A donor gives $5,000 using a card in her consulting company's name. She wants the annual report to say “The Okonkwo Family”. Her spouse is the one your gift officer talks to. The receipt must go to whoever legally made the gift.
That is four facts, and a single name field can only hold one of them. Whichever one it holds, three artefacts become wrong.
What each field is for
- Legal donor: the party entitled to the receipt. Tax consequences follow this field, so it cannot be a display preference.
- Payer: the instrument that moved the money. Useful for matching and fraud review, irrelevant to recognition.
- Recognition name: what the organization publishes, including anonymous. A preference, not an identity.
- Soft credit: influence without receipt — a spouse, a gift officer, a foundation trustee, a matching employer.
The failure you will not notice for a year
Merged fields fail silently. Receipts go out with the company name, the household salutation is wrong in a mail merge, and a major donor's soft credit total understates their influence. Nobody complains until an audit or a difficult conversation.
“If your recognition preference lives in the same field as your legal name, you have made an accounting decision by accident.”
Migrating an existing database
- Copy the current name into both legal donor and recognition name, then correct recognition where you have evidence.
- Treat every business-name gift from a known individual as a match candidate rather than a new donor.
- Record anonymity as a preference on the donor, not as the literal name “Anonymous”.
- Never delete a merged record — keep the merge history so a wrong merge is reversible.