Say a check arrives from the (hypothetical) Martinez Family Foundation. Everyone on staff knows it’s really Ana and David Martinez giving, and they’ll expect to be thanked and recognized that way. But the money came from a separate legal entity, and your records need to say so. Getting this right in Altru comes down to three decisions: who is the donor of record, who gets recognized, and how the two records are tied together.
The basic rule: the payer gets the hard credit
The constituent who actually gave the money gets the revenue. For a gift drawn on a family foundation, a trust account, or an LLC, that’s the entity, not the people behind it. So the foundation (or trust, or LLC) should exist as its own organization constituent in Altru, and the payment should be recorded on that record.
The individuals who directed the gift then receive a soft credit (Altru may label this recognition credit depending on where you’re looking). That lets their constituent record reflect the gift for recognition, stewardship, and prospect research without double-counting the dollars in your revenue totals.
Why not just put the gift on the couple’s record and add a note? Because your acknowledgment, your year-end giving reports, and any audit trail should match the name on the check. If the auditor pulls a deposit and the revenue sits on an individual who never wrote that check, you’ll be explaining it.
Setting up the entity record
- Search before you create. Family foundations get entered many ways: “Martinez Family Foundation,” “The Martinez Foundation,” “Martinez Fdn.” Search on the distinctive word in the name, and also check whether someone previously entered the gift on the individuals’ record.
- Use the legal name. Take it from the check, the grant letter, or the foundation’s own paperwork. Agree on one convention for “The” and abbreviations, and write it down.
- Use the entity’s mailing address, which is often a lawyer’s, accountant’s, or trust company’s office rather than the family home. Keeping it separate keeps foundation mail from being merged into household mailings by accident.
- Add the relationship. Link the organization to each individual with a relationship that describes the connection: trustee, board member, owner, or a custom type your team defines. This is what lets anyone opening either record see the connection.
- Add a contact if needed. If grant correspondence goes to a family office manager or an attorney rather than the family, record that person as a contact on the organization so acknowledgments go to the right desk.
Recording the gift and the soft credit
Enter the payment on the organization record as you would any donation. Then add the soft credit to the individual or individuals. A few habits keep this clean:
- Credit the people who actually directed the gift. If both spouses serve as trustees and the gift letter names both, soft credit both. If only one sibling runs the family foundation, credit that sibling, not the whole extended family.
- Decide how to split amounts. Some organizations soft credit the full amount to each individual; others divide it. Either works if you’re consistent, but full credit to each person will inflate any report that adds up soft credits across people.
- Don’t add soft credits to households by default. If your Altru setup rolls individual giving up to households, confirm how soft credits behave there before you assume the household total is right.
If you’re not sure whether a given report, query, or smart field includes soft credits, test it. Enter a small test gift with a soft credit in a sandbox, or check one known donor, and compare the totals. Blackbaud support can confirm the behavior for your version if the results aren’t clear.
Trusts, LLCs, and donor-advised funds are not all the same
Revocable living trusts
A gift drawn on a revocable trust is often treated by the donor’s tax advisor as a gift from the individual. Some organizations therefore record these on the individual’s record, and others still create a trust record. Pick a policy with your finance team rather than deciding check by check.
LLCs and family businesses
Treat these like any other business: an organization record, hard credit to the business, soft credit to the owner who arranged it. If the business might also become a sponsor or corporate member later, the separate record pays off.
Donor-advised funds
Gifts through a donor-advised fund come from the sponsoring charity (a community foundation or a fund at a financial firm). The sponsor gets the hard credit, and the advisor who recommended the grant gets the soft credit. Create the sponsor once and reuse it; you’ll see many donors give through the same few sponsors.
Watch for benefits
This is where entity gifts most often go wrong. Private foundations and donor-advised funds generally aren’t supposed to pay for personal benefits for the family, and a membership, event tickets, or a gala seat can count. If a foundation grant arrives with a note saying “please renew our family membership,” talk to your finance office before processing it that way. A common approach is to process the membership as a separate payment from the individuals and record the foundation grant as an unrestricted or designated gift. Your auditor or tax advisor should set the actual policy, not the front desk.
Acknowledgments
The formal acknowledgment goes to the organization, addressed to its contact, and reflects the entity as the donor. Many organizations also send a personal thank-you to the individuals, worded as thanks for their leadership in directing the gift rather than as a tax receipt. Make sure your acknowledgment letters and any automated thank-you process pull from the right record, so the family doesn’t receive a receipt implying they gave the money personally.
Cleaning up past gifts
If your database already has foundation checks recorded on individuals, don’t try to fix years of history in one sitting. Run a query for gifts where the payment notes or check names mention “foundation,” “trust,” or “LLC” and the constituent is an individual. Review that list with your development lead, fix the current fiscal year first, and agree on whether older gifts are worth moving. Any change to posted revenue should go through finance, since it may affect closed periods.
