Marking Constituents - Do Not Mail

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Christie Michals
Christie Michals ✭
Fourth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion

Within Raiser's Edge, how do you mark a constituent that has requested to NOT receive mail? How do you mark them as “do not mail”?

When building a query, I would like to exclude those who have requested that they not be mailed.

Thanks!

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Comments

  • Patricia Lewis
    Patricia Lewis ✭
    Ninth Anniversary First Reply

    We use Attributes (Mailing Considerations: Requested no Mail, Requested No Email) to filter these out in a query.

  • Linda Buerger
    Linda Buerger ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Name Dropper Photogenic First Reply

    I prefer using an attribute, mainly because you can add/subtract attributes in reports and mail. I create my query, or queries if I'm using segmentation in Mail, then in the Attributes tab I check “Include or Exclude Records With these Attributes”, filter on “Exclude”, Record Type “Constituent”, then list my attributes.

    This really helps to pull constituents that would normally fall into your query parameters. For instance, you're sending your fall appeal and including all donors over the last 12 months. If you have an attribute category of “Approach Restriction” with a description of “Spring Appeal Only”, you can easily remove those people from your mailing list so they do not get the fall appeal.

  • Rachel Cavalier
    Rachel Cavalier ✭
    Seventh Anniversary Facilitator 3 Name Dropper Photogenic

    For people who have asked not to receive post, we record that in the consent section which then sorts out the solicit codes (and these are what would be used to take them out of any queries etc).

  • Madeleine Holdsworth
    Madeleine Holdsworth ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic

    solicit codes. We use several. Do not solicit by mail, Do not send info by mail, etc.

  • Christine Cooke 2
    Christine Cooke 2 ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    for those that REQUEST, we put a note in Constituent Notes that says they requested to no receive mail, or solicitations or invites or phone calls or emails or all of the above so that we know it was them not us.

    Use the Solicit Codes that way it can be broken down into the areas listed above (specifics can be important in some communities). And if it is Do No Mail specifically, then the Send Mail Box on the Preferred Address is unchecked to insure that an address does not randomly show up somewhere.

  • Dariel Dixon 2
    Dariel Dixon 2 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Seventh Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Christine Cooke bCREPro:

    for those that REQUEST, we put a note in Constituent Notes that says they requested to no receive mail, or solicitations or invites or phone calls or emails or all of the above so that we know it was them not us.

    Use the Solicit Codes that way it can be broken down into the areas listed above (specifics can be important in some communities). And if it is Do No Mail specifically, then the Send Mail Box on the Preferred Address is unchecked to insure that an address does not randomly show up somewhere.

    I wanted to follow up on this idea with you @Christine Cooke bCREPro. If you are unchecking the Send Mail box, do you have another method for sending official documents like tax letters and the like? If you uncheck the send mail box, my understanding is that they would get excluded from any of the processing done by the mail functionality. Obviously, if you are exporting and creating letters from another process, then you can have more flexibility and can do what you want.

  • Christine Cooke 2
    Christine Cooke 2 ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    @Dariel Dixon – in my experience it is very rare that they would need a tax letter or statement if they are marked do not mail, because they have requested no contact they usually are not engaging in a donor capacity. And I misspoke a little - I only uncheck the Send Mail when they want no contact whatsoever. That is why there are different solicit codes. If they are Do Not Solicit but still want news or invitations to special events the Send Mail is still checked.

    For those that do have it unchecked - for things like Tax letter/statement they will come up in the pile with name only. I then look them up individually and then if indeed they need a statement I create a one-off of the cover letter and send it. That happens with the records where the folks are Anonymous gifts. Those are one-offs where I look them up and create the cover to correspond with the statement. make sense?

  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Lots of thoughts shared already.

    As a rule I do not uncheck valid addresses. Exclusions for mailing is done through solicit codes and attributes.

    You never know what can happen. With Blackbaud's data breach last year, we would have had quite a mess if we had to manually deal with manually adding hundreds of letters back in to the pull. because that box had been unchecked. So glad that was not the process here.

  • Dariel Dixon 2
    Dariel Dixon 2 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Seventh Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Christine Cooke bCREPro:

    @Dariel Dixon – in my experience it is very rare that they would need a tax letter or statement if they are marked do not mail, because they have requested no contact they usually are not engaging in a donor capacity. And I misspoke a little - I only uncheck the Send Mail when they want no contact whatsoever. That is why there are different solicit codes. If they are Do Not Solicit but still want news or invitations to special events the Send Mail is still checked.

    For those that do have it unchecked - for things like Tax letter/statement they will come up in the pile with name only. I then look them up individually and then if indeed they need a statement I create a one-off of the cover letter and send it. That happens with the records where the folks are Anonymous gifts. Those are one-offs where I look them up and create the cover to correspond with the statement. make sense?

    @Christine Cooke bCREPro That makes sense. Obviously, if the constituent is okay with not getting any correspondence including a tax letter, then unchecking the box is a good rule of thumb. It can be difficult as solicit codes can become tricky and problematic if allowed to get out of hand, and having another way to exclude these is helpful. I would probably imagine that the NVA checkbox is also checked in these cases as well.

    On a tangential thought, I've always been of the mindset that checking NVA does not always mean that the addresses may not be valid, but are invalid for our purposes, if that makes sense. The address we have may exist and the constituent may even actually live there, but if they are marked NVA, then that is a sign for everyone that these folks don't want to be mailed to. Email and phone contact may be okay though.

  • Christine Cooke 2
    Christine Cooke 2 ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    @Dariel Dixon. Yeah - that NVA box can get muddy if you don't make a decision and document it. I have always use NVA only when we know that the address is not valid. That's why relying a a combo of solicit codes and Send Mail check boxes are important. I'm not using NXT but in Database View you can have Business Rules that pop up when someone opens a record – I have them set to pop up with messages like “This person does not want to receive any mail” or “this person does not want email”. etc. I also have pop ups for deceased spouses, current board members and the folks that have given this FY YTD at our leadership gift level. It's an indicator for others that open a record and don't necessarily think to look at solicit codes

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