Parents and Children with Same Address

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Nikki Liptak
Nikki Liptak ✭
Ancient Membership First Reply
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Twice a year we mail an alumni newsletter. The problem is that many of our alumni also have parents who are alumni and we have the same mailing address for both the parents and children. My question is do you mail one newsletter to EACH alumni or do you mail only ONE per household. If you mail only ONE per household how can I get that as a label for my newsletter mailing. I know that if both the husband and wife are alumni I can use the head of household, but what if it is parents and children. Thank you for any information. Nikki
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  • Jenny Physioc
    Jenny Physioc ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Nikki Liptak:
    Twice a year we mail an alumni newsletter. The problem is that many of our alumni also have parents who are alumni and we have the same mailing address for both the parents and children. My question is do you mail one newsletter to EACH alumni or do you mail only ONE per household. If you mail only ONE per household how can I get that as a label for my newsletter mailing. I know that if both the husband and wife are alumni I can use the head of household, but what if it is parents and children. Thank you for any information. Nikki

     To "The Stephens Family" is what I would suggest.  Add the add/sal so it's easy to choose your needed choice.

     

  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Nikki Liptak:
    Twice a year we mail an alumni newsletter. The problem is that many of our alumni also have parents who are alumni and we have the same mailing address for both the parents and children. My question is do you mail one newsletter to EACH alumni or do you mail only ONE per household. If you mail only ONE per household how can I get that as a label for my newsletter mailing. I know that if both the husband and wife are alumni I can use the head of household, but what if it is parents and children. Thank you for any information. Nikki

    You could do addressee of family.

    Personally, if it's an alumni newsletter and both parent and child are alumni I'd sent them each a copy.  I guess I'd think of them as adults and if I'm working on creating donor relationship with child, I'd want them to feel they are an entity separate from their parents.  Also, while that home address may be what you have on record, they may have moved and parents may be keeping a mail pile for them or forwarding it on.   That's just my opinion.    Budgeting may be a factor if you're talking large quanitites of this situation.

    To pull them, I would think each alum should have a constitiuent code of alum and use that to pull.  Beyond HOH, RE is not going to catch two to same address unless you have somehow identified with solicit codes or do manual clean-up. 

  • Denise Covington
    Denise Covington ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 2 Photogenic
    JoAnn Strommen:

    You could do addressee of family.

    Personally, if it's an alumni newsletter and both parent and child are alumni I'd sent them each a copy.  I guess I'd think of them as adults and if I'm working on creating donor relationship with child, I'd want them to feel they are an entity separate from their parents.  Also, while that home address may be what you have on record, they may have moved and parents may be keeping a mail pile for them or forwarding it on.   That's just my opinion.    Budgeting may be a factor if you're talking large quanitites of this situation.

    To pull them, I would think each alum should have a constitiuent code of alum and use that to pull.  Beyond HOH, RE is not going to catch two to same address unless you have somehow identified with solicit codes or do manual clean-up. 

    I see the advantage of sending the entire household a separate bulletin, however, we can have 1 - 6 children alumni plus parents being alumni, so we chose to send 1 per household.

    I export my alumni to Excel and am sure to include constituent code and primary education class of field. (This is assuming that you have the Alumni module and that your addresses are standardized as we do).

    Once in Excel, I sort by address and class of (you can do address, const code and class of if you choose - say if you are pulling an annual report and former parents may be in there as well).  Then I add a column for dup?  Then I use the formula if address = address of next row, then dup, else unique.  I copy all and paste special --> values only.  Then I can re-sort by dup or unique and remove all the dups.  The original sort of your excel file will let you determine which record to keep.  For instance to send to the oldest alum, then your need to make sure your sort gets your oldest alum at the bottom of the family listing.  If you want parents to trump alum, then be sure former parents are at the bottom.  Or if alumni trump former parents, then your alum need to be at the bottom.

  • Alan Kay
    Alan Kay ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1
    Nikki Liptak:
    Twice a year we mail an alumni newsletter. The problem is that many of our alumni also have parents who are alumni and we have the same mailing address for both the parents and children. My question is do you mail one newsletter to EACH alumni or do you mail only ONE per household. If you mail only ONE per household how can I get that as a label for my newsletter mailing. I know that if both the husband and wife are alumni I can use the head of household, but what if it is parents and children. Thank you for any information. Nikki

     

    We have a similar situation but with registrants to events/activities where the parents can register for an event as well as their children. This of course means we have (for e.g.) husband, wife and maybe two or more children all with the same address.  HOH takes care of the spousal links but it's the children that we need to identify to prevent multiple mailings going to the same address.

     

    FYI .. Registration to our events is (mostly) via NetCommunity which creates a constituent record for each registrant.

     

    We use Solicit codes to record negative choices from the constituent and a

  • Melissa Graves 3
    Melissa Graves 3 ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Alan Kay:

     

    We have a similar situation but with registrants to events/activities where the parents can register for an event as well as their children. This of course means we have (for e.g.) husband, wife and maybe two or more children all with the same address.  HOH takes care of the spousal links but it's the children that we need to identify to prevent multiple mailings going to the same address.

     

    FYI .. Registration to our events is (mostly) via NetCommunity which creates a constituent record for each registrant.

     

    We use Solicit codes to record negative choices from the constituent and a

    I would use a special solicit code for these folks. Something identifying them as a minor that you can periodically review. Collecting birthdates for minors is highly recommended so you can remove this status after 18 when they are likely to move out and NCOA may give you a new address.

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