Temporarily Adding Alumni

Kylea Johnson

So this is my first year running an Alumni program--here's my issue:


I'll get a list of the class of 2019 grad information in September/October which includes birth dates, addresses, degrees conferred, etc., but I want to start connecting with Alums before then. At Commencement in June I plan to table and ask grads for their emails so I can start a welcome program, and have a few events lined up.


I want to use the NXT email function and track actions for these alums, so I'll have to add them to RE with very little data (name/email). Then, in October I'll get all their other info to import.


Here's the problem: I won't have enough info gathered on the alumni to run an "update" on their record (just name and email, not enough to match them up). Here's my current idea:


Add these alumni to RE so I can start tracking them and use the email feature of NXT, then, export the info when I get the full list of grads, and delete these "temporary" constituents (which will be flagged with a "temporary" attribute. Then I can add by hand or global add the actions accumulated in the meantime, etc. I only anticipate this being a list of less than 200 out of our 800 graduates per year.


Does this seem like a bad idea? Is there an easier way you can think of?

Dariel Dixon 2

This sounds like a difficult process to manage.  I don't know how the NXT actions move, and if they can be moved at all.  


Waiting to get that information for 3 months is tough.  I think it might worth considering if you may be able to get a preliminary list of expected graduates around or before commencement, and import that in.  Once the final list is created in October, you can compare the list and adjust accordingly.  The number of changes will probably be less than the number you were originally considering creating temporarily.

Tom Klimchak

Hmm.. yeah, that three month wait is rough... Though we have a similar situation: we pull in our students as Freshmen and then wait four years to pull in all their academic info when they graduation.  We do it using the StudentID field, which (generally) never changes.  


So, here an idea:  Is there anyway you "create" a sort of fake ID or alias for these people so that when you bring them in the first time you can quickly line them up with the full data list in October?  With your three pieces of info (name, email and grad year) you could concatenate the fields into some sort of unique alias.  Example:


John A Smith of 2019 could be JohnASmith2019

Mary B Jones of 2019 could be MaryBJones2019


Put those IDs in as an Alias.  When you get your full list in October create the IDs the same way.  Now you have a common field you can line up.  You can either line those IDs up with RE Ids in Excel or if you use an import tool like ImportOMatic you can have it look at that Alias field and automatically use it as weighted field...


Good luck!

Christine Cooke 2

That seems a lil labor intensive.  Three month wait - yuck.  


So I would put the class in, their name, email and their Primary Education info (which is your school and the class year, grad date) . Add any of your actions, send the emails etc.  Give them the proper Constit Code of Alumni


When the time comes for adding all the details you are missing -- export the group with their constit ID and match them up to the list of detailed info, because you have the Constit ID you can use that to import the additional info in.

 

Kylea Johnson

All great options--I will consider! Christine Cooke‍ that solution works out really well for my situation! I'll probably give this one a try.


Thanks all!