How to get Parents of Constituents

Andrew Smith 3

Our Annual Giving and Donor Relations team often requests the contact information of Parents of specific groups of Alumni, typically by what we have marked as Attributes on a Constituent record. Attributes like sports and student groups are often used as the basis of the list, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to get what I need.


Lets say I need a list of all the parents whose children went on a trip as a student in order to solicit them for the fund that supports said trips. There are three processes I have considered, and neither is really what I hoped for.


1. Query the group of Alumni who fit the request. In Export, use the query and export the Parent information from the Relationship section. The issue with this is that I can't show Solicitation codes for the Parents, which often differ from the Solicitation code of the alumni and is extremely important. Another issue is showing which Parent is the Head of Household so that I'm only sending one piece of mail to a household. This solution is as close as I can get to what we need, but again, not being able to see the Parent's Solicitation codes in the export is a deal-breaker.


2. Use the same process as the first process, but export the Parent Constituent ID's as well, then copy and paste those into a new Constituent Query using the "one of" operator in the Constituent ID filter. This could work, but it seems like it requires more work outside of RE than seems reasonable, not to mention the copy and paste limit of 500 records at a time in the "one of" operator would require multiple ID Filters.


3. Attempt to query the parents directly by looking at their relationship to the student, but I am unable to to filter based on the student's Attributes when going through the relationship filter. 



This is something we are asked for quite frequently, and we are unable to figure out the best way to go about it accurately. 

Karen Stuhlfeier

To find the parents export the students and get their import ID's. Then create a query to find parents:


Relationship

  Individual 

   Import ID one of


You can cut and paste the student's ID's into this. If you don't know how to cut and paste values into a query you can find that in Blackbaud Knowledgebase.

Alan French

That seems to be essentially the same as process number 2, isn't it? Albeit using the students' IDs in the second query rather than the parents'.

Dariel Dixon 2

Option 2 seems like the best way to go.  I'd look into SMARTPaste to get around the 500 record limit on the "One Of" option.

Becky Griswold 2

We store all alumni/student information related to their time as a student on the alumni/student record on the primary education relationship under attributes.  Then we're able to query on parents based on constituent code, individual relationship type and individual relationship education attributes.  

Bob Wiebe

Since we are in the land of workarounds, here is an option.  It involves a static list.

1. Query all parents of alumni and output their import id, solcit codes, head of household status and anything else you need. This is a static list.

2. Query and export all students in question and export their parents and parent import id's.

3. Do a v lookup to see which parents from your Master List correspond with the students.

4. Screen out the solicit codes and non heads of household as needed.


Does this stand the test of forum friends? I have not actually done this in a real scenario.

 

Christine Cooke 2

If I am understanding what you are asking.  You are pulling Alums and their Parents by a specific attribute (either constituent or prime education) that identifies them in a group. But you want the output to be the parents of the alums for an ask and/or reporting.


Ummm.  You can use option 3 pulling the parents and the Alum info through the relationship.  I don't know whether you are keeping these attributes on constituent attributes or primary education attributes, but you can pull both of  those in export.  


The query should also be pulled on the parents -- looking for the alum attribute info through the relationship.

Christine Cooke 2

P.S.  In the query it is not going to look like the filter is working because it will show a lot more than what you asked for. But in Export the info would be excluded.