I'm really liking SOM 2.0. However, I have a few suggestions if you plan on making updates:

For the Recency, please allow the option to select a rolling time frame (i.e. 0-3 months, 0-12 months etc). That was one of the best parts about SOM1. I didn't have to update dates. I think this is especially important since 2.0 allows users to save past segmentation. If I just want 0-6 months on an ongoing basis then I shouldn't have to update the date unless I want to.

Soft credits: It would be great if soft credits not related to the spouse could be included. This would be great in a check box form like the head of household option. Right now I'm finding many people who have giving only from family foundations or donor advised funds. I'm setting up a 0-0-0 RFM segment to catch them but it doesn't help me figure out what appeal they should receive. I also have thousands of donors who have hard and soft credits so right now segment omatic is not putting them in the segment we think they actually fit into. There's a danger of me mailing a lapsed appeal to a donor when in fact they have soft credits from their donor advised funds a month ago.

Hi! I know this is a very old thread, but I was wondering if someone could confirm whether SOM does now allow calculated recency (i.e a rolling timeframe), as opposed to (or in addition to) set date ranges?

I had a demo recently where we talked about calculated recency, so it looks like that is part of the current product, but some reassurance would be lovely!

Amy,

The way I see making this easier is to have a new hierarchy template type that can only be setup as a template. It would allow for rolling date ranges like you want, but whenever you added that template to a profile, it would be converted to a recency hierarchy and the dates would be set for you based off the date you added the template to your profile.

The reason we aren't allowing rolling date ranges is because the results will only change when the segmentation is performed. If you come back after a month or so and view the results, you may expect them to have changed. They won't because all of your segmentation results are saved on the profile when the actual segmentation occurs.

Hi Laura,

Thanks so much for taking the time to give us your feedback! The rolling time is interesting for exactly the reason you mentioned... now that we can save a profile and open it up again next week, we felt we needed to use specific date ranges so that the criteria weren't changing from one day to the next. If you use explicit date ranges, those ranges stay the same even if you have to work on with same segmentation data set over a few weeks. I ~would~ like to see a function in our next version that will pre-fill a certain number of time periods for you though. Can you tell use what time periods you usually use in your segmentations?

Soft credits are a bit tricky for this reason: we give you the ability in SOM to exclude certain gifts based on fund. So, for instance, say a user has set gifts to the membership fund to be excluded. A donor makes a split gift of $300, 50/50 between the Membership fund and the Keep Our City Beautiful fund. In SOM currently that gift, if Membership fund is excluded, will count as a gift for $150 to the Keep Our City Beautiful fund, ignoring the Membership split. What should SOM do if that gift is soft-credited to another record for $300? What about $150? Or $75? Unfortunately the soft-credits are at the gift level, not the gift split level (as far as I can tell). Any thoughts about what SOM should do in these scenarios?

Thanks, again, for your feedback!

Jeff