Withdrawn or former students in Raisers Edge

Heather Souders · October 2017

Looking for best practice around student that did not graduate (withdrew) from my school and Raisers Edge. I'm taking over the maintenance of Raisers Edge. I've found about 280 former student records that I'm not sure should be in Raisers Edge. These records are for students who could have been enrolled in kindergarten for only a year and then withdrew all the way to a student who moved after 10 years or more. My gut instinct is saying these records shouldn't be in Raisers Edge. I'd like to hear what other schools do.

Thanks.

Robert Brown · October 2017

Heather Souders:

Looking for best practice around student that did not graduate (withdrew) from my school and Raisers Edge. I'm taking over the maintenance of Raisers Edge. I've found about 280 former student records that I'm not sure should be in Raisers Edge. These records are for students who could have been enrolled in kindergarten for only a year and then withdrew all the way to a student who moved after 10 years or more. My gut instinct is saying these records shouldn't be in Raisers Edge. I'd like to hear what other schools do.

Thanks.

Hi Heather,

At my school, we don't make individual records for students until they graduate or leave having been here long enough - usually at least 4 years for JK-8 and 1 year for 9-12. If they don't get their own record, I change their relationship type to "child non-grad" but leave them on their parent's record. Hope this helps!

Robert

Karen Stuhlfeier · October 2017

We keep them with the constituent code and education status of Former Student. We do receive gifts from some of them and some of them attend reunions. I make sure that I only send mail and email to those who are old enough to have graduated. We find it important to have students in RE. They are connected to their parents and it's easy then to give solicitors infomration about someone's children that way.

Jennifer Beck · October 2017

I work for a Pre-K-6th grade school. I'd like to know how other schools handle this also. Just this year we've decided to enter EVERY student into Raiser's Edge, and think of them as potential future donors. Even if they only attended one year. And we enter them at the beginning of the school year, and set up the Relationship to their parents record. Not sure if this is the best way to go. If someone only attends for one year in kindergarten (for example) they aren't going to even remember much about the school later on in their giving years. Hmmm.

Jennifer

New Hope Academy

Heather Souders:

Looking for best practice around student that did not graduate (withdrew) from my school and Raisers Edge. I'm taking over the maintenance of Raisers Edge. I've found about 280 former student records that I'm not sure should be in Raisers Edge. These records are for students who could have been enrolled in kindergarten for only a year and then withdrew all the way to a student who moved after 10 years or more. My gut instinct is saying these records shouldn't be in Raisers Edge. I'd like to hear what other schools do.

Thanks.

Alicia Barevich · October 2017

Karen Stuhlfeier:

We keep them with the constituent code and education status of Former Student. We do receive gifts from some of them and some of them attend reunions. I make sure that I only send mail and email to those who are old enough to have graduated. We find it important to have students in RE. They are connected to their parents and it's easy then to give solicitors infomration about someone's children that way.

Exactly what Karen said! We do often contact alumni and parents of alumni who didn't attend for long. It's not uncommon to get unsubscribes from them, but until that happens, we consider them a solicitable alum, even if they only attended for a year!

Katherine Mannion · October 2017

We're a 6-12 school, and we do enter students into the RE database. Their constituent code is Student. Once they graduate, I change them to Alumni. If they leave early for any reason, I change their constituent code to Alumni, Non-graduate and on the education relationship I un-check the box for Primary Alumni.

Denise Covington · October 2017

We also do what Katherine does. However, we leave the primary education box checked. If we get college information for students who left before graduation (may be rare, but I'm sure happens), we do track that and it is still good to be able to pull alumni based on primary education informarmation.

Elizabeth Johnson · October 2017

We are a 9-12 school. All students are entered into RE on enrollment.

Student constituent code gets an end date, and they receive an Alumnus/a Non Graduate constituency code with a start date of the following day. Parents and grandparents have similar coding. If they have any students that have graduated from our school they do not get Non Graduate status.

Solicit codes are changed so they will not receive any solicitations until 4 years past their intended graduation date. They will have a reunion coming up shortly after that time so this works for us. Parents and grandparents are generally handled on a case by case basis. We have a handful of students that are with us on a short term exchange or parents only planned to send them for 1 or 2 years for the experience. Not all that don't graduate left because of an academic or discipline reason.

On the education tab we leave them checked as primary and add a date left. We only use the date left field when someone doesn't graduate. Very helpful when looking at their relations record as this is a column that all our users see. Education status is updated to withdrawn. If they didn't complete at least one semester they also receive an attribute with respect to that. We have an attribute that captures the specific code provided by the deans office Withdrawn-Academic, Withdrawn-Personal, Withdrawn-Disciplinary etc as we don't want too many codes showing up in the education status drop down.

We add an action type of "student change of status" to the record and record the reason why the left. A copy of the email or form shared by deans office is attached (we currenly use Omatic's Magic Folder - not yet on NXT) to their record.

We have been very consistent with this over the last 12 school years. I'm interested to see what other schools are doing so thanks for asking Heather and I've enjoyed reading the other answers.

Christine Cooke 2 · October 2017

Heather Souders:

Looking for best practice around student that did not graduate (withdrew) from my school and Raisers Edge. I'm taking over the maintenance of Raisers Edge. I've found about 280 former student records that I'm not sure should be in Raisers Edge. These records are for students who could have been enrolled in kindergarten for only a year and then withdrew all the way to a student who moved after 10 years or more. My gut instinct is saying these records shouldn't be in Raisers Edge. I'd like to hear what other schools do.

Thanks.

Have always kept them -- their constituent code is Alum-NonGrad as opposed to Alum. I have been in schools where those folks are still involved or want to be involved, especially those that had to move away vs. changing schools for another reason (not the right fit, expelled eek! and so on). Some of those folks were our most loyal donors at one school I worked at. And, at some point, someone from their class will wonder where they are or why they are not on a list. You will have the option of pulling them into queries and reports or not by giving them the separate constit code.

And speaking of things related -- I also have a constit code for Widows/Widowers of Alum because some of those folks will continue to give in memory of the decedent, so just because the Alum may have passed does not mean that their spouse does not receive mail every so often. Unless they request it to stop.

ShawnAlis Cusato · November 2017

Elizabeth, I'm interested in how you change the solicit codes. Are there dates built into the code? Do you put an action on the record to change it in 4 years? Do you query every year for the alums+4? Are there other situations where you change the codes in a similar fashion?

Thanks!

Marla Hager · November 2017

We're a k-12 boys' school. Some of our biggest donors and most involved alums are "non-grad" alums. So we keep them all.

We import all new students every year with a primary const. code of "student" and coded with a solicit code of DNC and a note dated with their DNC expiration year (their should-be graduation). If they leave before graduating, they become "alumus". If they graduate, they become "graduate alumnus". Every summer, we do a bulk delete of the solicit code on those whose notes are "expiring" and they become as any other alum. (Unless they've left under questionable circumstances, then their DNC note is set to never expire.) Also, we are always the primary education for anyone who's ever gone here.

Brian Davies · November 2017

We are a pre-K through 12 school. All students get their own record. We track alumni status using constituent codes and on the education relationship.

Constituent Codes:

When a student is a student their constituent code is "Student" with a start date of 9/2017 or whenever they started. When they leave or graduate they get an end date (6/2018) and then the new primary a constituent code becomes one of the following:

Attended (1-2 years without graduating)

Alumni (3+ years without graduating)

Graduate (Anyone who graduated regardless of time at school)

Lifer (12+ years and graduated)

Education Relationship:

We always set our school at the “Primary alumni information” and enter their date entered and either date left or date graduated. Well also code attrition and leave of absence as an attribute on the education relationship with the reason for the leave. We change constituent codes with the leave of absence dates. When/if they return I convert them back to students and remove the date left.

In addition we use constituent codes parents and grandparents that follow the same format. Parents of Attended, Parents of Alumni, Parents of Graduates, Parents of Lifers

Withdrawn or former students in Raisers Edge

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