Constituent Matching vs. New, Duplicate Records

Victoria Dick

Every time someone registers/pays for an event it is creating a duplicate Constituent in my NXT. Can someone tell me if I am missing something or how to stop this? Thanks

Dariel Dixon

It may be trying to match on email address. Often times, even if the names match, NXT wants both the names and email address to match as well.

Austen Brown

Hi Victoria - This is a by-product of the Automatic Constituent Matching tool in Web View (Click here to access the KB Article with more information on how it works). You will need to add a constituent review competent into your event registrant/gift approval procedure for Web View batches. I also recommend that you create a maintenance query that looks for new constituents added to your system, to be reviewed regularly (weekly, month) as a double-check.

Whitney Shelton

This is very helpful. Follow up question. what should the process look like?
1. approve gift in batch in new record

2. merge new record into original/older record

3. I know this makes new record inactive but if it is deleted then the batch record no longer has a name associated with it

Damon Rosenthal

This is for Events via RE NXT or a different tool?

Whitney Shelton

Hey Damon, I believe Victoria is asking about events. I missed that the first time. My question is regarding our online donation form in web view. For example, we have Dr. John Doe in our system with extensive giving. Mr. Jonathan A Doe filled out a donation form, and a new record was created using that name instead of matching with Dr. John Doe.

Damon Rosenthal

Thanks for the clarification Whitney. So this is all within RE NXT using RE NXT tools/functions vs using a third tool that is integrated with RE NXT?

Whitney Shelton

Damon, yes this is all within RE NXT web view. I created an online giving page that our Marketing Dept added to our Donate Now button on our website. I am going to fundraising → gift management → then approve the batch. After that, I check for a duplicate record and merge the two. This makes the record that the online donation form created become inactive. If I delete that inactive record, the gift in the batch no longer shows a name associated with it.

I have tried another method as well and get the same results. A gift batch with no constituent record attached. The gift shows on the correct record when I search for the individual constituent. This method was: approve batch like above, then go into the gift record and edit the constituent. Move the gift record to the older and correct record then delete the record the online form created.

Thanks for your help with this

JoAnn Strommen

I have been told they are continuing to improve the algorithms to identify matching records. We ran an alumni event last summer with an web view registration form. All or 99.9% of these people had records but we ended up with many, many duplicates. I worked with rep from BB after creating case providing examples of records not identified as dups - some with all the check points. (We also saw a fair # of typos by registrants in their address, phone, email entries that caused records.)

Using Tools > Data Health > Possible dups it's fairly easy to review them and merge any or all data to existing record. We did not lose any registration data. @Whitney Shelton, yes approve/process gift or registration first, then merge. We quit using webview for this reason and others. If the most recent record is created, is name truly lost from the batch record? That's an issue to bring up to support.

The clean up of having to go in to db side and delete the extra record is a pain.

Whitney Shelton

JoAnn, this is very helpful information. Thank you!

Austen Brown

Hi Everyone - I actually review and merge duplicates prior to committing batches in Web View. If your system has title as a required field, it is very easy to pick out the new constituents (title is not an available field within a NXT event or donation form). Once a week, I go to Tools > Data Health > Possible Duplicates > Merged Duplicates Tab and use that information to finish out the process within Database View of ensuring the “source/empty” records are indeed empty and deleting them.

Whitney Shelton

Hopefully one day soon the title will be an option. I work in healthcare so that Dr. title can be very important. When you review and merge the duplicates, it marks one as inactive correct? Then you do all your batch approvals and at end of week, you double check in database view the source is empty and delete. Do I have that right? If so, could you pull up a batch with a record that you did this to and see if the constituent name is showing?

Austen Brown

@Whitney Shelton - I process gifts daily, for gifts received yesterday. As I am reviewing the detail within each batch, if I notice that a constituent does not have a title I navigate to their record within Web View on a separate tab, and run their contact information through the duplicate merge tool. If a duplicate is found, I merge the records; if one is not found, I cancel the process. After the duplicate is merged, I navigate back to the batch in gift management and refresh the window - it will update to include the updated donor's record. After doing this for each entry without a title, and confirming all campaign, fund, appeal info is correct I approve the batch.

At the end of the week, I go to the Merged Duplicates tab within the Data Health area of Web View and make note of the merges I need to complete within Database View; and work through those in one sitting.

Whitney Shelton

@Austen Brown THANK YOU TIMES INFINITY!! This is the process I have been so close to figuring out but always still so far away. I truly appreciate your time explaining each step. I am thrilled to have a way of approving batches and handling the duplicates while also keeping everything assigned and orderly.

Damon Rosenthal

Thank you Whitney for the additional information.

We are not using that for Giving at this point. It sounds like you received some good info from Austen though. She is often a great source of info and help!