Learn About Soft Credits

When someone helps bring a donation to your organization (whether by making introductions or inspiring a matching gift), they deserve recognition for their role! Soft credits are a widely used concept in nonprofit fundraising that makes this possible.

What is a soft credit?

Every donation in MonkeyPod has a donor of record who is the person or organization who actually made the gift. That's the "hard credit." A soft credit additionally attributes that gift to someone who played a meaningful role in making it happen, without changing the donor of record or affecting your financial records.

Think of it this way: a board member spends months cultivating a relationship that results in a $10,000 gift. The donor gets the hard credit for financial and tax purposes — but the board member's effort made it possible. A soft credit lets you record that contribution so you can see the full picture of that board member's impact, not just their own giving.

Soft credits are purely a relationship management and fundraising tracking tool. They have no effect on your accounting, and they don't generate a receipt or tax acknowledgment for the soft-credited person.

Why do soft credits matter?

Strong relationships are at the heart of effective fundraising, and that includes relationships with the people who help you raise money — not just the donors themselves. Soft credits help you:

Recognize the right people. Give credit to board members, volunteers, staff, and advocates who work to bring in support, even when they aren't the donor of record.
See the full picture. Get a complete view of how a person contributes to your organization's success — beyond their own personal giving.
Steward key relationships. When you can see who has been instrumental in bringing in gifts, you can make sure those people feel appreciated and stay engaged.
Track board giving and getting. For organizations using Board HQ, soft credits count toward a board member's "Get" goal, helping you measure the full scope of their fundraising contribution.

Common use cases for soft credits

Not sure when to use a soft credit? Here are some of the most common scenarios:

Board member solicitation. Your board chair personally asks a longtime friend to make a major gift to your annual fund. The friend donates $5,000. The friend is the donor of record, but the board chair gets a soft credit for making it happen.
Peer-to-peer fundraising. You organize a walk-a-thon and each participant has their own personal fundraising page. When someone donates through a participant's page, the participant can be automatically soft-credited for that gift — recognizing their role in bringing in that support.
Matching gifts. A donor gives $1,000, and their employer matches it with an additional $1,000 donation. The employer's matching gift is recorded as a separate donation from the employee. The original donor can then be soft-credited on the employer's gift, reflecting the fact that their donation is what triggered the match. More on this below.
Staff or volunteer champions. A development staff member spends months cultivating a relationship that results in a significant planned gift commitment. A soft credit on that gift acknowledges their stewardship work in your records.
Gifts from Donor Advised Funds. For these gifts, the granting institution is the donor, and the donor advisor (who you'd likely consider your supporter) gets the soft credit. Learn more about how to handle DAF gifts here.

How to enter soft credits

Recording a donation, pledge, or grant

When you manually record a donation, pledge, pledge payment, or a grant in MonkeyPod, you have the option to assign a soft credit to any relationship in your MonkeyPod. Look for Soft Credit under the "Optional" heading when recording any of those transactions. This is where you'd, for example, enter the name of a board member who solicited the gift, a staff member who cultivated the relationship, or any other person who played a key role.

Peer-to-peer fundraising sub-pages

When you set up a fundraising sub-page for a specific participant, you can designate that person to be automatically soft-credited on every gift received through their page. See Learn About Peer-to-Peer Fundraising for details.

Tracking soft credits

When a soft credit has been entered for a donation, it shows up directly on the donation page right after the donor's name.

Soft credits are also included in the following places in your MonkeyPod:

Contribution Details report

You have the option of displaying and exporting soft credits in the Contribution Details report. Soft credit amounts are included in a person's giving totals.

Board HQ — Give or Get tracking

If your organization uses the Board HQ app and tracks board member "Give or Get" goals, soft credits are factored into the "Get" side of the equation. A board member who helps bring in gifts gets credit toward their goal. See Learn About the Board HQ App for details.

Relationship records

Soft credits are listed on the soft-credited person's relationship page in two places:

Soft Credits tab: At the bottom of their relationship page, the Soft Credits tab lists every gift for which they've been given a soft credit. Use the Download button here to export all the relationship's soft credits.
Interactions: Each soft credit also appears in the person's interaction history, listed as a donation with "soft credit" in parentheses.

The relationship page for the donor with the hard credit will also show soft credit details on the Transaction tab. Be sure to check the option for Soft Credit as one of the columns to show there.

Interaction Search

You can search for the term "soft credit" in your MonkeyPod's Interaction Feed. This can be really handy if you want to find all soft credits received during a specific time period and/or filter them by tag (such as finding all soft credits related to this year's spring fundraiser).

Soft credits and matching gifts

Matching gifts deserve special attention, because they involve two separate donations and two separate relationships with soft credits as the tool for connecting them.

Here's the recommended approach:

Record the original donation from the donor as you normally would.
Record the matching gift as a separate donation from the employer or foundation that is making the match. This is important because the matching gift is its own financial transaction, made by a different entity, and should be recorded as such.
Assign a soft credit on the employer's matching gift to the original donor, to reflect that their gift is what triggered the match.

This approach keeps your accounting clean and accurate, ensures the right entity is receipted for each gift, and gives the original donor appropriate recognition for the full impact of their giving.

What soft credits don't do

Soft credits don’t affect financial reporting—they’re simply a way to track and thank the people who influenced a donation.

They don't affect your financial records. A soft credit creates no accounting entries and won't appear in your financial reports.
They don't generate a receipt or tax acknowledgment. Only the donor of record receives acknowledgment of their gift for tax purposes. The soft-credited person receives no receipt.
They're excluded from the Year-End Giving Summary report. Since this report is designed to help donors with their tax filing, soft credits are intentionally omitted.
They're excluded from email merge tags for calendar year total giving. Again, since these are for tax purposes, only actual gifts are included.
Only one soft credit is allowed per donation. If multiple people contributed to bringing in a gift, you'll need to decide who gets the soft credit for that particular transaction.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is a soft credit different from householding?

These two features are sometimes confused, but they serve different purposes. Householding links individual relationship records into a household unit, and can aggregate giving totals at the household level, which is useful for understanding giving patterns within a family, for example. A soft credit, on the other hand, attributes a gift to someone who helped bring it in, regardless of their relationship to the donor. A soft credit doesn't link records or affect how giving totals are calculated.

Will the soft-credited person show up in my fundraising reports?

Soft credits are generally excluded from standard fundraising reports, which are based on the donor of record. By choosing to display the "Soft Credit" column in the Contribution Details report, you can see any soft credits tied to donations in the report.

Can I see all of the gifts someone has been soft-credited for?

Yes! Navigate to that person's relationship page and select the Soft Credits tab at the bottom. You'll see a complete list of every gift they've been soft-credited for.

Can I apply multiple soft credits to one donation?

Sorry, not at this time.

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