How do you handle changes in constituent codes?

Michelle Grant · July 2017

When a constituent’s relationship with your organization changes, do you add an end date or do you create a new constituent code?

Michelle Collins 2 · July 2017

Michelle Grant:

When a constituent’s relationship with your organization changes, do you add an end date or do you create a new constituent code?

We actually do both. I add an end date on the current relationship and then add the new code with a date that is one day after the previous relationship's end date. Ex. Old Con Code has end date of 6/30/2017 New Con Code has start date of 7/1/2017.

For us, this scenario typically happens with staff and board members so it isn't too messy, people are moving from current staff or BOD to Former Staff or Former BOD. However, I could see things getting complicated pretty quickly if you had a lot of con codes to manage and if that's the case you might just want to add the end date and be done with it.

Ryan Hyde · July 2017

Yep, our system has an absolute ton of codes, so we have song since given up on date-from / date-to in favor of simply looking at the existance (or not) of particular codes.

Joanne Felci 2 · July 2017

I guess it would depend on the circumstance

For the example of Board of Directors leaving the board what we do is change the Code from Current BOD to Former Board and we use start and end dates to track the term

Same for staff, the code goes from Staff to Former Staff with start and end dates

It would also depend if you want to track past constituencies

All depends on how you are going to use the data

Joanne

Melissa S Graves · July 2017

I have to disagree. It is not how you are using the data (today) it should be set up in a way so it is also useful in the future. There are analytical reports in RE that you can run that will show someone's giving from a particular timeframe and attribute it to the constituent code that was "primary" at the time the gift was made. Not using current and former codes with proper dates, limits you and your entire organization in the future from being able to utilize this reporting capability. I am a strong advocate for former codes and dates.

JoAnn Strommen · July 2017

We put an end date on the relevant code. We do not use "former" board/staff as others cited. End date give that status. No need to add another. And if there are no dates used can lead to complicated queries in my opinion if to find current staff I have to have code equals staff and code does not equal former staff.

Gina Gerhard · July 2017

JoAnn Strommen:

We put an end date on the relevant code. We do not use "former" board/staff as others cited. End date give that status. No need to add another. And if there are no dates used can lead to complicated queries in my opinion if to find current staff I have to have code equals staff and code does not equal former staff.

JoAnn - Just a comment on this, we have a lot of historical information (like we have board members back to 1960's) -- and we never had exact dates as to when they terminated. I'm not a real fan of then being required to actually use an End Date that is fictitious. You can't tell the difference between an End Date you actually know vs. not know.

Also, do you somehow record when they served on the board in various positions - Chair, Vice Chair, etc. - how do you capture this?

JoAnn Strommen · July 2017

LOL, recording board back to the 1960's made me laugh. I have the same situation but had old board lists to come pretty close for dates served. All I was given was annual list so I just have year dates for those historical records. My issue was Mrs. George Smith with no actual first name for the board member and on next list may just be listed as George Smith. Found they did not keep records well from those early years.

Our end dates are not required and for staff I put the date I received the employee list or list of terminated staff. HR keeps the exact records needed so it hasn't bothered me to have those approximate.

We don't currently record positions. As I used your idea of a Board of Directors record with relationships, I suppose I could add that in notes. Might be a good idea. At some point maybe RE will be reference source for that type of thing. It's not currently.

Christine Cooke 2 · July 2017

Michelle Grant:

When a constituent’s relationship with your organization changes, do you add an end date or do you create a new constituent code?

It depends on the Constit Code and Relationship. If it is a Board Member, then yes, there is an start and end date and the codes changes from Board-Current to Baord-Former when they exit the post. In the circumstance of Alumni and their parents, their relationship is considered ongoing from the day they enroll so there is only a start date, even when they go from Student-Current to Alumni and Parent-Current to Parent-of Alum, there is only a start date. You would have to determine those relationships for your Org.

Gina Gerhard · July 2017

JoAnn Strommen:

LOL, recording board back to the 1960's made me laugh. I have the same situation but had old board lists to come pretty close for dates served. All I was given was annual list so I just have year dates for those historical records. My issue was Mrs. George Smith with no actual first name for the board member and on next list may just be listed as George Smith. Found they did not keep records well from those early years.

Our end dates are not required and for staff I put the date I received the employee list or list of terminated staff. HR keeps the exact records needed so it hasn't bothered me to have those approximate.

We don't currently record positions. As I used your idea of a Board of Directors record with relationships, I suppose I could add that in notes. Might be a good idea. At some point maybe RE will be reference source for that type of thing. It's not currently.

JoAnn -

So if you're using relationships to track your board:

We add their current position in the 'Position' field on the relationship (ex: Chair, Vice Chair...).
We actually commandeered another field just below to create a dropdown category listing (Chair, Vice Chair) -- so we can more systematically pull all the Chairs of our boards (we have 9 boards we track!)
We then created a relationship attributes called Board Position Term to keep some historical information of when they served on positions. (ex: Board Position Term = Chair 1/2012-12/2014) and you can add extra info in the comments field (ex: did not serve full 4-yr term due to health)

Daniel Bayer · July 2017

Melissa Graves:

I have to disagree. It is not how you are using the data (today) it should be set up in a way so it is also useful in the future. There are analytical reports in RE that you can run that will show someone's giving from a particular timeframe and attribute it to the constituent code that was "primary" at the time the gift was made. Not using current and former codes with proper dates, limits you and your entire organization in the future from being able to utilize this reporting capability. I am a strong advocate for former codes and dates.

I cannot agree with/up-vote/like this enough. This is why I always advocate for using dates with Cons Codes, even though they can get cumbersome. It's so much easier to get an accurate historical snapshot of your org's giving this way.

Heather MacKenzie · July 2017

Cannot agree more with using both beginning and ending dates for constituent codes!

I would say former board member, etc. would be up to you, though. We do use former board member, for example, but we change our employees to plain ol' individuals when they leave us. I think it depends on your constituent code hierarchy and what you need to be querying and reporting on.

Reta Keenan · July 2017

We don't put dates by the constituency codes but add a relationship instead and put the dates there.

Cathy Spencer · July 2017

Michelle Grant:

When a constituent’s relationship with your organization changes, do you add an end date or do you create a new constituent code?

We use "former" when the relationship changes from active to another status such as when members retire or leave a board or our employ. I add the end date when they finish actively serving.

Lora Mather · July 2017

Currently, it is a required field and we expect at least one constitutent code per records, but more are allowed. We plan to use the end dates appropriately to the what the code represents such as board member, but not donor.

Michelle Grant:

When a constituent’s relationship with your organization changes, do you add an end date or do you create a new constituent code?

Lynnette Fisher · July 2019

I use start and end dates as well when board members' terms end as well as employees. The problem I run into is when you have a former employee with a start dart and open end date and that same person is also an alumni with a start date and open end date. Not sure how the reports will function. Any help would be appreciated.

Lynnette

John Heizer · July 2019

Lynnette Fisher‍ in theory (as the software is designed and intended to work, but doesn't always) to determine the Primary Constituency RE looks to see which constituencies have begun based on Start Date, haven't expired based on End Date, and then sees which of those is highest on the list (there are up/down arrows that can let you move them around).

Lynnette Fisher · July 2019

John Heizer - Thank you! That is what I thought but wanted to get some other opinions on it.

How do you handle changes in constituent codes?

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