Tracking and Finding Alternate Addresses and Names in RE

Tara Christiansen

In RE are you able to track alternate address and name combination information within one primary record? For example, John Smith receives mail at his PO Box, which he prefers we use as his primary address. He often sends checks which list his physical home address. If you are searching by address and only have the home address, how would you find John Smith in RE?



We are converting into Raiser'sEdge. In our current database we are able to find our donors by searching an address or name variation that is not listed as the primary (or spouse) name or address, but rather resides in an "Alternate Address" tab. In our test RE database we see that the search results only pull from address and name on the main page. Does anyone know a way around this? If you do not search like this, how do you prevent creating duplicate records for a donor that has multiple addresses? 

Jen Claudy

You are correct, the RE Search Window only looks at the Preferred Address (the one that shows on the Bio/Org 1 Tabs).  Typically, we search by name, and use the address that shows in the Search Results to confirm...if there isn't a record with that name & address in the results, we start opening each record and looking at the Addresses Tab.  We have just under 50k records, and there aren't often so many of the same name that it makes this terribly difficult.



If there are a significant number of records with the same name, like yesterday when searching for a Jennifer Smith, then I have a Query saved as "SearchConstituent" where I can put the Address Line 1 (under Addresses > All Addresses) in the Criteria as "begins with" and enter the first part of the address.  With or without name fields.



If you post this in the Idea Bank, I would definitely vote up the idea to have RE search Alternate (and Previous) Addresses...preferably with a checkbox option at the bottom of the Search Window to turn that on/off.

John Heizer

As Jennifer mentioned, searching by an Address other than the Preferred Address must be done through a Query. 



But if you have alternate names (Marion Morrison on Bio1 with John Wayne as his screen name), RE will search all entries in the Alias list.

Nicole Kennedy

We have a large number of constituents, so if we have a reasonable number of possible matches by name (2-3 max) we will open each one to look at the alternate addresses.  If more than that, we will use a query built to consider alternate addresses.  We also rely on a custom built Duplicate Checker that considers alternate addresses in case human error misses something- we run this tool monthly. 



A new tool that we haven't really been able to optimize, because we are just scratching the surface of its capability is Findomatic. This tool will allow you to search by alternate addresses.