I would like to see a comprehensive plan and solution for the outstanding Annual (and Quarterly) Giving Statements that have been discussed since 2019. I'm copying and pasting suggestions from Josh that need to be implemented and prioritized. I understand that BB requires an Idea in this Idea bank to consider the requests and our 37 collective replies on the Community discussion board are not sufficient to move this forward. While there are some piecemeal requests in the Idea board, I think these comprehensive lists from the Community board create a good explanation of the issues and solutions we need.

2019 Asks:

1. The process of running Annual Giving Statements needs to be more simple that it is now. Printing contribution statements from our two previous systems (ACS and Seraphim) was much easier.

2. There needs to be a way to print statements so that they fit windowed envelopes instead of having to print labels (and the time it takes to physically match the label to statement and apply the label to an envelope).

3. The statement needs to include both head and spouse (this is the biggest issue for us!).

Oct . 1, 2020 Asks:

1. Giving statements only include one spouse. Normally in the church environment, a giving statement incudes husband and spouse, and we believe this should be what Church Management produces. When church donors receive their giving statements, they want to see each spouse on the giving statement from the church (Mr. and Mrs. John Smith for example).

2. Also, each spouse will want to see all gifts from the family in their individual giving history in the client portal. This can be accomplished by adding soft credits to the spouse. However, adding soft credits is a laborious process when going through a batch of gifts (you have to click add soft credit, find the spouse and enter a dollar amount).

3. When entering gifts using the check scanner, the check scanner can pick up and credit either spouse with a gift. For instance, a check that includes a husband and wife may pick up the husband one time and the wife the next and can randomly select either one from there on out. This means that a giving statement will be produced for both spouses, splitting their gifts between them based on what was pulled by the check scanner when the gift was entered. This caused a tremendous amount of complaints and aggravation from church members from the 2019 giving statements. (There is no field to add a soft credit when using the scanner).

4. We are trying to fix this before it happens this year by merging gifts. However, when merging gifts in web view, the spouse who originally had the gift is marked inactive, which should not happen. The constituent is not marked inactive in database view, so we started merging gifts in database view. However, this is a step that we believe should not need to be taken by the user in the first place.

5. This is an issue with online gifts as well. Depending on which spouse donates, if both spouses are credited with gifts during the calendar year, each could receive their own statement.

6. Although there is a very small percentage (less than 1%) of married couples that want to receive separate giving statements, we believe the default should be that each spouse should receive credit for the gift. So whether the back office is looking at the constituent through church management or the donor is looking at gifts through the congregant portal, either spouse will see all gifts given under each of their records. We think separating gifts should be the manual process rather than giving soft credits.

In summary, we are trying to recommend:

1. Contribution statements that include head and spouse for all gifts given by either during the year and labels that match the recipients.

2. Gifts given by either head or spouse to be credited to both in their giving histories.

Additional Response from another BB user: "This is so critical! If giving isn't handled in a clear, professional manner we lose donors and that is not an acceptable result of our migration to BB. I believe enough of us have weighed in on this topic to make it your #1 Q4 priority -- especially since these functions have been promised for more than a year now. We were led to believe that BB was built out from a fundraising platform but receipting of those raised funds seems to be the lowest priority in Church Management. That doesn't make sense!"