Relationships tab

Nancy Sturm

Hi there.   Is anyone out there using "relationships" tab to track friends, etc that aren't related to a person/household "giving:?  Blackbaud advises me that "relationships" is intended more to bring $ into a record.  That doesn't make sense to me.  I intended to track friends, golf buddies, etc, linking records in my database that way, via the relationships tab.


Thoughts?

 

Faith Murray

We use the Relationships tab for any type of relationship that links two individuals: friends, cousins, estate trustees, grandparents, ex-spouses. 


Besides, in a sense, every relationship contributes to the ability to fundraise from that individual, through peer-to-peer fundraising. Imagine you want to solicit a gift from Jane Clark, but don't have a strong relationship with her. You know that Natalie Smith, who is your loyal donor, is her friend. By tracking that information, you could approach Natalie to ask Jane for a gift on behalf of your org. Until that point, Natalie would not be a solicitor, since the relationship has not developed to that point, so the Relationships tab is the only real method available in RE to record that data in a reportable way.


Bill Connors specifically lists friends, colleagues, legal advisors, etc. as appropriate types of Relationships in that tab (page 44 in his book). So I think you are on the right track using Relationships exactly the way you planned.

Nancy Sturm

Agreed.  Thanks Faith.  When working with couples, do you create relationships between householded records and for example as single friend?  Afterall one person can be friend with both in a couple. I prefer working in the household view. 

Faith Murray

Nancy Sturm:

Agreed.  Thanks Faith.  When working with couples, do you create relationships between householded records and for example as single friend?  Afterall one person can be friend with both in a couple. I prefer working in the household view. 

We don't make spouses individual records, so both couples share a single record in our system. But if we did, it would make most sense to me for a friend to show up as a Relationship for both spouses.

Melinda Dietrich

We use it to track "important" relationships - - - this allows us to communicate more effectively with specific groups.  For example, we keep track of those who are friends with our CEO and others who are friends with our Board of Directors.  We also have an influential family in the community that we have tagged with a relationship.  These "relationships" have proven to be extremely helpful to us as we identify segments of our database for fundraising.   

Christine Cooke 2

Nancy Sturm:

Hi there.   Is anyone out there using "relationships" tab to track friends, etc that aren't related to a person/household "giving:?  Blackbaud advises me that "relationships" is intended more to bring $ into a record.  That doesn't make sense to me.  I intended to track friends, golf buddies, etc, linking records in my database that way, via the relationships tab.


Thoughts?

 

I have found, over time, with clean up projects that I seem to inherit when coming into a new Org -- that those relationships are important.  That can be the only thing that tells you why that particular person or org is in your database, otherwise it can look very random.  So along with what others have said, I add that thought to ponder.