Nonprofit

Constituents, giving and receipts

A constituent is the single record for everyone who relates to the organization, holding several roles at once. This page covers how to read the constituent list, how the system separates direct giving from soft credit, how duplicate suggestions and record merges work, and how a receipt calculates the deductible amount when the donor received something in return.

One record, several roles

In many organizations the same person sits on three lists: donors, volunteers and the board. When they change their email, two go stale. When you want to know what they represent, nobody can add it up. The constituent exists to end that: one record, for a person or an organization, carrying several roles at the same time.

The available roles are donor, volunteer, member, alumnus, board, prospect and grant recipient. Each role has a start date and can be ended, which records the end date without erasing the history. Adding a role the person already holds does not create a duplicate.

Reading the constituent list

Open the Nonprofit menu and stay on the Constituents tab.
Use the Search field to look someone up by name, email or organization.
The list shows Name, Type, E-mail and Status (active or inactive).
Click a row to open that person's details.

What this person gave

Opening a constituent brings up the What this person gave block, with three figures. Direct giving is what they gave themselves: that is the number that enters the organization's revenue. Soft credit recognizes the influence of whoever brought the gift in without writing the check. Total is the sum of the two, and it serves to prioritize relationships, not accounting.

The separation exists because the two questions are different. Finance asks how much came in, and the answer is direct giving alone. Development asks who makes the money arrive, and there soft credit matters as much as the check. Adding both into a single number would answer both questions badly.

Example: Robert Salles gives US$ 2,000.00 a year and, as a board member, brokered a US$ 50,000.00 gift from a partner company. The screen shows direct giving of US$ 2,000.00, soft credit of US$ 50,000.00 and a total of US$ 52,000.00. The organization's revenue records the US$ 50,000.00 exactly once, under the name of the company that paid.

Duplicates and merging

The Possible duplicates block suggests records that might be the same person, with a Similarity percentage and the factors behind the suspicion. The factors are shown on purpose: a merge suggestion with no reasons is one people either accept blindly or ignore, and both outcomes are bad in a donor database.

The comparison uses name, date of birth and gender. Email and phone are left out of the score because within a family the same email or phone often appears on two different people, and that would produce wrong merges. Once a merge is confirmed, the roles and links move to the surviving record and the other one is marked merged, preserving the trail.

Households

Constituents can be grouped into a household, with one of them marked as primary and a shared address. That avoids mailing four letters to the same home and lets you look at the household's contribution, not only the individual's.

Receipts

The Receipts tab lists the receipts issued with their Number, Amount given, Benefit received, Deductible, Country and status. The deductible is calculated, not typed: it is the amount of the gift minus the fair market value of the benefit, with a floor of zero. If there was no benefit, the deductible and the amount given are the same.

Open the Receipts tab to see every receipt issued.
Compare Amount given and Deductible: the difference is exactly the benefit received.
An issued receipt can be voided, and its tax fields stay intact.
To correct a receipt, reissuing voids the old one and issues a new number pointing back at it. The tax history is never rewritten.

💡 Numbering is sequential within a country and tax year pair. Two jurisdictions in the same year have series of their own, and the next year starts the count over.

Segmenting without exposing anyone who asked to stay anonymous

When you build recognition lists, exports and requests to the AI assistant, the recognition preference is honored automatically. Anyone who asked for anonymity appears on none of those surfaces. Anyone who asked for restricted recognition disappears from public surfaces but still counts in internal reports, because the amount has to be accounted for even when the name is not displayed. With no preference on record, the system treats it as restricted.

Permissions and cautions

The nonprofit vertical has to be on, otherwise none of these screens returns any data.
The screen is for reading. Records and transactions come in through your organization's integration or through whoever administers the environment.
The amount of a gift is never edited over: a correction is an offsetting entry, so revenue stays reconstructible.
Card data is not stored. Only the brand and the last four digits are kept, along with the payment method reference.

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