Deceased Donors

Julie Heilman 2

Does anyone have a protocol for how long deceased donors are kept in the database?

JoAnn Strommen

Our criteria is based on their giving history. If there are gifts on their records they stay permanently. Deleting them would affect any reports pulling past data. If they have no gifts they are deleted at their death unless they have served as a board member. Then record is kept for 'historical purposes.'

If spouse has record they stay as relationship.

Julie Heilman 2

JoAnn, Thank you for that!

Christine Cooke 2

Julie Heilman:

Does anyone have a protocol for how long deceased donors are kept in the database?

If they have any kind of history with your org.  either as donors or volunteers, alumni, board members etc.  they would stay forever.

Julie Heilman 2

Thank you so much Christine!


Have a great week!

Dariel Dixon 2

Julie Heilman:

Does anyone have a protocol for how long deceased donors are kept in the database?

I think it somewhat depends on your organization.  I work for a healthcare organization, and we have a lot of memorial gifts come in honoring deceased individuals.  Depending of the volume of gifts, we often create tribute records for people who we know are deceased.  


In addition, it also may be kept as a relationship toward another donor or prospect.  If you feel that the record is completely inactionable, as in there is no other connection to the deceased individual, then I'd think the record could be deleted.

Esme CuevasAnderson

Dariel Dixon:

Julie Heilman:

Does anyone have a protocol for how long deceased donors are kept in the database?

I think it somewhat depends on your organization.  I work for a healthcare organization, and we have a lot of memorial gifts come in honoring deceased individuals.  Depending of the volume of gifts, we often create tribute records for people who we know are deceased.  


In addition, it also may be kept as a relationship toward another donor or prospect.  If you feel that the record is completely inactionable, as in there is no other connection to the deceased individual, then I'd think the record could be deleted.

 

Hi Dariel,
I am interested in knowing if you use your tribute gifts for any reporting purposes? I too work for a healthcare organization and the process here has been to add deceased constituents for tributes, however, I am wondering how beneficial the information is? We are starting to talk about record archiving so I am curious to learn what others are doing. Thanks for any information you can share!

Julie Heilman 2

Thank you all for your contribution to my question.  It is helpful in how our organization moves forward and it's nice to see that it is raising other viable questions regarding this topic.  Thanks again for all of your thoughts and sharing of your procedures.