Understanding Soft Credits in Salesforce NPSP

Salesforce NPSP helps nonprofits track not only who gave money, but also who influenced the gift. That distinction matters because fundraising is rarely a single-person action. A donation may come from one legal donor, but a board member, family member, advisor, employer, or donor-advised fund contact may have played an important role in making it happen. If your team is weighing where to manage this data long term, it is worth understanding the differences between NPSP and Nonprofit Cloud.

Soft credits give nonprofits a way to recognize that influence without changing the official donor of record. The hard credit stays with the person or organization that actually made the donation. The soft credit gives recognition to someone connected to the gift in another meaningful way.

This is especially useful for fundraising teams that care about relationship history, stewardship, donor influence, board engagement, household giving, and campaign reporting. Without soft credits, many important relationships stay invisible in Salesforce. With soft credits configured well, development teams can see both the money received and the people who helped make it possible.

What Are Soft Credits?

Soft credits recognize individuals or organizations who indirectly influenced a donation but did not directly contribute the money. They are not the same as hard credits. A hard credit belongs to the donor who legally made the gift. A soft credit is recognition credit for someone who helped influence, recommend, facilitate, or connect the donation.

For example, imagine John Smith encourages his friend Jane Doe to donate to your organization. Jane makes the donation, so Jane receives the hard credit. John did not give the money himself, but he influenced the gift. In Salesforce NPSP, John can receive a soft credit for that donation.

Another common example is a donor-advised fund. The DAF sponsor may be the legal donor on the gift record, but the individual who recommended the grant is often the person your fundraising team wants to steward. Soft credits allow the organization to track that relationship without misrepresenting the legal donor.

Soft credits are useful because they give fundraisers a more complete view of donor influence. They help answer questions like: Who helped bring in this gift? Which board members influenced donations? Which household members should be recognized? Which organizations or employers contributed indirectly through matching gifts?

Types of Soft Credits in NPSP

NPSP tracks soft credits in three ways:

• Contact Role Soft Credits: These are for individuals associated with a donation but aren't the actual donors. This could be someone who:some text
  • Donated through a Donor Advised Fund (DAF): The DAF receives the "hard credit" (the actual donation), while the person who recommended the donation (e.g., John Smith) gets a soft credit.
  • Influenced the gift in some other way.
• Partial Soft Credits: These are used when a gift should be credited across multiple people or when each person should receive a specific amount or percentage of recognition. This is useful for crowdfunding, peer-to-peer fundraising, family giving, or situations where several people helped secure one donation. For example, if three volunteers helped raise a $10,000 gift, the organization may decide to assign partial soft credit to each person based on their role. The total can match the gift amount, or in some cases go over the total if the organization wants to recognize influence rather than strict financial contribution. Partial soft credits are helpful when simple “all or nothing” recognition is not enough. They give development teams more flexibility when reporting on influence, stewardship, and campaign participation.

• Account Soft Credits: These are used to recognize another organization that influenced the gift. This is different from recognizing an individual Contact. For example, a company might match an employee donation. The employee receives the hard credit for the original gift, and the company may receive recognition for the match. Or a partner organization may help facilitate a donation even though it was not the direct donor. Account Soft Credits are especially useful for nonprofits that work with companies, foundations, chapters, partner organizations, or institutional supporters. They help fundraising teams understand not only which people give, but which organizations help create giving opportunities.

Managing Soft Credits in Salesforce

• Automated: NPSP can automatically assign soft credits based on pre-defined contact roles. For example, the primary contact on a DAF donation might automatically receive a soft credit.
• Manual: You can manually assign soft credits to individuals who influenced a donation on the Opportunity record.some text
• Contact Role: You can assign these manually through the “Add Contact Role” button on the Opportunity record. Select the person and their role, such as Influencer, Solicitor, Advisor, Board Member, or another role your organization uses. Manual soft credits are useful when a gift has a special context that automation cannot capture. Major gifts, campaign asks, board introductions, and complex family donations often need human judgment. In these cases, it is better for a fundraiser to assign the correct recognition manually than to force the gift into a rule that does not quite fit.

• Partial Soft Credits - can be used to award each contributor a specific amount or percentage of the total. This gives teams more control when multiple people should receive recognition for one donation.

• Account Soft Credits - are used when you want to honor another organization, not a person. This can include matching gift companies, partner organizations, foundations, or other institutions that helped influence or support the donation.

Viewing Soft Credits:

• Contact Role Soft Credits: These appear on the Contact record in the Soft Credit Allocation section. This helps fundraisers understand a person’s full influence history, not only their direct giving history. For example, a board member may not appear as a large direct donor, but their soft credit history may show that they helped influence several major gifts. That context matters when planning stewardship, board engagement, and future asks.

• All Soft Credits: Soft credits can also be displayed as a related list on the Opportunity record. This gives users a full view of everyone connected to a specific donation. This is helpful when reviewing a major gift, preparing donor acknowledgments, or checking whether the right people and organizations have been recognized. It also helps prevent confusion between the legal donor and the people who influenced the gift.

Important Notes

• Nightly Batch Update: NPSP updates contact soft credit totals through a batch process. You may not see soft credit totals update immediately after assigning a role. This is expected behavior, not necessarily an error. If the totals do not appear right away, wait for the batch process to run. If you need to force an update, go to NPSP Settings → Rollup Donations Batch. This delay is important to explain to users. Otherwise, fundraisers may think the soft credit was not saved correctly when the record simply has not rolled up yet.

• Hard & Soft Credit Totals: Salesforce does not natively combine hard and soft credits into one simple total for every reporting scenario. In many orgs, teams create formula fields, custom reports, or rollups to make combined giving easier to analyze. For example, a development director may want to see a person’s direct donations, influenced gifts, and total relationship value in one view. That may require a custom report type or calculated field depending on how the org tracks soft credits.

Be careful when reporting on combined totals. Soft credits are recognition credit, not actual revenue. If you add hard and soft credits together without context, you can accidentally overstate fundraising totals. The safest approach is to report them separately, then use combined views only for relationship analysis.

Optimizing Soft Credit Tracking:

• Expand Your Contact Role Options: Standard roles are a good starting point, but many nonprofits need more specific language. Work with development staff to define roles that match your fundraising process. Examples might include Board Influencer, DAF Advisor, Solicitor, Household Member, Campaign Volunteer, Matching Gift Contact, or Major Gift Introducer. The right roles make reports more useful and help users understand why someone received recognition.

• Customize Soft Credit Assignments: NPSP allows you to configure which Contact Roles trigger soft credits. Review these settings and make sure they match how your organization actually recognizes influence. Do not soft credit every role by default. If every related person receives soft credit, reports become noisy and less useful. Focus on the roles that matter for stewardship, campaign reporting, and relationship management.

• Consider Primary Contact Recognition: The “Always Rollup to Primary Contact Role” setting may be useful in some scenarios. It ensures that the primary contact receives credit for the donation, even when other soft credits are assigned. This can be helpful for household giving or donor-advised fund workflows, but it should be reviewed carefully. Some organizations want the primary contact always recognized. Others prefer more selective recognition based on the actual gift context.

• Soft credits work best when the rules are clear. Before changing settings, define how your organization wants to recognize influence, who should receive credit, and how that credit will be used in reports.

We know Soft Credits might get complicated, and it is not always easy to know how to use them efficiently. Let us know if you’d like help with setting up Soft Credits at [email protected].