Changing a fund name

Beth UnruhArnold

I Need to change the name of a fund in RE database but I understand if I change the name all previous gifts made will have the fund name changed there as well. How do any of you handle this pull a list of all the gifts before the name change and just add a comment or reference on the gift noting the name was xxx and is now yyyy or do you create a new fund and inactive the old fund or maybe keep it active.

Joe Moretti 3

@Beth UnruhArnold If all you are doing is changing the fund name, then in the fund Notes just put in what the old fund name was and the date the name changed to the new one. That is if this is just a fund name being changed. I do not see the need to do all that extra work if it is just a name change. Fund names do change sometimes, but it is just a name change, like the name change of a company.

Alex Wong

@Joe Moretti
(edited) Apology for my previous message, I thought i read you said Fund Name, but yes, Fund Note as you said is good.

@Beth UnruhArnold
it really depend on why are you changing the fund description/name. Fund is what the gift is going to be used for: what program or project the org support. If it is a simple change due to typo in the original name or a more “donor-friendly” name to use in reporting or mailing, then I don't see why you need to keep the old name. If it is to support a completely different program/project, you should create new fund. If you REALLY want to change name and keep the old name, I do not sugguest that you update every gift, you can either add to the fund's note section indicating the old name and date that the change happened, or (for more “reportability”) use a fund attribute to track the old name and date of change.

Darlene LeVielle

@Joe Moretti Is there any feedback about reporting in general and also specifically when filtering and adding criteria to queries and/or lists at an End User level. Does this affect how end users may search? Renaming ensures the aggregation of all associated fund and gift records, they just need to be aware of the new name or they need to know if they don't find any records with the previous name to do a query on the attribute field as well as the fund name field to be sure to find the data? I think it depends on how Lists/queries are generated and/or how much ad hoc / ‘One of’ queries are run using Fund name when other data element of a fund can be used to pull/aggregate financial data if applicable. Thanks.

Darlene LeVielle

@Alex Wong I would believe the reportability approach (for querying /lists (even though the fund attributes or Notes are not in web view yet) by using an attribute would be helpful.

Joe Moretti 3

@Darlene LeVielle Nothing changes in reporting or anything else if the only thing that is changing is the fund name. You just use the fund name in reporting, etc.

Alex Wong

@Darlene LeVielle
if in dbview using query, you can query on fund attribute

in webview using list, you can only filter/search by Fund Description (in webview, it is just “Fund”).

It sounds to me like you are just worry that other staff does not remember the new name and can't find gift with the fund's new name? I think you will have a harder time trying to tell people to fund dbview query on fund attribute than to just remember the new name

Darlene LeVielle

@Alex Wong I think you are recommending here then that wheever a fund desc change is made that end users who have already prebuilt queries be notified by way of internal Procedure of each fund desc change?

Alex Wong

@Darlene LeVielle
I'm pretty sure that any prebuilt query is going to be fine. query is “saved” with the fund record system id, description change won't affect it.

You can easily test this by checking one query that filter on a specific fund, make a minor description change, and reopen the query to see if that's true or not, I'm pretty sure it is.

Darlene LeVielle

@Alex Wong Thanks for this information. In a DBV dynamic query/WBV dynamic list criteria is rerun after for example, 1 year and uses the previous Fund Desc field in criteria without any changes to it, it does not go back to the DB to requery using the old desc to find the associated import IDs, and therefore it uses the same import IDs from a year ago to list the records for the new desc b/c it does not requery the desc when you refresh the records in the database? I think I am misunderstanding. It feels like static DBV queries or web view lists that use static DBV queries may retains the import ids when you ‘refresh records’ but I'm not sure. I wonder if there is a KB that describes this Specific Use Case. Thanks.

Alex Wong

@Darlene LeVielle
I'm having a hard time understanding what you were trying to say regarding “1 year".

so I did a test on my test environment database:

Gift Date: 7/1/17-9/30/17
Gift Amount: greater than or equals to $50K
Fund (webview gift list) Fund Description (dbview gift query - dynamic): Impact Scholarship TRI

then after changing the fund description to Impact Scholarship TRI - Changed, I close and reopen the same db query, did not make any changes:

Webview list will take some more minutes to refresh, so i'll post screenshot after it refresh

Alex Wong

@Darlene LeVielle
webview list has been updated

Notice how in the filter the fund (fund description) stayed the same as before change, but the result is still correctly the same 2 gifts, but in the actual gift information, the fund (fund description) is the changed name.

If you click on the filter for Fund

You can check the “selected” checkbox and see that the selected item is actually the now-changed fund (description).

Darlene LeVielle

@Alex Wong Thanks for this information. I was using 1 year just as an example of having not modified the query in a while. The thing perhaps to be mindful of is if RE is integrated with other apps where ad hoc queries exist where uses desc field and that app may not behave in the same way, perhaps but not sure.

Alex Wong

@Darlene LeVielle
Yes you are right, if an integration is build around “searching” for fund description using the exact text of the fund, then it would be a problem.

However, being a developer myself, I would've never coded an integration that isn't based on fund record system id (which never change, and cannot be changed for the same fund record, this is not the “Fund ID” field that can be changed). So it depends on the developer you used and their methodology.

Darlene LeVielle

@Alex Wong It seems the only thing for RE to be mindful of the option for renaming/changing the Desc is to have a process to communicate the Desc change, update an attribute/custom field with previous desc and applicable dates, as well as other system integrations.