Addressee and queries

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Cathleen Zinn
Cathleen Zinn
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in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion

Whenever I run a mailing list, if an individual relationship is married, I get both of their names on the list. Is there a way that I can just get the contact's name and not their spouse?

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  • Regina Holten
    Regina Holten
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    I guess you could ask for the PRIMARY member of a household?

  • Tamara Christensen
    Tamara Christensen
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    Maybe change the name formats?

  • Chris Nungesser
    Chris Nungesser
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    Hi @Cathleen Zinn,

    You're using Raiser's Edge, right? I haven't used Raiser's Edge for a while, but I remember there being a Head of Household processing option when doing exports or mailing lists. You can choose to mail to both members of a household. You can choose to mail to just the head of household. There is a third option about “mail to the first constituent found.” But I don't know who gets found first, so that option always seemed weird to me.

    Here is a KB article about it:

    Hope this helps.

    Chris ?

  • Cathleen Zinn
    Cathleen Zinn
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    Thanks Chris. I have been using “mail to first constituent found”, so I will try selecting Head of Household to see if that makes a difference.

  • Ray Bergman
    Ray Bergman
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    Hi Cathleen,
    If this is a Raiser's Edge question, I'd be happy to move it to the RE community for better exposure if you'd like?

  • Cathleen Zinn
    Cathleen Zinn
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    That would be great! Thank you!

  • Chris Nungesser
    Chris Nungesser
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    Hi @Cathleen Zinn,

    That's interesting. Just to help me better understand the issue, are you saying that both people have been appearing in the results as in: Jack Smith is a line in the export and Jill Smith is also a line? Or are you saying that “Jack and Jill Smith” is appearing in the export and you don't want to see both names? Does that make sense?

    If it's the second situation, I think that's just an addressee/salutations issue. You can fix that by adjusting your addressee/salutations and your export settings (for which addressee/salutation you are using). If it is the first scenario (both records are pulling into the export), then that's different.

    Using the mail to the constituent found first option, I don't think you should still be seeing both members of a household. If they are both appearing, it might be fixed by switching to mail to head of household, but, if that doesn't fix it, I might touch base with Support or your Customer Success Manager. My understanding is those head of household processing options should make it so both members do not appear (unless you pick that option, of course).

    Chris

  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
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    Or are you saying when you pull an org “contact” you get both names?

    If so that, too, is an addressee/salutation issue. Change the format selected as @Chris just described.

  • Cathleen Zinn
    Cathleen Zinn
    Seventh Anniversary 10 Comments Name Dropper Photogenic

    The addressee shows up as Mr. & Mrs. Joe Smith instead of Mr. Joe Smith. Of course this happens when there is a relationship with an individual who is married.

  • Dariel Dixon 2
    Dariel Dixon 2 Community All-Star
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    The query is pulling in the primary addressee on the record. Unless you ask it to pull in an optional addressee (provided you have one set up for this), this is the way it is designed.

    A way to fix this is to create an additional addressee and salutation type for occasions such as this. However, it is additional data entry. If the list isn't too large, it may be easier to just manually adjust them.

  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
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    When selecting the add/sal format for your records, you need to select a format that only has the one name.

    If your primary setting is pulling both names, then you can't use ‘primary.’ Our primary is just constituent, other formats pull in spouse. Exactly what to pull depends on how you have your add/sal structured.

    This KB article might help:

    I see @Dariel just replied also. Are you familiar with setting up add/sal? Do you have more than primary on your records?

  • Cathleen Zinn
    Cathleen Zinn
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    Thanks Dariel, that really helps. I will look into adding additional addressees and salutations.

  • Cathleen Zinn
    Cathleen Zinn
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    Thanks JoAnn. I appreciate your help. I will look in to adding additional addressees and salutations.

  • Chris Nungesser
    Chris Nungesser
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    Hi @Cathleen Zinn,

    @JoAnn Strommen is totally spot on.

    Sharing how my team uses Addressees/Salutations (just in case any of this is helpful). We use several addressee/salutation formats for different scenarios. We have formal and informal formats. And as a default our addressee/salutation formats include spouses, but we also create addressees/salutations for certain constituents where we have an individual relationship (e.g. - board members, business contacts, elected officials, etc.). We use those individual formats for anyone where we would only want to pull in the one person and not their spouse.

    A little off topic, but just to share, my team even has a custom addressee/salutation entry called Donor Recognition that we use for the donor roll in our annual report. This is helpful when a donor asks to be recognized outside of the traditional addressee type format - such as "The Jones Family".

    Good luck! You got this!

    Chris

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