Querying constituents with no interactions for the last 3 years

Kim Thompson 3 · August 2016

I'm trying to write a query (or even report) that pulls constituents who have not engaged with our organization since 2013 or before. I was going to use a 'Last Transaction' since engagement factors are part of transactions, but I think engagements aren't 'all interactions engaging with the site'. So I think this will only pull dollar amounts.

My next thought was to use Interactions, but we are a multi-chapter organization and pulling every person from every survey, email, event, etc. won't work because there's a limit to the interactions displayed to pull from. And there's no date range in that selection, so that's not likely to get the results I need.

We're trying to find ways to cut the number of constituents in the system due to cost limits.

Thoughts?

Amy Dana · August 2016

Kim Thompson:

I'm trying to write a query (or even report) that pulls constituents who have not engaged with our organization since 2013 or before. I was going to use a 'Last Transaction' since engagement factors are part of transactions, but I think engagements aren't 'all interactions engaging with the site'. So I think this will only pull dollar amounts.

My next thought was to use Interactions, but we are a multi-chapter organization and pulling every person from every survey, email, event, etc. won't work because there's a limit to the interactions displayed to pull from. And there's no date range in that selection, so that's not likely to get the results I need.

We're trying to find ways to cut the number of constituents in the system due to cost limits.

Thoughts?

What is the end result you're wanting to find? Are you wanting to scale down your email list or are you looking for past donors to reengage? I think that you might want to be a little more targeted because "no interaction ever" can be pretty broad.

Personally, I would just look at donations and event attendance. People who give you time and/or money are way more engaged than those who just respond to a quick SurveyMonkey.

Joy park · August 2016

Yes, like Amy said, it really depends on what interactions you consider valuable enough to meet your threshold. Sit down with the relevant people in your dept. and define what this should look like. :)

You can query on Last Action, or Last Gift, you can enter date ranges for scenarios, you can determine whether a certain field is blank or not blank...

Amy Dana · August 2016

Yes, definitely sit down and talk it through! This sounds like one of those requests where what they are asking for isn't what they want/need. I find that half of managing RE is figuring out what people acutally want from me.

Faith Murray · August 2016

Yes, to echo and expand upon the others' replies... I would suggest a multi-faceted query criteria. In addition to recent interactions like Actions, gifts, and event participations, you may also wish to retain anyone with recent Notes, or anyone with a "Date Added" of 5 years or less, whether they have given or not, or anyone who is a relative of a loyal donor, former boardmember, alumnus, etc.

I would discourage eliminating any person who has any giving history, however old the record, especially if you integrate with FE. They can pop up again years later, and it's not best practice. (And if you are integrated with FE, it can cause major problems.) If you do feel that you must eliminate some of these people regardless, then at least you will need to keep anyone with a gift history in the past 7 years (for your audit trail), and I would advise exporting all their information into an archived document outside of RE.

Kim Thompson 3 · August 2016

Thanks everyone! We are trying to come up with a variety of ways to reduce record count. Merging duplicates is definitely 1 very-very time-consuming way. With lots of events and ways to participate, and individuals vs. families participating, we have about 18k duplicates. Those have to be manually 'decided' and merged. So if we pulled people without a recent interaction (donation, event participation, etc) than we can maybe reduce our count. It's just not in this year's budget to increase our maxiumum # of constituents in the system, but we obviously want to keep currently 'active' folks going until we can re-engage others with a new future budget. Does that make sense?

Amy Dana:

Kim Thompson:

I'm trying to write a query (or even report) that pulls constituents who have not engaged with our organization since 2013 or before. I was going to use a 'Last Transaction' since engagement factors are part of transactions, but I think engagements aren't 'all interactions engaging with the site'. So I think this will only pull dollar amounts.

My next thought was to use Interactions, but we are a multi-chapter organization and pulling every person from every survey, email, event, etc. won't work because there's a limit to the interactions displayed to pull from. And there's no date range in that selection, so that's not likely to get the results I need.

We're trying to find ways to cut the number of constituents in the system due to cost limits.

Thoughts?

What is the end result you're wanting to find? Are you wanting to scale down your email list or are you looking for past donors to reengage? I think that you might want to be a little more targeted because "no interaction ever" can be pretty broad.

Personally, I would just look at donations and event attendance. People who give you time and/or money are way more engaged than those who just respond to a quick SurveyMonkey.

Gary Parratt · October 2017

Hi, I know this is late (your post was over a year ago - so I will probably start a new discussion, but just incase:

I am looking to do this not to save money but to follow GDPR law that is coming soon.

It will be a legal requirement not to keep personal data longer than necessary (actual it is law, but lets not get pedantic on wording)

The simplest of requests is not always easy to action.

Originally I was looking for a way to say "Last event was less than" but this does not work because there is not "Last Event", but entering "event is less than" will get those that went to old events but also went to new events.

So I will have to look for:

Query 1: everyone who has no gifts or last gift was before dd/mm/yy
Query 2: those who have been to an event since dd/mm/yy
Static query: Query 1 sub(tract) Query 2

It means having a final static query, but that is not a bad thing

Some we may well anonymise rather than delete entirely

Obviously there are further criteria - but that is a basic method

Christine Cooke 2 · October 2017

Kim Thompson:

I'm trying to write a query (or even report) that pulls constituents who have not engaged with our organization since 2013 or before. I was going to use a 'Last Transaction' since engagement factors are part of transactions, but I think engagements aren't 'all interactions engaging with the site'. So I think this will only pull dollar amounts.

My next thought was to use Interactions, but we are a multi-chapter organization and pulling every person from every survey, email, event, etc. won't work because there's a limit to the interactions displayed to pull from. And there's no date range in that selection, so that's not likely to get the results I need.

We're trying to find ways to cut the number of constituents in the system due to cost limits.

Thoughts?

Please read this.

http://www.billconnors.com/media/Raisers Edge NXT Pricing - To Delete or Not Delete Constituents.pdf

Gary Parratt · October 2017

I read the white paper on delete or not to delete, and whilst there are some interesting points I think it is dated.

Especially as there are more stricter data protection issues in May.

Keeping a constituents details indefintely is no longer an option, you have no right to keep them longer than expected.

Aside from the retention period of the data, I think a bigger question now is "To Delete or To anonymise"

You have a choice on deleting the record, or to remove the presonal data... that is a decision for you.

Take a time span of, say 7 years: If a constituent has not intereacted with you in that time you certainly cannot justify keeping their details.

If audited, you we fail.

So having set your time (personally I like 7 years of gifts and 4 years of events) what do you do with those that are not interacting?

Delete completely or anonymise. I guess it is down to whether you report on old data, if you do remove name, email, phone, relationships and some actions, leaving County and region.

If you pay by the number of constituents make the call to download anonymous data then delete.

Choice is yours but keeping Europen data (regardless of whether you are outside the EU) indefintely is no longer an option

Chris Gregory · October 2017

How does this apply in the US. Do you have to delete after 7 years if you have no interactions with somenone?

-C

Melissa S Graves · October 2017

Gary Parratt:

I read the white paper on delete or not to delete, and whilst there are some interesting points I think it is dated.

Especially as there are more stricter data protection issues in May.

Keeping a constituents details indefintely is no longer an option, you have no right to keep them longer than expected.

Aside from the retention period of the data, I think a bigger question now is "To Delete or To anonymise"

You have a choice on deleting the record, or to remove the presonal data... that is a decision for you.

Take a time span of, say 7 years: If a constituent has not intereacted with you in that time you certainly cannot justify keeping their details.

If audited, you we fail.

So having set your time (personally I like 7 years of gifts and 4 years of events) what do you do with those that are not interacting?

Delete completely or anonymise. I guess it is down to whether you report on old data, if you do remove name, email, phone, relationships and some actions, leaving County and region.

If you pay by the number of constituents make the call to download anonymous data then delete.

Choice is yours but keeping Europen data (regardless of whether you are outside the EU) indefintely is no longer an option

How does this work for European educational institutions? If someone was a student but they do not engage for a particular time do you have to remove or anonymise their data?

Gary Parratt · October 2017

Chris Gregory:

How does this apply in the US. Do you have to delete after 7 years if you have no interactions with somenone?

-C

In theory, you would IF there are no other laws dictating a longer retention period.

As I am not looking at law outside of the UK I could not tell.

Personally - except for one particular group of our constituents I dont see why we would keep them.

Querying constituents with no interactions for the last 3 years

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