Current student information

Michelle Morello · February 2021

Hi everyone. I'm wondering how you handle your current student information in RE. Do you enter each student as a new record or just as a relationship to the parents and then give them their own record when the graduate?

Thanks in advance.

JoAnn Strommen · February 2021

Michelle Morello‍ - first welcome to the community!

I looked at your profile to see - you're org is a high school. That could be a factor in what you do. Hopefully other users at high schools will reply.

I'm at a university (alumni and advancement). We have requested to get student info for juniors and seniors from the university to create record for each student. So far, requests have not been approved. We have very, very limited parent records - essentially only those who donate. When we have both, we create separate records.

As you are dealing with younger constituents, I think accurate coding as students would be the key. IMO, creating a record for each student, relationship link to parents, would be the best option. I just think it would be easier to do on the front end than to go in later and create alum records from the student relationship on the parent's record or to add as graduates and not have them linked to parents.

Just my 2 cents...hopefully others with experience in this scenario from high school will share their opinions.

Michelle Morello · February 2021

Thank you JoAnn Strommen. That is my opinion as well.

We have traditionally entered students, parents and grandparents as incoming Freshmen to get all their info at the start but do not solicit students until out of the school or sometimes until they are 5 years out i.e. potentially graduated college by then.

Thanks again for your input!

Crystal Bruce · February 2021

Hi and welcome! Discussion moved to the Raiser's Edge forums for more answers. Thanks!

Miki Martin · February 2021

Hi Michelle Morello‍ and welcome to the Community! Hopefully this time my answer will post; I've had some issues the last few minutes.

I work in the Advancement Department of a Catholic high school and we are mainly working with alums. However, whenever a new class enters, we enter all students in the database, linking them with any relationship already entered (unfortunately our database doesn't link to the school's system). This would be sisters, mothers, aunts, grandmothers, etc. since we're an all-girls school. If a student's mom did not attend we enter the father and link him (mom is then the spouse).

I've created a Parent address type, and we mark their preferred address as inactive until they graduate. We also utilize Solicit Codes Do Not Mail, Do Not Email and Do Not Solicit to be sure they're not included in various queries and lists. Having the Parent address type has been crucial to our mailing list for our magazine, as now I can just exclude those living at home so we only mail one to a household.

We have a Constituent Code of Current Student (and Current Parent) we use while they're attending NDA. Once they graduate that becomes Alumnae (and Former Parent). Since I started almost a year ago I am entering dates in those codes, as well. Since not all of our students do graduate, I have added a Non-Grad Constituent Code so we can see when a girl may have attended. Some women are still involved with our school even though they ended up having to transfer.

Hope this helps!

Gina Smith 2 · February 2021

Hi Michelle,

We are a K-12 school and although we don't solicit students, we do add them as constituents in RE when they enroll in our school. We also make both parents (and all grandparents if applicable) constituents.

Years ago, we had students as non-constituent records and converted them to constituent records when they graduated. We found this to be a tedious process, and I believe our original transition happened around our first integration implementation between RE and Education Edge.

We now use Connect RE to sync with Core. I believe (its been a bit since we implemented integration) that with this integration, it is a requirement that the students have their own records. You do, however, get a choice of whether to give each parent a constituent record, or just one parent.

Aside from the integration issues, there are at least a couple of benefits I can think of off the top of my head.

Special grade/campus lists for targeted communication. We keep current grade level info on the Attributes/Custom Field, and several times a year, this gives us the opportunity to run grade level lists for targeted communication from the Development department, or sometimes facilitate competition between grade levels.

Search student record to find a parent record. The RE db view search option does not give you the option to search for non-constituent records. So, if you are searching for a family/parent, but don't know the parent's name(s), but you do know the student name, you'll be able to find the student record and use the relationships tab to identify the parent.

There may be other advantages, as well. These are the top ones I can think of at the moment.

Feel free to reach out if you have any specific questions. Good luck!

Brenda Ryther · February 2021

Hi Michelle.

I also work at a Catholic high school and my procedure for this is pretty much the same as Miki Martin's. Our alumni are our biggest constituent group so we establish a student record as soon as they enroll and use the same record once they are alumni. With a student record, I add all the do not mail, solicit, etc codes until they graduate. I also connect any constituent relationships with them right away. We use this information for family legacies. Once a current parent's student graduate, they become a Past Parent but we keep all records in tact.

Judy Spigarelli · February 2021

I've mostly worked in Higher Ed, but joined high school almost a year ago. As of this year, we will be adding students as Freshman. Our database does not have students linked to parents, only the parent was added when the student started. I'm guessing it was a lot of work and there was only one person for both Alumni Relations and RE work. I've already found that several alum who transferred out late in their time here still want to be connected. Not having them in the database is a challenge, so we'll start adding them as Freshman and will update their records yearly.

Michelle Morello · February 2021

Thank you, that is what we were doing also but someone recently questioned the procedure and I wanted to see what others are doing.

Carlene Johnson · February 2021

Hi Michelle,

I've been at a number of K-12 schools, currently at a Catholic boys high school, previously at at Pre-K through 12 coed school. My practice has always been to add students at the time they enter the school, add full constituent relationships for EACH parent, link the student to parents, and also link the student to siblings. If grandparent info is available we link that as well. As someone else mentioned we want to track legacy information across families.

That way we follow the student through their school career, adding any pertinent info as we can about significant student accomplishments, activities, etc. in preparation for soliciting them as alumni. We also track VERY basic financial aid info - ie, did they receive it or not - so that we can bear that in mind 1) as we solicit the parents and 2) when the student becomes an alum who benefitted from financial aid or received a significant scholarship.

We have a senior class gift program and we solicit the seniors and then solicit them as young alum after graduation.

Our constituent codes are:

New Student - meaning first year at the school

New Parent - meaning this is the first year they have a student enrolled at the school

Current Student - year 2 and beyond of being a student at the school

Current Parent - year 2 and beyond of having any student at the school

Former Student - student who attended but did not graduate / left before graduating

Past Parent - no longer has any student enrolled at the school - regardless of whether a student graduated or not

Alumnus/ae - graduated from the school

We use start & end date ranges for all constituency codes as well as the date entered, date left, and date graduated on the student's education record. Education status field is Current Student, Former Student, or Graduate.

At a previous school we had Senior Systems as our enrollment database and used ImportOmatic to bring in the data during each "rollover" season. At my current school we have Blackbaud's K-12 software (CORE) and also use IOM to bring in/update our records during rollover.

Happy to answer any further questions you might have as you figure out your process!

Christine Cooke 2 · February 2021

I've been at a few high schools and currently a 2-8. Have always added the student as their own record at the time they enroll. The Student record is linked to both (or more) parent records, siblings, grandparents, other outlying relatives when we find out who they are such as aunts, uncles, cousins.

We track activities, clubs, awards throughout their career on campus under Education Attributes, being sure to add for each year they participate in something. We also track whether they received tuition assistance or not (basic yes/no).

We have a policy of not soliciting or otherwise contacting current students so they are ALWAYS left out of mailings, invitations, asks, announcements... everything. They have a Solicit Code that helps insure they will not receive anything. After they have left the school or graduate that is changed.

Helps to have all of this info because you're asking parents and grandparents -- it's helpful to know if they have one child or ten and/or if they are or have all been enrolled at your school. All of the activities helps with reunions and asks in the future when they are adults.

Current student information

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