Multiple Constituent Records for Chapters/Groups of Same Organization

Joelle Ferreira

Hi All,



I'm currently looking to clean up my organization's database over the summer, and we've come across a dilemma. We have constitutent records for different chapters groups of the same organization, but they all give through the same organization name. For example: Bank ABC Branch #1, Bank ABC Foundation and Bank ABC Community Program all make donations. Each of these constitutents have different addresses.



 What is the best way to capture the relationship between these constituents without cluttering the database? The best answer I could think of is to leave constitutent record on it's own and create organization relationships between them. Any recommendations would be appreciated! 





 

JoAnn Strommen

We have similar issues.  Each has their own constituent record.  For the little 'branch' bank on the org 2 tab we link them to HQ/Parent org.  We have not done org relationships of branch to branch.  There are org relationships between HQ/Parent co and Parent Foundation etc whenever we felt it was appropriate. 



Gifts can be soft credited as needed so in most cases we have not clutter relationship page with all the relationships.  Gift tab for HQ/Parent org shows all the gifts.



So far has worked for us.

Matt Page

In a previous organisation I created the relationships like you suggest, but I did this in conjunction with the "Parent Corp" field on the Org 2 tab to make it easy to identify which part of the organisation is higher up the hierarchy. I don't know how that affects mailings and gifts though.



Matt

John Heizer

I find the Parent Corp field on Org2 to be pretty useless.  It doesn't even link to the parent org Constit record.  When you find/select the parent org record (F7 or clicking the binoculars) RE just copies the current Org Name text into that field and can, optionally, add 1 to the number of subsidiaries field of the parent org.  But if you, for instance, change the name on the parent org record the change isn't reflected on "child" records (essentially losing the link completely).  Yes, I'll enter the information into the Parent Corp field, but only for the convenience of quickly seeing the information.  It's useless for any data analysis, so you'll always want to duplicate that information on the Relationships tab.

Marissa Flynn

We have begun to merge many of these accounts based on our desired output. We discussed what really mattered for us, and these types of accounts (ie: banks, grocery stores) don't ask us for totals based on store, so there was no need to have multiple accounts. Instead we enter them on one account and use a gift note to add more details if needed (ie: store number or cross streets). It makes data entry much easier and we are still able to pull data based on store number/cross streets if needed, even though 99% of the time it is not. 



We do keep Orgs and their Corporate Foundations seperate because typically Orgs want us to report this money reported seperately. And this results in only 2 records as opposed to many more.



For us the Parent Corp Field was completely useless as well so this solution has been much easier to maintain and update. 



I suggest looking at what outputs you need from the data entered and create a solution based on that. For recognition and reporting purposes this makes much more sense for my organization.

Nicole S

John Heizer:

I find the Parent Corp field on Org2 to be pretty useless.  It doesn't even link to the parent org Constit record.  When you find/select the parent org record (F7 or clicking the binoculars) RE just copies the current Org Name text into that field and can, optionally, add 1 to the number of subsidiaries field of the parent org.  But if you, for instance, change the name on the parent org record the change isn't reflected on "child" records (essentially losing the link completely).  Yes, I'll enter the information into the Parent Corp field, but only for the convenience of quickly seeing the information.  It's useless for any data analysis, so you'll always want to duplicate that information on the Relationships tab.

I totally agree with this.  I enter it because it's accurate and useful, but RE does not handle it properly.