Donor identity and ID types
A name and a phone number can belong to more than one person, or change over time — a donor’s identity number is the one detail DonorCARE treats as fixed, and it’s what makes a record theirs.
Why it works this way
Section titled “Why it works this way”Names get mistyped, phone numbers get recycled, and two different people can share both. An identity number doesn’t have those problems, so wherever DonorCARE has one on file, it uses it as the deciding fact about who a donor is — ahead of name, email or phone. That matters most at the moment a tax-deductible donation is recorded: DonorCARE looks for an existing donor with that same identity number in your organisation before creating a new record, so the same person’s giving stays on one profile even if a different email or phone number was used this time.
It also matters for the two documents that leave your organisation with a donor’s identity on them: a tax-deductible receipt and an LHDN e-invoice. Both require an identity type and number, because both are legal documents made out to a specific person or business, not to a name alone.
The terms
Section titled “The terms”Identity type — the kind of identification a donor is recorded under: NRIC (MyKad), Passport, Business Registration (for a company or sole proprietorship giving as an entity), or Army ID. The identity type and number are always recorded together.
TIN (Tax Identification Number) — the donor’s LHDN tax number, separate from their identity number. It’s optional to record, and DonorCARE can check it against LHDN before you rely on it — see Manage donor tax profiles.
Canonical identity — the identity type and number together are what DonorCARE treats as proof of who a donor is. Two donor records carrying the same identity type and number are the same person as far as DonorCARE is concerned, and giving recorded against either one counts toward that person’s combined history.
What this means in practice
Section titled “What this means in practice”Do
- Enter a donor’s identity number as soon as you have it, even if you already created their record without one — it’s what lets a later donation under a different email or phone still land on the right profile.
Don’t
- Enter someone else’s identity number “to get past” a required field. If it’s ever reused for the actual owner of that number, the two donors’ giving histories will be treated as one person’s.
A company giving as a business (Business Registration) and the same person’s owner or director giving individually (NRIC) are two different identities to DonorCARE, even if they share an email address or phone number — that separation is deliberate, so a sole proprietor’s personal and business giving are never silently combined.
Worked example
Section titled “Worked example”Two records exist for “Lim Ah Kow” (an invented example): one created from a temple visit with NRIC 700101-XX-XXXX, one created later from an online donation using the same NRIC but a different email address. Because both carry the same identity type and number, DonorCARE recognises the second donation as the same person and adds it to the existing record instead of creating a third one — no merge needed. If the online donation had been entered under a slightly different NRIC (a typo, say), the two would stay separate records until someone corrects the number or merges them by hand.
Related
Section titled “Related”Screenshots use sample data. Every screen on this page is captured against a demo organisation seeded with generated donors, amounts, receipt numbers and campaigns. Any resemblance to a real person or organisation is coincidental.