CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Households can't die anyway (not possible to enter a death date...)

My problem:
Two individuals (a family) living together are both contributing to our organization. However, they only want one snail mail...
AND;
I need the complete contribution history in one record. (I will differentiate my activities based on how many contributions recorded)

How to solve this?

In my mind, there is three different solutions to this:

What solution are you using? And who do you think I should kill?

Solution 1: One household, two individuals, with "household relations"
Household:
- Snail mail
Individual 1:
- Demographics
- Contributions and tax deduction
- Digital communication
Individual 2:
- Demographics
- Contributions and tax deduction
- Digital communication

Pros:
- Always only one snail mail
- CRM reality will reflect how we talk about this in real life.
Cons:
- Snail mail and digital communication will not be in the same record.
- Contribution history and activity history(for snail mail) will not be in the same record.
- It will be nearly impossible (I think) to do different activities based on the families contribution history, as it will potentially be scattered over three different contacts.

Solution 2: One household only
Household:
- Snail mail
- Digital communication
- Contributions and tax deduction

Pros:
- Always only one snail mail
- All activities in one contact
- All contributions in one contact
Cons:
- No place for individual demographics (gender, birth date, death date)
- Never dies.
- Only possible for one person to get tax deduction.
- Only "one" person for e-mails, sms, membership, events and so on.
- Any real time divorce will be catastrophic, since the contact can't be split, and can't change contact type to individual.

Solution 3: Two individuals only, with "postal relation"
They will have a relationship saying that one receive snail mail, the other don't.
Individual 1:
- Demographics
- Snail mail
- Contributions and tax deduction
- Digital communication
Individual 2:
- Demographics
- Contributions (soft credited to individual 1) and tax deduction
- Digital communication

Pros:
-Individual demographics
-Individual digital communication
-Separate tax deduction
Cons:
-No shared contribution history

PS! I also read this discussion https://civicrm.org/blogs/eileen/households-%E2%80%93-bit-audit, but still are not sure what suits me best...

I tend to agree with Erik. But why record incoming contributions at household level, instead at individual level? In real life my wife and I have a shared bank account so when we donate to your organisation? Who is donating? My or my wife? .

That is a different situation then in the Netherlands where both partners could own a bank account

That is a different situation then in the Netherlands where both partners could own a bank account

But what shows up at the bank receipt?

Ok, In Norway it will only show either John Johnson, or Janet Johnson, but never John and Janet Johnson.

 

Yes, that is what my intention was in solution 3.

But I think it won't be possible to do that in solution 1, as it is only possible to "soft credit" one other contact.

And what about the Display Related Contribution extension: https://civicrm.org/extensions/display-related-contributions

That sounded really interesting. Thanks! (But it seems as it is only for 4.1 and 4.2, and I am now at 4.3...)

Solution 2 is dead, but I am still not sure if solution 1 or 3 is best...
It seems as the only benefit I get from solution 1, rather than solution 3, is the ability to adress the mailing differently, i.e. Dear Johnson Family instead of Dear John.

But it should be possible to work around this, with having a function that adds two individual names, into one.

In my mind, Solution 3 will be the "cleanest" database, with the least risk of losing data integrity...

In the for what it's worth department ...
We support a number of CiviCRM sites on separate instances that we call PowerBase.

PowerBase users do not use Household at all. We go with option three and designate a relationship to show the significant other(s).  In cases where multiple people in the household give donations, we thank them individually.  In cases where they donate together (and where the implementing PowerBase organization is very careful with updating their database), we modify the "main" donor's addressee field to include both.

We've removed "Create Household" from the Contacts Menu, but other than that Households live on.