A household groups a family or organization's patrons under one shared name, mailing address, and combined giving total — without changing anyone's individual record. A patron can belong to only one household at a time.
Before you start
Venue Admin with canViewDonors, or Super Admin.
Creating a household
From a patron's detail page, click Create household.
Noctern names the household automatically — "The [Last Name] Family" when the patron has a last name — and adds that patron as the primary contact. You can rename it afterward.
The household page
Go to AdminVenuesHouseholds and open a household.
Eight combined tiles run across the top: Lifetime giving, This year, Last year, Gifts, Ticket spend, Orders, Last gift, and Last order — this is where the year-over-year giving comparison lives (the patron detail page itself only shows lifetime totals). Combined giving is derived by summing members' own totals, not a separate source of money — it updates shortly after a member's giving changes, and a member's individual total is never affected by joining or leaving a household.
Click Add member to search for a patron by name or email and add them. A patron already in another household can't be added — remove them from their current household first.
Use the star icon to Make primary, or the trash icon to Remove a member. You can't remove the primary contact while other members remain — make someone else primary first. Removing the last member deletes the household.
Click Edit household to set the household name, kind (Household or Organization), informal salutation (e.g. "Bob and Jane") and formal salutation (e.g. "Mr. and Mrs. Robert Smith") for mail-merge use, and the shared mailing address.
The shared mailing address is used for exports only — it never overwrites an individual member's own address on their patron record.
Click View in patrons list to see all of a household's members filtered on the Patrons list.
Households in campaigns
When composing a campaign, choosing Household scope and checking One email per household sends a single email per household instead of one per patron — keeping the primary contact if they're emailable, or the first emailable member if not. This reduces the recipient count shown in the campaign composer.
Watch out
A patron can only be in one household. If you need to move someone, remove them from their current household before adding them to the new one.
- Open a household in the demo venue and check the combined giving tiles against the sum of each member's own giving.
- Try adding a patron who's already in another household — confirm the dialog blocks it.
- Open Edit household and note the informal and formal salutation fields.