New Constituent Source Field

Don Irwin

Hello,


I am looking for a good place to record how/why a constituent was added to RE. For example, when I import a list of volunteers, I would identify that is why they were added. Some of these are covered by constituent codes, but sometimes I add records to be researched or for other reasons. 


How do you all identify the constituent "source", and have you found this useful to track?


Thanks!


Don

Dariel Dixon 2

If you're working under the idea that constituency is defined by how the record relates to your organization, I don't know why there's not already a constituency code available for these records.  I'm a big fan of broad constituencies and attributes for fine tuning.  


I'd consider an attribute here for constituent source.  It's interesting, because before you mentioned it, I never considered that at all.  There's an existing field for this for addresses, but not for the master record itself.  I'd also consider renaming an existing unused fields (ex. Religion, Income), but I am not sure if those fields are visible in NXT.  Even if you're not on NXT now, unfortunately you may have to consider what happens to those fields if you move over to it.

JoBeth Marihugh

Aloha,


I created an attribute using a table to narrow the content for this exact source.  When we create a new constituent record, we simply use from the drop down menu the best fit and in the comments free text is available to advise "specifics".  For example

Category: Source

Description: Prospective Constituents

Date:

Comments:  source of prospect like name of director, or major donor recomended, etc.


hope this helps.


JoBeth Marihugh

Matthew Nareff

We actually re-purposed one of the fields on the Bio2 tab.  I belive it was the religion field and we will never have any need to keep track of someone's religion so we took a field that had no use to us and made it one that did.  We also made it required.  It definitely can be done with an attribute, and that would probably be my first instinct but we figured why not take a field that we don't use and make it useful.

Aaron Rothberg

Hi Don-


Depending upon how many characters you need, I like to load information like this into the Import Id. For instance, my CrowdRise Import Ids start with CR. My Team Raiser Import Ids start with TR. I try to keep attributes of any type to a minimum, but that's just my personal preference.

Tom Klimchak

We use a constituent attribute/custom field.  We called it "Origin" and some sample options are:

• Parent Rollover
• Alumni Rollover
• Donor
• Event Participant

We also use the date of the attribute as the entry date (in most cases) and we sometimes put little comments in as well.  We honestly don't do this for EVERY record (we haven't really had a pressing need to) but if we're doing a mass import or our spidey-sense starts tingling we're use it ?

Darlene Wolf

We use an attribute called Origin. Currently the description is a text field, which makes it easy to get a lot of different inputs, which makes it not very searchable. However, I'm the only one populating that field at this time, so as long as I govern myself, it doesn't get too out of hand!

Cathleen Mai

We use the Constituent Codes as an overall Category and an Attribute with a drop down table for the details.