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Enable spouseholding for Raiser’s Edge NXT

Updated

This article explains what “spouseholding” means in Avid’s Raiser’s Edge NXT integration and how to enable it by updating your field mappings. Use it when you want Avid to treat a household as the primary donor record (instead of each constituent).

Use this article when

  • You want donor counts and rollups to align to households (not individual constituents).
  • You want gifts and related credit behavior to follow household-level rules in your model.
  • You are onboarding and need to apply Avid’s recommended spouseholding mapping changes for NXT.
  • You are troubleshooting unexpected deduping or donor-count changes after connecting NXT.
This is optional and not the default. Spouseholding changes how records roll up and can change donor counts, which can surprise users if they are expecting an “individual constituent” model.

Applies to and prerequisites

Applies to Raiser’s Edge NXT connections in Avid
Permissions You need access to edit connection mappings (Admin or Integration Manager role in Avid).
What you’ll update Field mappings for Constituents and Transactions
Time ~10 minutes, plus time to validate in your datasets

What spouseholding means

Because Raiser's Edge NXT doesn't support native householding functionality, many organizations struggle to appropriately segment donors based on giving attributed to different spouses. To help overcome this, Avid offers optional Spouseholding (spouse householding) support in which Avid creates a pseudo household based on the spouse marked as primary and includes both spouse constituents within it as individual contact records. In practice, this is implemented by leveraging NXT spouse relationships and their "primary" attribute to group the records into a usable form. This significantly simplifies household-level reporting and segmentation, and is our recommended method for organizations using NXT.

When to use spouseholding

  • You want household-level reporting and segmentation based on spouse relationships.
  • You want household-level rollups while still keeping each constituent as an individual record.
  • You want campaigns to treat both spouses consistently when giving is attributed to only one spouse.

When not to use spouseholding

  • You report and plan strictly at the individual constituent level and do not want household rollups to affect counts.
  • Your team expects current Avid donor counts to remain unchanged from the default NXT mapping.
  • You do not currently use spouse relationships in NXT.
Example: why spouseholding helps
  • Major donor treatment: If gifts are attributed to only one spouse in NXT, spouseholding helps you treat both spouses consistently at a household level.
  • Campaign suppression: If one spouse is already a recurring donor, spouseholding makes it easier to suppress the other spouse from a recurring donor upgrade campaign when you are targeting households.

Expected impacts

Spouseholding can change how Avid groups records and calculates rollups. This may affect donor counts and can influence how giving levels and credit-related behaviors appear in analyses. 

What may change after you enable spouseholding
  • Donor counts: Counts may shift because households become the primary grouping key, not individual constituents. 
  • Rollups: Household-level rollups may replace individual-level rollups in places that use the account identifier.
  • Credit behavior: The transaction account identifier is intentionally changed to read from household fields (see the mapping table) which can influence how credit/attribution is represented in downstream reporting. 
  • Deduping risk if misconfigured: If you do not map Constituent ID as the default contact identifier, contacts can fall back to the account identifier and dedupe within a household. 

Mapping changes overview

To enable spouseholding, you update mappings in two places: your Constituents mapping and your Transactions mapping.

Area Source field (NXT) Map to (Avid) Why it matters
Constituents Household ID Account ID Makes the household the account-level donor key. 
Constituents Constituent ID Contact ID (default) Prevents contacts from falling back to Account ID and deduping within the household. 
Constituents Constituent ID Custom field Original Constituent ID Keeps the original identifier visible/searchable for audits and troubleshooting. 
Constituents Is Head Of Household Is Primary Contact Marks the household’s primary contact using NXT’s head-of-household indicator. 
Constituents Is Head Of Household Custom boolean Is Head of Household Preserves the original head-of-household flag separately for filtering/searching. 
Transactions Household ID Account ID (swap from constituent-based) Moves transaction account attribution to household-based behavior (soft credits by default). 
Transactions Constituent ID Original Constituent ID Preserves the original constituent reference on gift records for audits/searching. 

Steps

  1. Open your Raiser’s Edge NXT connection mapping screen in Avid.
  2. Update your Constituents mappings for spouseholding.
    1. Map Household ID as Account ID. 
    2. Map Constituent ID as Contact ID (default contact identifier). 
    3. Map Constituent ID again as a custom field named Original Constituent ID. 
    4. Map Is Head Of Household as Is Primary Contact. 
    5. Map Is Head Of Household again as a custom boolean field named Is Head of Household. 
    6. Update your Transactions mappings for spouseholding.
      1. Swap the transaction Account ID mapping so it reads from Household ID (instead of a constituent-level identifier). 
      2. Map Constituent ID as Original Constituent ID on transactions.
      3. Save your mapping updates and re-run any required sync or refresh.
  3. Expected result: New and updated records reflect household-based grouping and the added custom fields.
  4. Validate the results in Avid.
    • Confirm households do not collapse into a single contact (a sign Contact ID is missing or mis-mapped). 
    • Spot-check donor counts and rollups in the views your team uses most.
    • Search for Original Constituent ID on a few known records to confirm it is populated.

What you’ll see

  • Household identifiers mapped into Account ID for constituents and transactions.
  • Constituents preserved as distinct contacts via Contact ID.
  • Additional fields available for search and filtering, including Original Constituent ID and Is Head of Household. 

Next steps

  • Review the places you track counts and confirm they align to spousehold expectations.
  • Update any saved audiences, filters, or exports that assume an individual-constituent model.
  • Link this configuration from your “Connecting Raiser’s Edge NXT” article so users find it at setup time.

Notes

How Avid generates Household IDs for NXT

Raiser’s Edge NXT does not provide a native household identifier for this use case. When spouseholding is enabled, Avid generates a household identifier based on the primary constituent in the spouse relationship.

To make it clear these are not original NXT constituent IDs, Avid generates IDs in these formats:

  • Avid_Gen_SH12345 when the account represents a spousehold.
  • Avid_Gen_C54321 when there is no spouse relationship for the constituent.

The number at the end corresponds to the NXT Constituent System Record ID of the primary spouse (or the constituent if there is no spouse relationship).

Exports: include both Account ID and Contact ID

When you export for direct mail or other downstream workflows, export both:

  • Account ID (spousehold ID), and
  • Contact ID (individual constituent).

This makes it easier to target at the spousehold level while still acting on the correct constituent records.

If your exports only return one contact per account by default, use the export option that includes all associated contacts. See: Export constituents and include associated contacts.

Do not skip the Contact ID mapping. If Constituent ID is not mapped as the default Contact ID, constituents can fall back to Account ID and dedupe within the spousehold.

Get help

Contact LockStep Support if:

  • You enabled spouseholding and donor counts changed in an unexpected way.
  • You see contacts collapsing into one record per household (deduping symptoms).
  • You cannot locate the mapping screen or the required destination fields in your connection.

Include:

  • The name of your connection (Raiser’s Edge NXT).
  • Whether spouseholding is enabled (yes/no).
  • Screenshots of your Constituents and Transactions mapping rows for the fields listed above.
  • 1–2 example households where the behavior is incorrect (no donor names needed; use internal IDs if available).

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