Households?

A list reader wrote me recently with question about reducing duplicate contacts, proper attribution of contributions, and households. I’ll paraphrase for the sake of brevity and privacy:

We’ve long had a problem dealing with the blurred lines between spouses and others who might share household finances. For example: online contributors sometimes enter their first name as “John and Mary,” creating duplicate contacts which are hard to resolve. We’d also like to send printed mailings to our constituents, preferably only one mailing per household — but have a hard time deciding the correct salutation: “Dear Resident” is too generic, but “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” might just be incorrect.

As to the mailings, I’m wondering: is there a way we could use Households to track this information, and then use tokens to get something like “Dear Smith Family” on these mailings? What would we do if the two adult partners in the household have different last names?

It’s a great question!

These challenges are often overlooked or simply avoided because they’re complex. Emails are (usually — and don’t get me started!) read by a single individual. But printed mailings are a different matter, and constituents often expect, or at least prefer, to get one printed letter per household, not separate letters for each individual.

Unfortunately, it is indeed complex, and there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Below is (basically) what I wrote back to this question:

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Households in CiviCRM can be useful for this purpose, though I know some organizations make a specific decision not to use them, usually because it's hard to settle on best practices for various scenarios. Here's a quick outline of typical concerns:

We'll use a hypothetical example of the Smith family, consisting of Bob and Alice Smith. Bob and Alice each have an individual contact record, and we also create a Houshold contact named "The Bob and Alice Smith Family" (or something similar). Sometimes Bob donates online; sometimes Alice. Sometimes they send a check donation by mail, with no letter explaining who it's from, and the name on the check is "Bob and Alice Smith". Now, we get to decide some things:

• Bob's contributions will naturally be attributed to Bob, and Alice's to Alice (after all, households don't fill out forms online; only individuals do). But Bob, when he's donating online, may intend that his donation be attributed to his household instead of to him directly. Do we want to accommodate that, and if so, what's the best way to do it?

• Should the check be attributed to Bob, Alice, or the Household?

• In reporting on Bob's contributions, do we only want to include his own, or also those of the Household, or even also include Alice's? (And the same question arises for Alice, and for the Household.)

• CiviCRM will allow you to register a Household for an event, but households (like companies and other organizations) don't attend events; only individuals do. But is there ever a case where we'd want staff to register a household for an event?

• CiviCRM will also allow you to send mass emails to a household, but households don't read; only individuals do. Under what circumstances, if any, do we want to send a mass email to a household? What email address should be used — Bob's, Alice's, or some other? If we send to Bob's email address, how do we handle it when the Household unsubscribes or opts-out of all mailings — should we also apply that to Bob himself?

Deciding for yourself:

All those questions can be answered with some care and forethought, and I strongly recommend that each organization take the time to think those through before they begin using Households. Practices can be altered and improved as you go along, but it's quite difficult to "clean up" data later if you don't know what it means (as you probably won't if you don't have clear practices).

Based on the policies and practices you decide, there are ways to get good and predictable behavior for reporting (for example, the Aggregated Household Contributions report extension), recording contributions, sending mass emails, and mailing letters/statements.

As for tokens in exports:

There's currently no way to use tokens directly during the "export contacts" process. However, there are some exportable fields which support tokens, namely: Postal Greeting, Email Greeting, and Addressee.

Still, I expect that whether you need these, and how you use them will depend on the policies and practices you develop for Households. The typical use case is that the Household record is created with its own name (e.g. "The Bob and Alice Smith Family"), and then that name is used in communications (emails, printed letters) targeting that household — in which case the Household name is already known, and tokens need not apply.

You can see I'm hinting that good use of Households is more complex than it might appear on its face, and that implementing their use is probably best done with great care.

I realize I'm not answering all of your questions, but hopefully this helps move you forward. If you'd like to schedule a call to work through the details of your various situations, please let me know; I expect there are some nuances that are worth unpacking further.

All the best,
A.