update Deceased constituents

Options
How often do you update deceased constituents in your database? Do you have any more efficient way than signing up for Legacy.com and scanning them one by one?

I just learned that the BB deceased finder can be run only once a year with our subscription.



 

Comments

  • We are very reactive/ad hoc with keeping track of deceased donors. Mainly because most of our model is gift officer based and people know the donors very well/keep track of people


    If we did more mailings I'd be concerned about this more - keeping on top of it I mean
  • Cathleen Mai:

    How often do you update deceased constituents in your database? Do you have any more efficient way than signing up for Legacy.com and scanning them one by one?

    I just learned that the BB deceased finder can be run only once a year with our subscription.



     

    Our practice is to run DeceasedFinder before our major mailings, which for us means quarterly about a month or so before our newsletter goes out. I haven't found a more efficient way to scan for deceased constituents apart from Legacy/funeral home websites, but I do like to scan through the obituaries to verify that it's not a senior/junior situation anyway.

  • We check the local obits against the database each morning so this catches a fair amount.  We also have alerts on legacy.com for obits that mention our org name (parent company of any of our sites) in the obit ("in lieu of flowers send donations to") so that catches some from outside the area as well.


    And then we run DeceasedFfinder a couple of times per year. We also had another vendor run something for us at that caught seriously old deceased records (back to the 80s I think).


    Whenever we run these services though, we always research each one to confirm the person is actually deceased (we have found a few that were not).
  • shani traum:

    We check the local obits against the database each morning so this catches a fair amount.  We also have alerts on legacy.com for obits that mention our org name (parent company of any of our sites) in the obit ("in lieu of flowers send donations to") so that catches some from outside the area as well.


    And then we run DeceasedFfinder a couple of times per year. We also had another vendor run something for us at that caught seriously old deceased records (back to the 80s I think).


    Whenever we run these services though, we always research each one to confirm the person is actually deceased (we have found a few that were not).

    How did you set up the alerts on Legacy.com? Thanks!

  • Here's the link:
    https://www.legacy.com/obit-messenger/sign-up.aspx?email=


    If the link doesn't work, you can go to legacy.com and scroll to the bottom. There's a link on the bottom right side of the page.
  • And make sure to set it up with OR not AND between the Cities.
  • Cathleen Mai:

    How often do you update deceased constituents in your database? Do you have any more efficient way than signing up for Legacy.com and scanning them one by one?

    I just learned that the BB deceased finder can be run only once a year with our subscription.



     

    I get a weekly report from the hospital with deceased folks and then cross-check that list with our database and update accordingly.  Dont catch those that are newly deceased in other hospitals or areas though...unless it was in the paper's obituary or hear from other sources.  Win some, lose some.  

  • Thank You for all your responses!
  • Hi Cathleen,


    We are subscribed to a press clipping/media monitoring service which lets us know every time our Organization name is mentioned in any media, but specifically in this case, when it is mentioned in obituaries. We use Burrellesluce, which is a New England based company. We then update our databases with this information, send out condolence cards, and set up Tributes in RE as necessary.


    We also run Deceased Finder through RE once a year, per our subscription.

     

     

  • Thank You, Erin! I will check this out. Can you share the company's name with me?
  • Erin O'Meara:

    Hi Cathleen,


    We are subscribed to a press clipping/media monitoring service which lets us know every time our Organization name is mentioned in any media, but specifically in this case, when it is mentioned in obituaries. We use Burrellesluce, which is a New England based company. We then update our databases with this information, send out condolence cards, and set up Tributes in RE as necessary.


    We also run Deceased Finder through RE once a year, per our subscription.

     

     

     

    Erin - that is pretty cool!  So is Burrellesluce the name of organization that does the press clipping/media monitoring?

  • Thank You!
  • Cathleen Mai:

    Thank You!

    9ad17a4fb45c79be6f8cc9293252c88e-huge-st

     

Categories