Organization constituent record as proxy for committee names?

Dave Billnitzer:

 Hi all:

How do others manage their lists of committees within RE?  Until today I had assumed the best practice would be an Individual Constituent record that had an attribute that indicated committee membership of one sort or another.  Ex:  Constituent code = Board member, with an attribute like Fundraising committee or Executive committee, etc.  And to find your current committee members you simply query for the appropriate constituent attribute.

Today I discovered that some time before me this company was creating Organization constituent records to represent a committee, and then individual constituents were assigned to that organization via relationships / reciprocals.   I hadn't seen that approach before - trying to imagine the plus / minus to that way of doing it.  

Thoughts one way or the other; good, bad, indifferent?

 

We assign a Committee Attribute in the constituent record. Committee membership can change every year and we just change the attribute. Each of our committee members also get a Note in their record that lists the various committees they've served on and corresponding dates. So there is a more detailed record of their service with us in case we ever need to call upon that information. But we keep only current committee memberships listed in attributes. I think that is the easiest way, I think tracking it through an organization record/relationships would make it challenging to get the information out. The nice thing about keeping it in attributes is that most of the functions in RE allow you to filter by attributes so it's easy to pull a giving report or mailing labels, etc. I think recording it under the individual record/attribute makes the most sense.

Jason Black:

Dave,

We manage committees using org records.  One of the benefits I see is being able to track history.  For example, I get requests from our Alumni Relations office for a list of past board members who served between two specific dates.  Having these relationships built with start and end dates makes this kind of list possible - I don't know how we'd do it otherwise.  We can also include positions, such as chairman, president, secretary, etc. for various committees, similar to what we do for employment relationships.

Jason - This is exactly what works for us as well with this approach. 

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  Also, we're able to add staff members who are responsible for the board/committee. 
  
  
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  And you can create attributes for more detailed information (ex: Board term: 1st, 2nd)
  
  

The only tradeoff is a bit more complexity in your queries to pull the members. 

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  To somewhat simplify this, we created a specific constituent code for this "class" of records.
  
  
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    So in our queries we can say (for example): give me anyone who has an individual relationship of "Director" to an organization that has a constituency code of "Foundation-Board".
    
    

Dave Billnitzer:

 Hi Gina:

So are you saying that you created a handful of organization constituent codes that apply to committees? 

ex:  org constit code  = "executive committee"   or   "fundraising committee"  or  "outreach committee"   etc

 

and then you assign individuals to each organization with a position, and a relationship and reciprocal?  

ex:  "committee member"   or    "committee chair"   or   "committee secretary"  

 

Dave -

 Sorry I didn't explain this part very well.  I created constituency codes that would help me "group" the types of boards we have: 

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  Charitable Foundation Board (this is for all our boards - statewide board and our other 8 regional boards)
  
  
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  Charitable Foundation Committee (this is the code for ALL our associated committees)
  
  

So each of these board/committee org records has one of these constituency codes.

I then set up relationships to all the members, with specific relationship/reciprocal "terminology" 

  - For our statewide board - use the term "Director"

  - For our regional boards - use the term "Board Member"

  - For our committees - use the term "Member"

So when I need to pull all our regional board members, I can structure the query:  give me all the individuals who have an organization relationship of the type "board member" and have a relationship to the organizations that have the constituency code of "Charitable Foundation Board".  Because I use the terminology specific for the type of board, I can get at these various groups with the combiniation of relationship/reciprocal and the constituency code.

If I didn't set up the constituency codes, I would need to specify all 8 regional board member records each time I wanted to pull all the regional boards.  So it's helpful if you need to group these various data elements together.

We evolved this particular approach because of the way we needed to slice/dice/group our data. So it would just depend on your data and how you need to work with it.

Hope that's a bit more clear?

Dave Billnitzer:

 Hi Gina:

 Yes, that made perfect sense.  It never would have occurred to me to use org records to represent committees  - very clever.   I had been toying with the idea of using the Events module (committee members would be participants; a coordinator would be the staff person who assists the committee, and that way I could use the scheduler to plan out several months' worth of committee meetings, and it would be easy to maintain records of everybody's attendance.    Any thoughts about that, pro or con?. 

Dave -

We pull our board and committee information constantly, so having the org records structured with members makes it a stable and visible structure that you can then use in queries, exports and reports.

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  In Query, I have a folder called ^TEMPLATES and in that folder, I create queries for each of the boards and committees (^BOARD-Directors-Current ; ^BOARD-Directors Curr+Former; ^COMMITTEE-Fiscal Policy Committee-Current, etc.....)
  
  
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  Our RE admins are familiar with these standard ^TEMPLATE queries for all the groups or combination of groups.
  
  

We also then set up our board meetngs as events, and we globally add in the members (using the Global Add/Participants) based on the board and committee standard queries we have already set up. 

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  Our RE admins are also familiar with this process, so they can set up the board meetings and globally add the members themselves.
  
  

This has worked best for our organization, so the org records are a very VISIBLE way of looking at the boards/committees and seeing at a glance who all the current and former members are. I would probably opt for this way vs. setting them up as an event with participants - if someone were lookingn for the Board of Directors I don't think you'd think of looking in the events module for that info?

Good luck -- let us know what you decide!

Renee Lipman:

I'm also interested in learning more about this.  I also want to be able to track meeting attendance so that at the end of the year I can see which trustees attended which board and committee meetings. Is this easy to do using org records and how does it work?

Renee - Here are the basics of how I do this for my org:

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   Create the board/committee org record and add the members as relationships (with position, date from/date to, attributes, etc. - whatever you need).
   
   
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   Create standard queries for all your boards/committee members or combinations
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     ex: For Board of Directors, your query should be: All constituents who have an organization relationship of "Board Member" on the specific record of "NH Charitable Foundation Board of Directors".
     
     
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     ex: For Former Board of Directors: All constituents who have an org relationship of "Board Member-Former" on the specific record ...."
     
     
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     Set up a version of these queries that are "Individual" queries (not constituent).
     
     
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     If you choose to identify former members by the Date From/Date To fields, that means that you cannot put FUTURE Date to fields in. 
     
     
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       ex: We like to put the entire term of our members, so the date from is when they started (1/1/2012) and the date to is the date when their term is due to end (12/31/2018).  Since we do it this way, we CANNOT identify former board members by the criteria (and Date To is not blank).  So instead, we have the relationship of "Board Member" and "Board Member-Former" so we can pull our former members.
       
       
3. 
   
   Set up events for all your board/committee meetings that you want to track.
   
   
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   Using Global Add, add the board/committee members as registrants to your board/committee meeting event. Use you individual queries when you do your global add (that's why they need to be of this type).
   
   

So you are maintaning your board/committee org records by adding new members and making old members "former", and the standard queries that you have set up will always be updated - so once you get that all set up there's really no more to do.

And adding the members to the board/committee members can be handled quickly using the Global Add, so that's also easy.

Hope this helps! Feel free to contact me if you want more info.

Rachel - We do not have the Volunteer module but do have Events, so that's why we set the board meeting up as events.

It's great to open up a board member's constituent record and easily see which board meetings they attended/did not attend.