Marking Constituents inactive

Donna Hren

We are looking at creating a procedure for marking constituents inactive.  Can others tell me what criteria they use to mark a constituent inactive.

JoAnn Strommen

There have been a number of posts/threads about this.  Here's one

https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/196/16347?post_id=52391#p52391


There are mixed responses on using this field.  Some don't use at all, for some it's no gift in last X years.  How it's used depends a lot on the type of org you work for.  We use it for things like staff who left employment with gifts on their record but not with a good relationship, for past donors who've moved out of our area (philosophy is support the Y in your community).  While we potentially could mark records as inactive the limitations it puts on things is a negative. 


Other concern with using the field is there is no additional field for documentation of why and when record marked inactive.  Hope to see that addition at some point.

Stephanie Crawley

Donna Hren:

We are looking at creating a procedure for marking constituents inactive.  Can others tell me what criteria they use to mark a constituent inactive.

We tend to use Constituent Code more to determine inactivity with a Date To there.  And then for most solicitations we are only looking at constituents with gifts in the last 5 years.  But we then follow up annually with queries on a combination of criteria - hasn't given a gift ever to any campaign and has been in the system at least 10 years and has no active Constituent Code - and mark those Constituents as Inactive, for example.  I also want to next look at inactivating constituents who have had no gift to any campaign in 10 years and have been in the system at least 10 years and have no active Constituent Code.

Tiffany Harder

Donna Hren:

We are looking at creating a procedure for marking constituents inactive.  Can others tell me what criteria they use to mark a constituent inactive.

Hi Donna,


We just recently started using the constituent is inactive check box.  We mark deceased records as inactive and constituents with no activty or any kind in over 3 years as inactive.  We have a business rule applied that if a gift or registration is made then the box is unchecked.  We really just started using it as a way to create a clear query of constituents that we wanted integrated when we purchsed Luminate Online.  We didn't want it muddied up with constituents that are not active with us.  Otherwise I have found it isn't really that useful of a field and I have no strong positive or negative outcomes from its use.

Alan French

Donna Hren:

We are looking at creating a procedure for marking constituents inactive.  Can others tell me what criteria they use to mark a constituent inactive.

We use it for people who are deceased, have requested no correspondence, or have no valid contact information - basically we can't/shouldn't be communicating with them. Makes it nice and easy to exclude them from everything. For us it's less to do with whether they are engaging with us, and more to do with whether they could engage with us.