Deceased Records - Excluding from mailings

Dawn Pello

Recently we had an incident where a mailing query did not exlcude deceased and we accidentally sent out some mail to deceased individuals.

Our management is suggesting that we start a new policy where we change the current address to prior and put our Institution address in as preferred so that even if this mistake happened again the mail would never get out to the actual address. 

My instincts feel like this is an over reaction and not the best practice.  Does anyone have any advice on how they handle this situation and ensure that deceased members are not sent any mail?

Kate Brasacchio 2

Hi Dawn,


For my database, what was suggested to you is definitely not a best practice.  I'm not sure if you have individual or spousal records, but I do the following when someone passes away:


*if the deceased is the primary record holder, I move their information to spouse and make the spouse primary and adjust the Addressee/Salutation

*if the deceased is the primary with out a spouse (or the spouse is predeceased) I mark the record as deceased with the date.

*when running a query, I uncheck the box on the criteria tab that says to include deceased

*for an export, I uncheck the box on the first tab that says to include the deceased (I do this even if the query is marked)


I would suggest that you ensure your records of those who are deceased are marked as deceased and then update your queries/exports/reports to not include any records marked as deceased.


I hope this helps - feel free to email me if you have any questions.


Thanks!

Kate

JoAnn Strommen

Mistakes happen and sometimes it's easy to miss the check mark to exclude the deceased.


I agree it's probably not best practice but I know it was considered by us a one point also.  Have heard of many work arounds over the years in addtion to marking record as deceased:

Copy address to alternate and enter org address as you mentioned

Copy address to alternate and leave address blank

Copy address to alternate and enter "DECEASED"

Uncheck the send mail button for all addresses on the record (currently do this) Address could potentially still pull just exporting all data.

On Bio tab, check the box for no valid address

and many combinations of above.

Just some options - am sure you'll hear some more ideas.

 

Melissa S Graves

I do not recommend this for so many reasons and yes, it is an overreaction. To do this effectively makes you lose any ability to do analysis in the future based on location. I try to compare how much was raised in a particular area last year to this year - now this person's past giving does not count in that area because the address is blank. Not good. Also your ability to tell John Smith A from John Smith B in search is often dependent on address.


My recommendations:

1. Limit who has the authority to create any mailing list. Hopefully now people realize how critical, important and undervalued people in data professions are - these things are not easy and need focus, time and attention and can't be rushed.
2. Create query templates for your most commonly done mailing lists and use "save as" each time to use as your base and go from there - uncheck include deceased and Has no Valid address.. ALWAYS sub out exclusions using a second query to exclude based on deceased, Has no valid address, solicit code and any other factors. Yes - is is overkill to excluded deceased and HNVA again but it does not hurt.
3. Create mail templates that you re-use and/or copy and always exclude deceased. Use mail whenever you can and not Export if you can avoid it. Mail automatically excludes deceased and HNVA and always uses address processing so you already are at an advantage.
4. Create export templates for when mail is insufficient to get the data you need for your mailing. again - excluding deceased and HNVA.
5. Create a checklist to use at the end of your mailing list that is double checked to be sure the appropriate things were done and share with the powers that be. I have never done this... but for a while, this may provide the security that your team needs to know everything proper was done. It is a routine that can't hurt.

Ryan Hyde

Yes, this is definitely an over correction.


Think about the implications related to historical reporting. What if you want to do a historical report on # of donors per zip code? If you start dumping all deceased records into your local zip code, then you will artifically inflate the numbers in that area and skew your results. That's not great. 


You could argue that you don't want to include deceased donors in historical data reporting, but I don't think that's right, as historically, those donors were alive.


Anyway, it's not hard to imagine ways that this could cause real, meaningful problems. Just make sure the person pulling queries is double checking their work, or have another person do a spot check review afterward, and you should be fine.

Mercedes McCayRead

Dawn Pello:

Recently we had an incident where a mailing query did not exlcude deceased and we accidentally sent out some mail to deceased individuals.

Our management is suggesting that we start a new policy where we change the current address to prior and put our Institution address in as preferred so that even if this mistake happened again the mail would never get out to the actual address. 

My instincts feel like this is an over reaction and not the best practice.  Does anyone have any advice on how they handle this situation and ensure that deceased members are not sent any mail?

If you don't already, I suggest you set up your deceased options under config/business rules.  There is an option to automatically uncheck the "send mail?" checkbox for all of the decased's addressess as soon they are marked deceased.  I then also change the addressee salutation to say John Smith (deceased), so that would pull into a query or mail if it accidentally went all the way through.  I will say this has happened to us in the past also, so I additionally have a dymanic query that is just deceased people from our database and I will usually remove that from my final query list when doing large maling lists just as another check to make sure that I don't have any deceased people showing up in the final list. 

Christine Cooke 2

Dawn Pello:

Recently we had an incident where a mailing query did not exlcude deceased and we accidentally sent out some mail to deceased individuals.

Our management is suggesting that we start a new policy where we change the current address to prior and put our Institution address in as preferred so that even if this mistake happened again the mail would never get out to the actual address. 

My instincts feel like this is an over reaction and not the best practice.  Does anyone have any advice on how they handle this situation and ensure that deceased members are not sent any mail?

I have found, after inheriting inconsistent recordkeeping several times, that folks do not tend to utilize best practices on any basis, or at least consistently when it comes to marking folks deceased.  RE makes it very easy to exclude deceased from lists -- mailing or otherwise.


3 steps must happen every time on a record when a person becomes deceased.

1.Even if you do not have a date (which can be full mm/dd/yyyy or mm/yyyy or yyyy) at least check the Deceased checkbox

2. Check the Invalid Address checkbox

3. Go into the Preferrred Address and Uncheck the Send Mail checkbox.


Then -- every time you write a query you can Uncheck the Include Deceased at the top of the Query window (right above the field list).  Your deceased folks will not be included.

Cathleen Mai

When the final mailing list is ready, I copy the Constituent Id's into a query and look for deceased one more time. Never had an issue though. The exclude deceased checkbox works,  when it is checked ;-).


 

Christine Cooke 2

Dawn Pello:

Recently we had an incident where a mailing query did not exlcude deceased and we accidentally sent out some mail to deceased individuals.

Our management is suggesting that we start a new policy where we change the current address to prior and put our Institution address in as preferred so that even if this mistake happened again the mail would never get out to the actual address. 

My instincts feel like this is an over reaction and not the best practice.  Does anyone have any advice on how they handle this situation and ensure that deceased members are not sent any mail?

Yes I agree - overreaction.


If records are marked properly you will avoid sending to dead people.

1. Record is marked deceased and either a mm/dd/yy or mm/yyyy or yyyy is entered depending on info you have.

2. Preferred Address is has the Send Mail box Unchecked


when you pull lists or exports those check boxes on the first Tab -- UNcheck Deceased and UNcheck Invalid Address and they will NOT be included.  Easy - straightforward and no extra steps.  Works every time as long as folks are marked deceased.  (Note: when Send Mail is UNchecked the address will not export onto labels or envelopes or anything so it's a backup to make sure mail is not sent when there is no address printed)

Jill Freidmutter

Well before I worked at our hospice, there was a mailing that went out to deceased. Not a good thing for a hospice. A policy was instituted that when someone dies, the address is removed from their record. That way, we would never again mail to deceased. I instituted a policy to move the "address prior to passing" to a Constituent Note and still remove the address from the address fields. We serve a small geographic area and aren't concerned with reporting based on address. 

 

J Baumann

Christine Cooke:

Dawn Pello:

Recently we had an incident where a mailing query did not exlcude deceased and we accidentally sent out some mail to deceased individuals.

Our management is suggesting that we start a new policy where we change the current address to prior and put our Institution address in as preferred so that even if this mistake happened again the mail would never get out to the actual address. 

My instincts feel like this is an over reaction and not the best practice.  Does anyone have any advice on how they handle this situation and ensure that deceased members are not sent any mail?

I have found, after inheriting inconsistent recordkeeping several times, that folks do not tend to utilize best practices on any basis, or at least consistently when it comes to marking folks deceased.  RE makes it very easy to exclude deceased from lists -- mailing or otherwise.


3 steps must happen every time on a record when a person becomes deceased.

1.Even if you do not have a date (which can be full mm/dd/yyyy or mm/yyyy or yyyy) at least check the Deceased checkbox

2. Check the Invalid Address checkbox

3. Go into the Preferrred Address and Uncheck the Send Mail checkbox.


Then -- every time you write a query you can Uncheck the Include Deceased at the top of the Query window (right above the field list).  Your deceased folks will not be included.

 

I would agree this is the best and simplest option - however, I would NOT check the Invalid Address box.  (That leaves the meaning of that checkbox as all living people and organizations for whom you've simly lost a good/mailable address.)


I would simply change the Preferred Address Type to ""Previous" and make sure the Send Mail box is unchecked.  The Mail Function - by design - leaves out ALL addresses with the Send Mail to this address unchecked. 


If you want to be able to do a visual check to see if your mailing list has any deceased people in it, you could use a new Add/Sal with the word "DECEASED" at the end of the person's name in Primary Addressee.  Open in Excel your csv list created by Mail - and search for the word DECEASED.

Michelle Collins 2

Dawn Pello:

Recently we had an incident where a mailing query did not exlcude deceased and we accidentally sent out some mail to deceased individuals.

Our management is suggesting that we start a new policy where we change the current address to prior and put our Institution address in as preferred so that even if this mistake happened again the mail would never get out to the actual address. 

My instincts feel like this is an over reaction and not the best practice.  Does anyone have any advice on how they handle this situation and ensure that deceased members are not sent any mail?

Lots of great suggestions here. In addition to the above methods I also add a Solicit Code of "No Solicitations" that I use in the SUB list of queries I run when creating these lists. Your org could create a solicit code of "Deceased" to make it really obvious why these folks should be knocked out of the list.