Soft Credits & Linked Actions: Seeing the Full Picture Behind Every Gift

In fundraising, the entity that legally makes a gift isn't always the person your organization actually has a relationship with. A donor-advised fund (DAF), a corporate matching gift program, a family foundation, or a workplace giving campaign may write the check, while a real individual — the DAF advisor, the employee whose gift triggered the match, the family member who directed the grant — is the one your team is cultivating and stewarding. In the nonprofit industry, this recognition is called a soft credit: credit for a gift given to someone other than the official donor of record, so that person's role in the gift is visible without duplicating the transaction itself.

Humanitru's solution for this is the Linked Action. A Linked Action connects an individual constituent to a gift that was hard-credited to an institution, so that individual's Action history, giving behavior, and stewardship picture reflect the gift — even though the dollar amount and tax receipt stay with the institution that actually made it.

Linked Actions let Humanitru keep three things accurate at the same time, without any manual workarounds or duplicate data entry:

• Accounting stays clean — the institution that wrote the check remains the legal donor of record, holds the tax receipt, and is what your revenue reporting reflects.
• Stewardship stays personal — the individual behind the gift is acknowledged, cultivated, and recognized as part of your ongoing relationship with them, not lost behind the institution's name.
• Reporting stays complete — you can see institutional giving volume and the individuals behind it side by side, without counting the same gift twice.

This is where Linked Actions deliver the most value: they let your team pull up an individual constituent's record and see their full giving picture in one place — personal gifts they wrote themselves, sitting alongside every gift that came through a DAF, a company match, or a family foundation on their behalf. Nothing about that individual's philanthropic relationship with your organization is hidden in an institution's record where your gift officers would never think to look.

• Donor-advised funds — the DAF (e.g., “Vanguard Charitable – Smithfield Fund”) is set up as its own constituent record. The individual who advises the fund is a separate constituent. The gift is hard-credited to the DAF; the advisor receives a Linked Action, so their advising activity shows up in their own giving history.
• Corporate foundations and matching gifts — the company or foundation holds the hard credit. The employee whose personal gift triggered the match, or the relationship manager at the foundation, receives a Linked Action — so their full philanthropic footprint, matched dollars included, is visible on their record.
• Family foundations — the foundation holds the hard credit. Family members involved in directing the gift each receive a Linked Action, letting your team see which family members are actively steering the foundation's giving.
• Any other split between payer and steward — whenever the entity on the check and the person you want to build a relationship with aren't the same, a Linked Action is how Humanitru keeps both sides visible.

1. Set up the institution (the DAF, foundation, or company) as its own constituent record, just like any individual — with a profile, contact information, and its own Action history.
2. Record the donation as an Action on the institution's record. This is the hard credit — the Action that represents the actual transaction and drives accounting and tax receipting.
3. Link that Action to the individual constituent who should receive credit. Humanitru creates a corresponding Linked Action on the individual's record at $0 that connects them to the gift.
4. The Linked Action then appears directly in the individual's Action history, factoring into their giving behavior and stewardship profile — giving your team a complete view of that person's relationship with your organization, whether they gave directly, through an institution, or both.

Linked Actions and Relationships solve two different problems, and using both together is what gives you the complete picture. A Relationship documents a structural connection between two constituent records — a board member and their employer, a donor and their family foundation. It's a navigational and contextual tool: it tells you these two records are connected, but it doesn't move any gift credit.

A Linked Action does the opposite: it doesn't describe how two people are connected — it connects a specific individual to a specific transaction, so that transaction shows up in their giving picture. In most cases where an institution gives on an individual's behalf, you'll want both: a Relationship so anyone viewing either record understands the connection, and a Linked Action so the gift itself is reflected in the individual's history.

The Linked Hard Credit Constituent column in Constituent Reporting makes this model fully reportable. When pulling a list for acknowledgment purposes, include the hard-credited institution's name alongside the individual's name and address — so a thank-you letter to the individual correctly reflects that the gift came through their DAF or corporate match, rather than reading as though they wrote a personal check. This same field is what lets your team build reports that show the complete picture of an individual's giving: their direct gifts and their institution-routed gifts, together.