggestions on how to avoid this issue?  The same issue occurs with "in honor of" as well as frequently the person being honored does either not have an email, or its unknown to the donor.

I would like to investigate, but I am not sure which area of the code to focus on, or what any side affects would be. For example, would the change I make only impact "in memory of / in honor of" dedup logic, or anywhere where CiviCRM cannot decide which record to update.

Another idea I had, is add the ability to have a different dedup( Such as first name and last name only) rule in place for "in memory/in honor" of processing, than the rule used for events.