Linkages are used to establish relationships or connections between donors. Through the use of linkages you may create individual solicitor lists, report on all those who attended a related institution or event, denote familial relationships, employer-employee relationships, and so on. Each donor may have an unlimited number of relationships with other donors, prospects, and solicitors within your organization. The Matching Gift feature in DonorQuest is also implemented via Linkages. For some background information about Linkages and example use, please first read the Quick Start topic on Linkages.
The Jump button of the Linkage datasheet is important enough that it deserves some additional discussion here. This button allows you to jump immediately to a linked donor account, so that you may see their full information including donations, pledges, and of course, linkages to other donors. This technique may be used to traverse the entire web of relationships in your database, allowing you to discover relationships you may not have known existed. For example, in viewing the linkages of one of your strongest supporters, you may casually jump to the donor's uncle, only to discover that the uncle is a very influential shareholder of a large corporation you have been trying to get a grant from. Since you have strong influence with the nephew, you may be able to get him to influence his uncle to influence the corporation to give you a lot of money!
Following is a description of the fields in the Linkages table:
Linkage Linked To
Shown as This Donor on the linkages form, this is the ID number of a linked donor. When adding a new linkage, you may directly enter the ID number of the linked donor in this field, or you may search for the donor you wish to link by clicking the Browse button.
Linkage Relation Type
Shown as Is Viewed As on the linkages form, this is a coded field which shows how another donor is related. A code up to ten characters in length may be entered here. For example, if the related donor is a solicitee of the current donor, you might use a code like - SOLTEE - to describe the relationship. Since a solicitor/solicitee relationship is reciprocal, you would also want to link the solicitee donor back to the solicitor donor. This is normally done automatically by DonorQuest since you tell it in advance which relationship codes have reciprocals, and what the reciprocal codes are.
Linkage Comment
A general comment that is specific to the linkage being added. May be up to 80 characters in length.
Linkage When Last Edited
Stores the date when the Linkage record was last changed in any way. Automatically maintained by DonorQuest.
Linkage Who Last Edited
Stores the name of the last user to make a change to the Linkage record. Automatically maintained by DonorQuest.
For some example linkages entry, please also see the Linkages Button topic of the Quick Start Guide.