What are your Constituent Codes?

Lindsay Godman

When I inherited my database I had approx. 8000 pages of Constituent Codes and have since scrubbed and scrubbed it down to a page!


Before I get TOO delete happy, what are your main Constituent Codes?

Karen Stuhlfeier

That really depends on what type of organization you work for. The constituent codes I use at a private K-12 are totally different from the ones I used at the Alzheimer's Association. Constituent codes broadly describe how the constituent is connected to your organization. At my school, they play a big part in how we segment our appeals and what we report on. We use ones like Current Parent, Alumnus/ae, Current Trustee, Current Faculty/Staff etc.

Dariel Dixon 2

WHOA!!!  That's crazy.  I'll never complain about my constituencies ever again...


That said, this is a horrible question to answer, because the answer always is, "it depends".  What it depends on is the type of organization you are, and what you determine your hierarchy as.  For instance, for higher-ed, it might be Alumni.  Healthcare might have a primary of Donor.  Other organization might use Supporter.  It's tough, but kinda like Smokey the Bear would say, Only you can truly determine what your CCs should be.


That said, I'm in healthcare now. My main codes are Donor, Board (there's arguments for membership here, but that's another discussion), employee (same argument for relationship records), honor/memorial.  There's a lot of variation for employees, due to a lot of reasons, and there's also former variants as well.


Using attributes to augment your constituencies helps.  I always try to use broad constituencies, and then use the attributes to more closely fine tune.

Elizabeth Johnson

Looks like Lindsay Godman‍ works at Catholic Social Services of the Miami Valley - I'm with a school so I can't help more than Dariel Dixon‍  (he he he Smokey Bear reference) and Karen Stuhlfeier‍ for this purpose but may someone in her vertical can


And oh my goodness that is a lot. I'm assuming you have already locked tables down in security?

Lindsay Godman

I am at a social services nonprofit. So yes, different points of reference for sure.


I have locked everything down since I started (my director cannot even change anything) but I still feel like I am not even coming close to having things cleaned up.