CellPhone Finder experience

Hannah Wiginton

Has anyone used the CellPhone Finder service? It's actually not listed as an available service in RE like AddressFinder, Giving Score, etc., but they have 1 Knowledgebase article about it. https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/54661. 


Wondering what experiences anyone might have.


Thanks!

Tom Ong

I am not sure whether this service is available through non-NXT Raiser's Edge.  We went live with Raiser's Edge NXT last July, and we are able to see this service under Data Health Center menu option.   We ran this service a few months ago.   In return, this process inserted a new phone-type called "CellPhone Finder" on targetted constituents.  I believe that this process is run once a year according to the contract.  Hope this helps.


Tom

Hannah Wiginton

Tom Ong:

I am not sure whether this service is available through non-NXT Raiser's Edge.  We went live with Raiser's Edge NXT last July, and we are able to see this service under Data Health Center menu option.   We ran this service a few months ago.   In return, this process inserted a new phone-type called "CellPhone Finder" on targetted constituents.  I believe that this process is run once a year according to the contract.  Hope this helps.


Tom

Well I guess that would make sense if it's not showing up in RE. The KB article does not specify.


Do you feel it helped improve your database and gave you up-to-date information? I was reading another thread that talked about EmailFinder pulling information from 10 years ago - not helpful in some cases. Has CellPhone Finder given you new numbers that were current and you are able to use?


Thanks,

Hannah

Tom Ong

Hi Hannah,


This Cell Phone/Phone Finder is not a full automated process.  There are few things that we, here, have to consider when using these Cell Phone Finder or Phone Finder processes:

_ We will need to do some work to determine which Cell Phone Finder records having the same Cell numbers on our RE database.

_ If they are the same, we can probably do a mass delete of these Cell Phone Finder records.

_ If our current Cell numbers do not exist in RE but Cell Phone Finder do exist, we could make these Cell Phone Finder numbers to be our Cell numbers.

_ If our current Cell numbers in RE and the Cell Phone Finder numbers differ, then we will need to determine what to do with them.


Similar scenario above also applies to Email Finder.  We have not had time to do such above steps yet...


Tom

Hannah Wiginton

Tom,


Thanks for your reply. I appreciate knowing the workflow your org is considering. I feel we have outdated numbers for many and others, we just don't have a number at all. 


Thanks for the input. 


Take care,

Hannah

Faith Murray

We have used PhoneFinder (not cell phones - and from a different vendor) and EmailFinder (from BlackBaud). The data cleanup is as Tom described it, in terms of weighing and evaluating the integration of the data. Although we haven't done a full-system evaluation, from our experience with individual records since then, it would seem that most of the information has been fairly accurate. Oftentimes it located a number we already had, which validates its accuracy; and when the numbers differed from what we had, usually either the PhoneFinder number was more current, or else neither ours nor PhoneFinder was current - rarely was our database already more accurate than the PhoneFinder. So it's still an improvement over what we had before.


The one type of data service we have found to be quite "iffy" is the AgeFinder. But phones and emails have worked well.

Hannah Wiginton

F Murray:

We have used PhoneFinder (not cell phones - and from a different vendor) and EmailFinder (from BlackBaud). The data cleanup is as Tom described it, in terms of weighing and evaluating the integration of the data. Although we haven't done a full-system evaluation, from our experience with individual records since then, it would seem that most of the information has been fairly accurate. Oftentimes it located a number we already had, which validates its accuracy; and when the numbers differed from what we had, usually either the PhoneFinder number was more current, or else neither ours nor PhoneFinder was current - rarely was our database already more accurate than the PhoneFinder. So it's still an improvement over what we had before.


The one type of data service we have found to be quite "iffy" is the AgeFinder. But phones and emails have worked well.

Hey F,


I do appreciate the feedback on your experience with the service. Good to know it worked for you and confirmed your data. Thanks for the input!


Hannah