Globally Deleting Tribute Records

Kristen Lewis

Hi Everyone, I work for an animal welfare organization and in the past 2 years have begun purging old and obsolete records from our database. Primarily, I am focusing on tribute records that do not have any gifts associated with them (they have not given gifts, but gifts have been given in honor or in memory of them), have not seen activity for over a year, and have not had any other affiliation with our organization. These are constituent records that exist only as tributes.


For those of you that use the tribute module, do you have rules for purging tributes from your database?


If you are an animal welfare organization, how long would you suggest keeping a constituent record that is for a pet?

Joseph Conley

Kristen,


Whenever I hear about deleting constituent records, it makes my heart beat a little bit faster. As a rule, one never wants to delete constituent records. But, every rule has exceptions and you may have found one. If a record really does exist ONLY for the tribute and is literally tracking nothing else it may be worth cleaning up. Do remember that if number or amount of gifts you are receiving as a result of tributes is a metric your organization uses, these gifts will now no longer be coded as such (unless they are also flagged as tribute in another way). 


Where the tribute module really thrives is when a significant (as defined by your org) number of gifts are coming in in honor of (or memory of etc) a specific individual. So if a board member retires, if someone donates a birthday, things like that. Conversely, if someone is making a gift single gift in honor of a single person (or pet) you might want to consider tracking this in the reference field or as an attribute. Both are able to be pulled into acknowledgement letters. One of the organizations I worked at in the past did this and it was very successful. This will prevent you from creating constituent records for pets (or children or anyone else who you will have no other relationship with)


Hope this helps!

Jill Freidmutter

Hi Kristen,


We use the tribute module. We are a hospice and create tributes for deceased patients, deceased donors, and others as requested by our donors. Sometimes folks donate in their loved one's memory year after year. I don't believe in deleting information, so we keep the tributes and relationships forever. What is the incentive to purge your tributes? If you are trying to keep the number of constituent records down, one other option is to keep the tribute in the "owner's" record. That way you are not adding to the constituent count.


best, Jill

Heather MacKenzie

Kristen Lewis:

Hi Everyone, I work for an animal welfare organization and in the past 2 years have begun purging old and obsolete records from our database. Primarily, I am focusing on tribute records that do not have any gifts associated with them (they have not given gifts, but gifts have been given in honor or in memory of them), have not seen activity for over a year, and have not had any other affiliation with our organization. These are constituent records that exist only as tributes.


For those of you that use the tribute module, do you have rules for purging tributes from your database?


If you are an animal welfare organization, how long would you suggest keeping a constituent record that is for a pet?

I very firmly hang in the group that considers deleting full records as a thing to avoid at all costs, so our database only has records deleted when there's absolutely nothing associated with them in the way of any interactions or gifts ever, or if they are being merged as duplicates.  So here's what I would do.  I'd create 1 or 2 new records that are named something like Tribute - Dogs, or Tribute - Cats, or whatever works best for your org.  Then merge all these other records you want to "get rid of" into that one record.  This keeps all the gifts associated with those tribute records still linked to the Tribute module and you can pull reports, query your data, etc.