What is a household account, and how do I manage household accounts?

In this Salesforce system, each individual's contact record is grouped under a "household account". These household accounts are a way that Salesforce groups contacts around a physical address, limiting mailings to only one piece per physical address, and aggregating donation and membership information. Every contact is in a household account, even if they're the only individual in that household. (Please note that this is separate from the $60 Household membership - the household accounts are just the way individual contact records can be grouped).

You'll see this in the system as there being a contact record for John Doe, and then a separate household account he's connected to named "Doe (John) Household". If there were multiple people in that household, you would see that account as "Doe (John and Jane) Household", for example - both John and Jane would have their own individual contact records, but they would share the same household account record.

The NAMI Salesforce team will be working on making sure states/affiliates can manage household accounts and Household memberships when they begin updates on the membership areas of NAMI 360 in late 2021. Right now, the additional people added to a Household membership will have their membership information displaying properly on their individual contact record if they are set up correctly under the household account; however, states/affiliates do not seem to be able to add existing contacts to a household account (only create new ones). We will have Help Center articles about managing households and Household memberships once the NAMI Salesforce team's work is finalized.

For now, please send a list of the names of the people who should be covered under the Household membership to memberservices@nami.org and we can work on that for you.