tagging key contacts such as VIPs, institution's key contacts, head of state, government officials, etc.

Brenda Goo

Hello! How do you identify key contacts for your organization and where do you flag the record in the database? I have a project for tagging prominent constituent records and I am looking for ideas and best practices. I would really appreciate it if you can share some of the best practices you have adopted in your organization.

Thank you,

Brenda

Joe Moretti 3

@Brenda Goo Attributes are your best bet. If you are going to have many different ones, you may want to create an attribute category like Segment as a table, then create the various codes for that table like VIP, Head of State, government official, etc. I use something similar in our database. This makes it easy for when you are pulling lists, etc.

Brenda Goo

@Joe Moretti- thanks for the input Joe! I appreciate it. I was leaning toward using attributes as constituent codes (Bio 2) is so over-use (in my opinion) within our organization. It makes querying the data cumbersome!

Brenda Goo

@Joe Moretti - oops hit the post button too fast! Do you have best practices you can share in identifying such population like VIPs, key contacts, etc.?

Joe Moretti 3

@Brenda Goo Constituent Codes are important and should be about why the records are in the database like Board Members, Foundations, Corporations, Schools, Government, Staff, Former Board, etc. Depends on your Organization. An ideal number should be around 10-12 constituent codes, then use the attributes to break them down. But someone is going to have to let you know, who is a VIP, etc. Constituent Codes should be a little more generic and the attributes can drill down more. For instance if you have a lot of government people in your database, you can then use an attribute Category called Government and then break it down like Senator. Mayor, Congressman, Council Member, FBI, Non-Elected government, etc. Constituent Codes and attributes should work in conjunction with your reports, mailing lists, etc to make it simple to grab those records.

JoAnn Strommen

@Brenda Goo If you want a pop-up/flag when a user opens a record you have identified as a VIP you can create a business rule. It is based on a query of records with a constituent code of XXX or records with attribute of YYY.

I use caution if you use db view a lot as the pop-ups can get very irritating when they happen a lot and users start to ignore them.

Brenda Goo

@JoAnn Strommen I think I've seen the pop-up window you are referring to. It's not heavily utilized in our organization.

Dariel Dixon 2

I agree with @Joe Moretti. Attributes are probably best. However, I really hate projects like this unless there is some sort of maintenance plan. How often with you update/refresh these plans? Particularly for individuals who received the status ex officio and may be removed after the leave the position.

Also, due to the fact that we are on NXT, we don't use business rules as the pop-ups and annotations don't appear in webview which is where our fundraisers and the majority of our staff work. So depending on the audience, you may want to determine if it is the right fit or not.

Elizabeth Johnson

@Dariel Dixon - we do see annotations in the web view particularly if the checkbox to show automatically is checked. Annotation pop-ups are annoying to me in the database view to click to get to the record but in the Web view they are called Alerts and they do show up (if the checkbox to show automatically is checked) at the top of the page and are not annoying to me at all as they don't block anything! I love it when changes are actually an improvement.

Dariel Dixon 2

@Elizabeth Johnson Can these be set to a business rule? I've seen alerts before, but I've always thought of them as one-offs. I don't think I can set them via a workflow or another automation. I honestly haven't used them as I've never had a business need for them TBH. If I can't automate the setting of the alerts, it doesn't really help for many of my purposes.

Elizabeth Johnson

@Dariel Dixon, I whole heartedly agree it is true they are one-offs - but I saw your note that they didn't appear and that was the piece I was responding to.

Brenda Goo

@Joe Moretti Interesting!! Still so much to learn about how data is utilized and organized in RE. Wow! 10-12 constituent codes. That's a lot of constituent codes to manage. Would you be willing to share the list and a definition for each constituent code?

Brenda Goo

@Dariel Dixon I agree with you on the data maintenance part. In my previous job, keeping up-to-date information was important and we had key people maintaining specific ‘attributes.’ it takes a village and there are regular check-ins/meetings with data entry folks. I'd like to set up a similar process here so that data is always current. How do you keep the data current in your organization?

Karen Diener 2

@Brenda Goo
I've been watching this thread and wanted to chime in on the number of constituent codes. There is no “optimal number”. I've worked with organizations that have a lot of constituent codes, and other organizations that have very few.

Schools, for instance, will have codes for students, alumni, parents, parents of alumni, sometimes “exit alumni” (for those who attend but transfer), and so on. On top of that, they might have more traditional codes such as Board Member, Employee, Foundation (sometimes multiple Foundation types), Government, Educational Institution, Club, Religious Institution, etc. They also may have Former versions of many of those codes (rather than use the dates), and all of those codes are reasonable.

It depends on what makes the most sense for your organization. As others have mentioned, it should explain why the constituent is in your database / their relationship to you. I think of them as values that do not change frequently, and things I cannot otherwise determine from someone's record. I strongly recommend against coding constituents with values such as Donor, Prospect, Major Donor, Sustainer Donor, etc. Those are not all terrible codes, but whenever I've audited a database with those codes, they are incorrect. Major Donors with $500 of lifetime giving, Prospects with donations on their record, Sustainer Donors whose recurring gift ended 5 years ago, etc.

I just don't want people to feel like they are doing something “wrong” if they don't have a specific number of constituent codes. Take an honest look at what you have and what you need, and make sure everyone understands what they mean.

Karen

Katherine Manniion

@Brenda Goo I'll throw another wrench in the works here! Let's assume you use Attributes to identify your VIPS. Those constituents also need to have up-to-date Organization Relationships. And as you make a change to one you should be checking the other to ensure that it reflects the change.

I'd ask why we're tagging these people to come up with the best plan for coding. Is it strictly for flagging, so gift officers notice when they open a record? I'd use Annotations for that. Is it for mailing lists? That would be Attributes. I would not, however, let them ask me to do both Annotations (because it's easier for them) and Attributes (because you need them for lists). Too much room for error (and too much work for you!)

Good luck!

Christine Cooke 2

@Brenda Goo
I have mainly worked in schools, I will start with that. Like I see in the thread, yes, we have current students, alums, current parents, alum parents, board members etc as Constituent Codes. Constituent Codes describe the affiliation the individual or org has with our institution. Within those groups there are secondary tags/flags. Those tags are significant enough that they are used regularly for lists and are also historical in nature.

They are kept as Attributes. They fall under two categories for us. Special List or Volunteer. Volunteer has board officers and subcommittees along with any volunteer position someone may hold like parent association chair or an event volunteer. In our case the FY is added to the Comment field of the Attribute as 0000-0000 (4 digits for query purposes this works otherwise it gets messy!). These tags never go away so that you can see on a record how much or how long someone has dedicated time and skills. The Special List are tags for things that do not fit as a volunteer service such as former head of school, current head of school's list of peeps, Legacy Society, Neighbor (literally the folks on our block), Founder's contacts, etc. The FY may or may not be utilized.

These are all maintained/revisited once a year with a few updates changes through the year usually not more than twice.

Still on RE7 and use business rules for a couple of them that are important for others to see or to remind myself.

Sunshine Reinken Watson

@Brenda Goo I record key contacts on the relationship record. I'm leaning towards finding a way to note government officials on the relationship record as well so you don't have to update in two places when they term out of office. But constituent attributes also make sense for this.

Brenda Goo

@Christine Cooke bCREPro I appreciate the feedback! I too worked in the higher education setting so I am used to seeing alumni, parent, corporation, and foundation as record types (aka Constituent Codes in RE). There is definitely some clean-up/re-structuring of constituent codes in my organization as they quite fit the constituent code definition and could be moved to the Attributes section for historical purpose. Great suggestion on the Special List or Volunteer. I was thinking along those lines as well.

Brenda Goo

@Karen Diener Thanks for the feedback! I agree with you on the unnecessary constituent code such as donor or prospect. I've come across these codes in our database which to me doesn't make sense. I also agree with you in adapting what makes the most sense within the organization. I am 4 months into the job and I am seeing lots of opportunities in strengthening and cleaning our data.

Amanda Tindale

I'm interested to know if anyone has tracked this kind of information through custom ratings in NXT? If so, do you have any examples of how it works for you? It's something we've been considering doing for VIP supporters. We don't use any of the inbuilt ratings as we're UK based and I'm told it's not relevant.