Managing Households in Humanitru

Separate Constituent Records

Each member of a household is maintained as their own constituent record in Humanitru. This means every individual has their own:

• Contact information (email, phone, address)
• Communication preferences and opt-in/opt-out settings
• Personal engagement history
• Custom fields and notes

A key benefit of separate records is the ability to communicate with each person individually via email. Rather than relying on a single shared address for the household, you can reach each constituent directly with personalized messaging — ensuring the right person receives the right communication.

Keeping records separate also ensures that data is accurately tied to the right person — for example, if one spouse is a volunteer and the other is a board member, those activities are tracked individually and won't be conflated.

Best practice: Even if two people share a mailing address, resist the urge to create a single combined record (e.g., "John and Jane Smith"). Separate records give you far more flexibility for personalized outreach, accurate reporting, and long-term relationship management. Plus, we can link actions between constituents.

Beyond the standard fields, Humanitru's Tags and custom fields offer a wide range of options for organizations to build structure and strategy around their constituent data in ways that are unique to their specific needs. Whether you want to flag household roles, track engagement tiers, segment by program interest, or capture information specific to your mission, these tools allow your team to tailor Humanitru to reflect how your organization actually works — rather than adapting your processes to fit a rigid system.

 

Relationship Links

Once individual records exist, you can link them together using Humanitru's Relationships feature. A relationship link formally connects two constituent records and defines how they are related.

To add a relationship:

1. Open one constituent's record.
2. Navigate to the Relationships tab.
3. Select Add Relationship and search for the other constituent.
4. Choose the appropriate relationship type (e.g., Spouse, Partner, Parent/Child, Household Member).
5. Save — the link will appear on both records automatically.

Relationship links are bidirectional, so both constituents will reflect the connection. You can view a constituent's household network at a glance from their record, making it easy to understand the full picture of a family or household's engagement with your organization.

It’s important to use consistent Relationship namings, as this will be used throughout the database. Ex. Use “Spouse” throughout the database instead of Partner, Husband, or Wife.

 

Grouping Households for Mailings

When generating a mailing, Humanitru's Combine Similar Rows feature gives you control over whether household members receive individual pieces or are consolidated into a single document. This is particularly useful for printed appeal letters, acknowledgments, and other direct mail where you want one piece per household address.

Grouping Options

You can choose how constituents are grouped:

Combining Names

When records are grouped, you can control how names appear in the merged document using Group By Options for the Name field:

• Combine Grammatically — joins names naturally (e.g., "John and Jane Smith")
• Combine with And — explicitly joins with "and"
• Combine with Comma — joins with a comma
• Use First Alphabetically — uses only the first name alphabetically
• Use Last Alphabetically — uses only the last name alphabetically

Combining Donation Data

For grouped households, calculated fields like donation totals and dates can also be merged intelligently:

Donation Total

• Sum Together — adds both constituents' totals for a combined household figure
• Use Largest — uses the higher of the two totals
• Use Smallest — uses the lower of the two totals

Last Donation Date

• Use Most Recent — surfaces the most recent gift date across both records
• Use Earliest — surfaces the earliest gift date across both records

This means your appeal letter can accurately reference a household's combined giving history — for example, acknowledging their total giving or most recent gift — while still sending just one piece to the shared address.

What Gets Generated

When constituents are grouped, only one letter is produced in the downloaded file — not one per person. However, when you use Finalize, Download & Add Action to Constituent Profile, a Letter Sent action is added to each grouped constituent's record, with the generation date recorded as the Action Date and the letter itself attached. This ensures that both household members have a complete communication history, even though only a single piece was mailed.

This is particularly useful for:

• Annual fund appeal letters
• Year-end tax acknowledgments
• Event invitations sent to a shared address

 

Linking Donations, Memberships, and Other Actions

Because each household member has their own record, activity is attributed to the person who actually gave, joined, or engaged — not lumped together at the household level. This includes:

Donations — Each gift is recorded on the donor's individual record. If both partners give, their donations are tracked separately, which matters for accurate donor recognition, giving society qualification, and tax receipting.

Memberships — A membership can be linked to one constituent or shared across household members, depending on how your organization structures membership benefits.

Actions — Volunteer hours, event attendance, advocacy actions, and other engagement types are logged on the constituent who participated.

Tip: When acknowledging a major gift from a household, consider pulling up both constituent records to review the full relationship history before drafting your stewardship communication.

Linking Actions Across Household Members

When an action — such as a donation, membership payment, or meeting — involves more than one household member, Humanitru allows you to record it on the primary constituent and then link it to related records. This keeps attribution accurate while ensuring the activity is visible across all relevant profiles.

When to use linked actions:

• Membership payments — If one spouse pays for a household membership, the payment is recorded on their record. Linking it to the other spouse's record ensures both show the membership activity, which is useful for recognition, reporting, and communications.
• Donations — If a gift should be recognized as coming from both partners (e.g., a joint major gift), linking the donation to the spouse's record ensures it appears in their history without creating a duplicate transaction.
• Meetings and touchpoints — If a fundraiser met with multiple family members, the meeting action can be linked to each attendee's record so staff have a complete picture of who was in the room.

Related constituents can be added to an action in three ways:

• Manually — Open the action on the primary constituent's record and add the related constituent(s) directly.
• Via integration — Some integrations, particularly membership platforms, will automatically link related constituents when both household members' information is provided during the transaction.
• Via Smart Automation — Your organization can configure Smart Automations to link related constituents to actions automatically based on defined rules.

However they are linked, the action will appear on all connected profiles, giving your team full visibility into household-level engagement without duplicating data entry.

Best practice: Always record the action on the constituent who was the primary participant or payer, then link outward to other household members. This keeps your data clean and ensures giving credit and financial records remain accurate.

Summary

If you have questions about setting up households for your organization's data, contact Humanitru Support or reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

Related Articles

• How to Edit a Constituent Profile
• How to Apply a Tag to a Constituent
• Create Mailing Interface