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Blackbaud CRM Higher Education Product Advisory Group (Higher Ed PAG)

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How does your institution track certificate programs?

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Melissa Mason
Melissa Mason ✭
Tenth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
in High Education Program Advisory Group (HE PAG)
Yale has had certificate programs we offer that are not degrees. Overtime some of these become degree programs; others do not. We consider these folks alumni in both instances. We currently use the education record to track, but for a long time have marked the education status as "incomplete". Unfortunately, this does not give someone an alumni constituency due to the status. We have a user-defined "alumn-non grad" constituency that we manually apply in these instances as well as others (withdrawals after certain duration of matriculation are alums too). We're curious how others track these kinds of programs.
  • Do you give them an education record?
  • If so, do they get a status of "graduated" even though no degree?
  • Do you track in another way?
Any information would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks, Melissa

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  • Travis Soyer
    Travis Soyer ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic

    Melissa,

     

    We
    also have certificate programs at TCU and capture them in
    CRM.  Although we do not consider certificate recipients as
    true alumni, we do give them a Constituency of “Alumni – No Degree”
    and engage with them much like we would traditional alums  The
    certificates come through our interface with PeopleSoft and are
    captured as an education record in CRM.  The status on this
    record is “Completed” (we customized the list of
    statuses).

     

    I’d
    be happy to discuss more if you’d like.

     

    Travis

     





  • Rick Root 2
    Rick Root 2 ✭
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Hi Melissa,


    Here at UNC-Chapel Hill, from a fundraising perspective, we consider anyone who attended UNC an Alumnus once their status is either Graduated or Incomplete, and that includes those who were in Certificate programs.


    We have an item in the "Educational Program" code table called Certificate.


    We have configured the Alumnus Constituency status to be applied any time the status is "Incomplete" or "Graduated" because we basically throw everyone who has completed at least one semester into the "Alumnus" category and treat them as such from a fundraising perspective.


    So, our version of CRM counts them as Students while attending and as alumnus when Graduated or Incomplete, but not Honorary or Unknown.


    We technically refer to these folks as XMAT's but they still get the constituency of Alumnus.

     
  • Melissa Mason
    Melissa Mason ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
    Hi Rick - 

    We have an educational department for the certificate.I'm intrigued by the fact that you were able to configure the Alumnus constituency to be triggered by the Incomplete status. Is this a customization? We were told this was not possible when we first implemented CRM 2.91 but would definitely be interested in (and would solve our certificate confusion potentially).


    Thanks, Melissa
  • Melissa Mason
    Melissa Mason ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
    Hi Travis-


    This is helpful. We were hoping to vet what we are doing now to see if anyone had a better solution. It looks like we are doing the same thing though I like your constituency name "Alumni - No Degree" better!


    Thanks, Melissa
  • Rick Root 2
    Rick Root 2 ✭
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic

    We have an educational department for the certificate.I'm intrigued by the fact that you were able to configure the Alumnus constituency to be triggered by the Incomplete status. Is this a customization? We were told this was not possible when we first implemented CRM 2.91 but would definitely be interested in (and would solve our certificate confusion potentially).

    Melissa, we did build a customization - a data list and an edit form - that allows us to change the implied constituency by changing the information in the EDUCATIONALHISTORYSTATUS table


    I thought this was out of the box functionality, but I guess it was a customization built right at go live 5 years ago by my predecessor.


    Rick

     

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