After much digging, I found that the Head of Household (HoH) mailings in The Raiser’s Edge (RE) only suited spousal relationships, and at our University we have parent/child and sibling relationships to consider as well – not to mention the case where more than two people live at the same adress and request a joint mailing. There are no elegant solutions so far (RE 7.9), so this is the least ballache solution I can find:
- Add an Addressee/Salutation type called, say, “Joint Mailing”
- Add a solicit code for exclusion, say “Joint Mailing – do not mail”
- Query for data where Solicit Code Does Not Equal “Joint Mailing – do not mail”
- Export the addressee/salutation by type, with “Joint Mailing” as preferred, and allow it to fall back to the standard if it does not exist (i.e. if they haven’t specified a single household mailing), This is done by clicking “Criteria” in the export output window.
This seems to work, as long as you remember the solicit code in the queries, and is less of a PITA than other methods I have read about. The advantage is that you can still mail people separately for other mailings (fundraising, reunion year/subject etc), but keep a household or seed list contact together without duplicitous mail.