Raisers Edge IDs

Janet Stiles

Hi, For approximately 10 years our foundation's database was not in our control; our national foundation controlled all databases.  We were given back our database recently and it is a mess.  My first step, for various reasons, needs to be re-sequencing our Constituent IDs.  There are multiple formats in our database right now, some alpha numeric, some with hyphens, some without, some are 15 digits long, some are only six with an underscore.  I would like to know what numbering system others use for their record IDs.  Right now the most popular format suggestion from my people is a four digit year followed by a number, automatically assigned by Raisers Edge (2019-XXXX).  I am curious to see what other formats are out there.  Thank you for your input! Janet

Crystal Bruce

Discussion moved to Raiser's Edge forums. Thanks!

Molly Traynor

Hi there-  I don't have a specific number methodology, but I try to make sure that they are all the same length with NO special characters or letters.  Part of my reasoning for that is that we send our Annual Fund to a lockbox and the bank scans and returns to me a file for import as we get so many gifts.  I worked for BB as a consultant for a number of years and never really found a need to do this.  I would be curious to hear what other people's reasoning might be. 

Aldera Chisholm 2

My current org does YYYY-XXXX. The one advantage to that number system is if you do discover a dupe you can tell immediately which is the original and which is new. But you can do that looking at the record as well. My org before that just used sequential numbers, so symbols or otherwise. To be honest, I've never found a particular advantage to one way over another!

Dariel Dixon 2

I'm not sure what the benefit would be to re-sequencing Constituent IDs.  Outside of simple uniformity, but I guess that's just a preference.  Maybe I'm missing something, but what is gained by changing this information?

Becky Jones

Ours have always been strictly numeric and have been auto-generated by BB for the 27 years I've been at my organization.  You can tell the age of a record by it's constituent ID among other things.  I don't blame you, I would want some form of unity in all the ID numbers from past and going forward.  That way when you print out the ID on reports, it all looks reasonably the same and will fit within a certain area in your report.

Good luck! Sounds like a mess!

Chris Nungesser

Hi Janet Stiles‍! 


I'll echo what Dariel Dixon‍ wrote. Before making that adjustment, I'd first want to know if it's necessary to re-sequence the IDs. Is there something that's gained? Or is there something you'd like to do that you won't be able to do if the Constituent IDs remain in the current format?


You may have already done this, but, sharing just to case, I would run a list of constituents and their IDs just to make sure that you don't have anyone sharing an ID. Those duplicate IDs you'll want to address for sure.


To answer your question, I think the YYYY-##### format would work. I like Aldera Chisholm‍'s point about the year being useful. You can look at the ID and know when your foundation first began a relationship with that constituent. My organization does numeric IDs and they increase in value sequentially (auto-generated by Raiser's Edge). So I can tell which of two records is older just by looking at the ID numbers (the lower number is the older record).


Good luck!


Chris