Households or Families
Note: If you have a Catholic instance of MinistryPlatform, you'll see the term Family. Otherwise, you'll see Household.
- These are collections of contacts who share a primary residence. Though not a requirement, these contacts are generally related by birth or marriage.
- Households/Families should have no more than two Contacts whose position is Head of Household.
Record Fields
- Household ID
- Unique database identifier for this Household. Used as the Family Call Number by many churches for Check-In.
- Household Name
- The last name of one of the Heads of Household.
- Address
- The physical address where this Household resides. (Commas separate the different fields that make up the full address.)
- Home Phone
- The home phone of the residence (can be the mobile phone of one of the heads if needed).
- Congregation
- The primary Congregation/Parish where this Household attends worship. See Update a Household Congregation/Parish for strategies on keeping this information up-to-date, and see Contact Tracking for why that matters.
- Care Person
- The individual in your church who is assigned the responsibility to contact and care for this household.
- Household Source
- How this Household heard about the church. This list is sometimes re-purposed to indicate the data entry tool or event that led to adding this Household to the database.
- Family Call Number
- Some churches use this for Check-In, but most do not.
- Home Phone Unlisted
- Set this value to Yes for the Home Phone to not appear in the online church directory. An individual can also mark this field as Unlisted via the Online Directory.
- Home Address Unlisted
- Set this value to Yes for the Home Address does not appear in the online church directory. An individual can also mark this field as Unlisted via the Online Directory.
- Bulk Mail Opt-Out
- Set this value to Yes for this address to be omitted from general mailings. Note: This field does not automatically remove them from mailings; each time users must actively exclude Bulk Email Opt Out addresses using the Advanced Search Tool to create views that honor this preference, or use the Trim Selection Tool to remove people with this preference from the selection.
- First Donation
- The first date any member of the family made or scheduled a donation. This value is updated by a nightly routine.
- Last Donation
- The last date any member of the family made or scheduled a donation. This value is updated by a nightly routine.
- Last Activity
- The last date any member of this household gave, pledged, responded to an opportunity, attended an event, or joined a group. For some groups just being in them counts as recent activity. This is updated by a nightly routine.
- Alternate Mailing Address
- The alternate physical address where this Household resides for a portion of the year (college, summer home, snowbird, etc.).Note: Many, but not all, reports honor the alternate mailing address.
- Season Start and Season End
- The dates when the alternate mailing address begin and stop being used by specific reports. If an alternate address is entered and these fields are blank, reports will always use the alternate address. If only the start date is entered but there's no end date, reports will use the alternate address after the Season Start.
- Repeats Annually
- If yes, the Season Start and End dates (month and day) will be used each year.