Attributes

Thank you very much JoAnn for you advice. 


JoAnn Strommen:

There is no reason that you can't have more than one constituency code on a record.  We do and I think it's much cleaner than putting that info in attributes.  We pretty much stick with constituency codes that answer question of "Why the record is in RE/what's their relationship to us?"  So an individual could have constit code of donor, board member, heritage club member.  Personally have not had any issues pulling data - am sure you could run in to it somewhere.  You do want to keep it to a reasonable number of codes though.


In attributes, we record more info on their heritage club membership (our endowment members) pertaining to their status, gifts, etc.


My 2 cents...

Thank you, Jen for your advice. There are some records we don't have any constituency codes on because they were imported for mailings, but weren't in the database. 


Jen Claudy:

Having more than one Constituent Code is fine.  We require at least one on every record.  I often use the Primary Constituent Code to pull lists and such (which also automatically becomes the Gift Constituency...although that can be changed on the Misc Tab of the Gift Record).


I still have some cleanup to do on both Constituent Codes and Attributes, but so long as they mean something to you, it shouldn't really be a problem.  At least not an insurmountable one.

Hi Lauren,


Thank you very much for your response. The things you said are very interesting and I will definitely take them into consideration. I am also interested in getting those instructions. You said to email you but, you didn't put your email address in the post. And, I also see you are a consultant for RE. I looked you up but didn't see a website, just your linkedin profile. I am going to be purchasing that book mentioned in the above post about to help. But I would like to get some information about your services. I really want to learn RE the best that I can and I haven't had or may not get any official training from Blackbaud. 


Thanks again,

Rob


Lauren Schler:

Several of the gift reports in RE allow you to create gift summaries based on constituency code. They can be set to pull from Primary Constituency code (the top constituent code on the donor’s constituent code grid on the bio/org 2 tab) OR based on the hierarchy you’ve established in your Constituency Code code table in Config.

 

Regardless of which method you use, you’ll want to keep in how mind how RE is identifying Primary Constituent Code. If being a board member trumps being an Alumnus, then Board Member should be on top on the bio2 /org 2 tab and Alumnus should be second. Primary Constituency is an available field in query. Unlike Constituency Code, which is also available in query, Primary Constituency will return only one result per constituent regardless of how many constituent codes are applied to the constituent’s record. In that way, it’s useful as means of easily seeing what constituent code is at the top of the “pecking order” for each constituent and it’s useful as a means of segmenting your database into broad groupings (i.e. Alumni, Parent, Employee, Business/Corporation, Nonprofit/Service Organization, In Memory/In Honor only record - this later is a category that’s often created for records that are only created as tribute records).

 

If you add an end date to a primary constituent code you effectively turn it off. The aforementioned gift reports will group these records into a category called “Unknown.”  If you add the Primary Constituency field to a query, the query will return a blank for constituents whose primary constituency codes have an end date (if you also add Constituency Code to the query, this field will display the constituency code regardless of whether or not there is an end date).

 

Therefore, I recommend not using end dates for Primary Constituency codes. There is a setting in Business Rule that, when enabled, automatically applies an end date to the primary constituent code when a constituent is marked as deceased. If you are relying on Primary Constituency Codes for reporting and grouping, you’ll want to be sure that you don’t have this enabled. Depending on the version of RE that you are using, there is a Plug-in that allows you to reorder Constituent Codes. I’ve never used it but have been curious about how it works. I came up with a method for identifying records with duplicate constituent codes (i.e. Alumnus and Alumnus) and cleaning this up and adding the appropriate constituent code as the primary constituent code. Please email me if you’d like these instructions and I’ll send them to you as an attachment.

 

Once you get your constituent codes cleaned up and in the order you want them to be in, you can set Constituent Code as a required field for every record and set-up a business rule that alerts a user if he/she applies a primary constituent code that is other than one that you’ve identified as one of the ones you’ve identified as primary (I call these secondary constituent codes and often see them used to identify volunteer or committee roles for your constituents).

 

Best,

 

Lauren

Lauren Schler Consulting

 

 

 

I ordered that book today. It really sounds like it will help me in my job. Thanks again!


Melissa Graves:

I highly suggest Bill Connors book "Fundraising with the Raiser's Edge: a Non-Technical Guide" (or something like that). His coverage of this topic is well done (as well as all of his other topics). And don't be deceived by the non-technical part. It is plenty technical - just written in a way where non-technical folks understand the technical issues.