When do you create a new Raiser's Edge record?

Howard Marmorstein

We'll be migrating our E-CRM to another product and they want to import all the old E-CRM records into RE.  Which got me thinking ... when do you ccreate a new record in RE?  What critiria do you use for a new record?

 e.g., Is just an email sufficient with NO name or a "fake" name (as a lot of e-subscribers tend to do)

 do you require the person has take a "real" action aside from just signing up for an e-newsletter (for which many unsubsribe a week later!).

 Those kind of things.  If anyone has a policy on this, that would be great.

Helen Wieger

Howard Marmorstein:

We'll be migrating our E-CRM to another product and they want to import all the old E-CRM records into RE.  Which got me thinking ... when do you ccreate a new record in RE?  What critiria do you use for a new record?

 e.g., Is just an email sufficient with NO name or a "fake" name (as a lot of e-subscribers tend to do)

 do you require the person has take a "real" action aside from just signing up for an e-newsletter (for which many unsubsribe a week later!).

 Those kind of things.  If anyone has a policy on this, that would be great.

There are several potential ways to go about this. Here's our current policy: Someone gets a constituent record if: -They donate - regardless of whether we have their full name or address (some checks only have initials). -They volunteer -They are a host at one of our events (this is necessary for our event reports) -They are a guest at one of our events AND they have valid contact information (address, email, or phone number, or, better yet, all three) -They are a guest at one of our events AND their spouse already has a constituent record (with or without contact info on said record) -They request to receive updates AND provide name and valid contact information. We do not create a constituent record for the following people: -A guest at one of our events who does not donate or provide contact information (we use the RE:Events module, so they do have a guest record in there) -Any non-donor without valid contact information. We found that having a large number of unidentifiable constituents in the database was only creating unnecessary bulk. If someone does not have a full name and/or valid contact information, the only reason for me to create a record for them is to record giving or track event attendance through the years. Hope that helps. Helen Wieger Database Administrator Outreach Community Ministries