How to Handle Out of State Counties?

Marisa Allison

Hello! I've been tasked with organizing our counties in RE to consolidate them. We've decided that we would prefer to just have one "county" name for all of the out of state counties in our database. We have tossed around the idea of just calling the county "out of state" or "King" (the most populous county in WA state, where we are located) but have reservations about both of those. Out of State seems too generalized and King seems like it would mess up our metrics for actual King County constituents. Does anyone have any ideas? What does your organization do with counties that are out of their state? 


Thanks so much! 

JoAnn Strommen

What data to use should be determined by how you anticipate needing to pull/report on the info. How do you use county info?  Some orgs use it heavily, others like us don't use it all. 


I would definitely not use the same name as a county in your state.  Yes, it will skew your reports. 


Out of state is an accurate description.  Do you have records for a number of other states?  Perhaps something specific to the state like "Colorado - state" and "Texas - state." 

Dariel Dixon 2

It's important to note how this information is being entered in your system.  If this field is being populated by an NCOA or other address verification service, you'll probably have a recurring issue on your hands, as this data will be written every time you run those processes.


However like JoAnn Strommen‍ mentions, it's vital to determine what you'll need those fields for.  It very well may be an easier way to pull the data by changing your filtering on the queries.

Elizabeth Johnson

Hi Marisa Allison‍,


At one time I managed our 5 local counties in RE and that was pretty much it for the United States. We have around 180 countries in our system though so we do need to use that field for some of our international addresses. We stopped using the data in the county field when we acquired Omatics RecordRadar as using a radius was much more useful to us than maintaining that field when our population feels like it is constantly moving. I did have several audit queries and global tasks set up to help maintain it monthly or right before an event. Now that we have NXT we are not using RecordRadar although that inexpensive addon still has many advantages.


I have something for you to ponder as you work through the sage advice from JoAnn Strommen‍ and Dariel Dixon‍. When I read your question it sounds like you really only care about your county. What if you only entered that data for your county? If it is blank and they live in another state - you will know they live in another state because of the state field. If the county is blank and they live in your state - well you know that they live in another county in your state. Why maintain something if you don't need to? Then you could set up some audit queries with the towns in your county and some global changes to add or remove your county as needed. I think if you were only trying to enter your county it would be much easier for your data entry person to remember to make the change when someone moves in or out of the county. 


Hope this helps,

Elizabeth




 

Keri Barnhart

I think Elizabeth Johnson's idea about leaving County blank for the ones you want to lump as "not ours" is a good idea - it'll be easier to go back later and fill in if you expand your range, I think. And using a double query criteria for other states and/or county is blank would get you the Out of State that you need.


This is the method I'm using with my database. We serve 2 counties primarily, but there are 5-6 counties in the metropolitan area and we often receive tribute/memorial gifts from elsewhere in the country. We have been established for nearly 60 years in one of the counties, but only recently expanded to the other. Currently, we're using County data to identify donors from the new region for metrics and reports, so I only do the County data entry for the 6 in our metro area.


Do be aware that if you have Address Accelerator running, it will fill in the County field for you, which may cause trouble either by adding counties you don't want or by not adding the ones you do want. We would sometimes have issues where the address was too new to be recognized, or the Accelerator didn't like the complicated address format and wouldn't process it. My work-around was to base the location queries on ZIP, which has a specific pattern in the first three digits to identify the region. We knew that if we used a 320 or 322 ZIP, we would get everyone in the metro area - anyone in a 320/322 zip code was within an hour drive of our location.


Of course, the NXT address filters made things even easier by letting us use the radius search. But if you're not on NXT and you've got Address Accelerator, using the ZIP code might be your easiest option. There are loads of maps and charts available to identify ZIPs, so you can build up the list of the ones you want.