tracking grad year of parent's student

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Bob Wiebe
Bob Wiebe
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in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion

Our department is hoping to improve the way we invite parents of graduates to support our university.   We will want to focus our attention on parents of certain grad years, e.g. 5 years out, 10 years out from grad. What is the quickest way to do that?  A query for this purpose might get quite convoluted. We could create an attribute category "Parent of Graduate" with a series of drop down  grad years in the description.  We could include the grad year in our constituency code, e.g. Parent of Graduate 2003, but we don't generally clutter our constituency codes with year designations. Open to ideas...

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  • Jim Wise
    Jim Wise Blackbaud Employee
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    Bob Wiebe:

    Our department is hoping to improve the way we invite parents of graduates to support our university.   We will want to focus our attention on parents of certain grad years, e.g. 5 years out, 10 years out from grad. What is the quickest way to do that?  A query for this purpose might get quite convoluted. We could create an attribute category "Parent of Graduate" with a series of drop down  grad years in the description.  We could include the grad year in our constituency code, e.g. Parent of Graduate 2003, but we don't generally clutter our constituency codes with year designations. Open to ideas...

    I think that you are on the right track with constituent attribute. This will give you more flexibility tracking and reporting on these students and their parents. The constituent code should only define the constituent's relationship to your organization (parent, student, etc.). I was able to easily group the parents of graduates based on the year that was in the description of the attribute. Another option: If you have a constituent record for the parent and a relationship for the student, list the class of year in the education section of the relationship record. You could then query based on the relationship (son, daughter, etc.) and the class of year (2019, 2020, etc.). This would negate the need for an attribute. Hope this helps! Jim Wise Senior Customer Support Analyst - Fundraising Solutions Blackbaud, Inc.
  • Christine Cooke 2
    Christine Cooke 2
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    James Wise:
    I think that you are on the right track with constituent attribute. This will give you more flexibility tracking and reporting on these students and their parents. The constituent code should only define the constituent's relationship to your organization (parent, student, etc.). I was able to easily group the parents of graduates based on the year that was in the description of the attribute. Another option: If you have a constituent record for the parent and a relationship for the student, list the class of year in the education section of the relationship record. You could then query based on the relationship (son, daughter, etc.) and the class of year (2019, 2020, etc.). This would negate the need for an attribute. Hope this helps! Jim Wise Senior Customer Support Analyst - Fundraising Solutions Blackbaud, Inc.
    James is on the right track. I have worked in several schools and must say -- for reporting purposes it does help to put the student grad year as a constit attribute on the parent record. For a lot of instances, just going to the relationship and finding the student's primary alum info grad year is sufficient, but with some reporting and export purposes it really does help to have the year in the parent attribute. The constit code should not include the year, but can be Parent-Current and Parent-of Alum, and get changed when they student graduates or transfers out. If you would like to discuss it in more detail, I would be happy to share my working experience with this sort of situation.
  • Candace Chesler
    Candace Chesler
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    Bob Wiebe:

    Our department is hoping to improve the way we invite parents of graduates to support our university.   We will want to focus our attention on parents of certain grad years, e.g. 5 years out, 10 years out from grad. What is the quickest way to do that?  A query for this purpose might get quite convoluted. We could create an attribute category "Parent of Graduate" with a series of drop down  grad years in the description.  We could include the grad year in our constituency code, e.g. Parent of Graduate 2003, but we don't generally clutter our constituency codes with year designations. Open to ideas...

    Bob - If the students have their own constituent record, and you have the alumni module - I would strongly suggest you follow James' second suggestion. Make sure the student's are coded with your school as Primary Alumni and have a Graduating year. Then you can build queries based on the relationship with a graduate based on their graduation year. Placing an attribute on the parent record would work - but it would get complicated when parents have more than one graduate - and it can clutter up your attribute table. Much cleaner, in my opinion, to use the alumni module on the student record and let the database do the work. Let us know which way you decided to go! Candace Chesler
  • Samantha Horoschak
    Samantha Horoschak
    Ancient Membership First Comment Facilitator Level 1
    Christine Cooke:
    James is on the right track. I have worked in several schools and must say -- for reporting purposes it does help to put the student grad year as a constit attribute on the parent record. For a lot of instances, just going to the relationship and finding the student's primary alum info grad year is sufficient, but with some reporting and export purposes it really does help to have the year in the parent attribute. The constit code should not include the year, but can be Parent-Current and Parent-of Alum, and get changed when they student graduates or transfers out. If you would like to discuss it in more detail, I would be happy to share my working experience with this sort of situation.
    I am in a similar situation. Prior to my employment, agency had been tracking everything in Constituent Codes (we have over 200 active ones that I am trying to get down to a reasonable number...) I have just finished setting up a "Parent, Class of" attribute, with a drop down table of years as choices. This can be assigned more than once, for any parents that have more than 1 kid at our school. But what do you do if they withdraw rather than proceed all the way to graduation? Say I want a report of parents of class of 2016 giving, but 2 members transferred to other schools? Do I remove the attribute, since you can't add an end date? Do I create a new option in my table "withdrawn" rather than 2016? Or ?? (In case you can't guess, we don't have the alumni module, or EE. Just RE.)
  • Christine Cooke 2
    Christine Cooke 2
    Ancient Membership 1000 Comments 500 Likes Name Dropper
    Samantha Horoschak:
    I am in a similar situation. Prior to my employment, agency had been tracking everything in Constituent Codes (we have over 200 active ones that I am trying to get down to a reasonable number...) I have just finished setting up a "Parent, Class of" attribute, with a drop down table of years as choices. This can be assigned more than once, for any parents that have more than 1 kid at our school. But what do you do if they withdraw rather than proceed all the way to graduation? Say I want a report of parents of class of 2016 giving, but 2 members transferred to other schools? Do I remove the attribute, since you can't add an end date? Do I create a new option in my table "withdrawn" rather than 2016? Or ?? (In case you can't guess, we don't have the alumni module, or EE. Just RE.)
    I also have a Class of in constit attributes. As for your question about what to do if they withdraw/do not graduate and what to do. I leave the attribute, otherwise when you are reporting on past parents, whether withdrawn or graduated, your number will not be accurate. Depending on the school I have worked in (there have been 4) we have had either two or three constit codes for parents. Parent-Current, Parent of Alum (graduated) and optional Parent-Withdrawn. Then when you are reporting on past parent giving, you can pull Parent of Alum and Parent-Withdrawn so that you get the full amount collected in those years. If you removed the attribute just because they withdrew, you will not be able to do this. So leave it there and when pulling queries/reports, rely on the constit code and the attribute to pull reports/stats.
  • Samantha Horoschak
    Samantha Horoschak
    Ancient Membership First Comment Facilitator Level 1
    Christine Cooke:
    I also have a Class of in constit attributes. As for your question about what to do if they withdraw/do not graduate and what to do. I leave the attribute, otherwise when you are reporting on past parents, whether withdrawn or graduated, your number will not be accurate. Depending on the school I have worked in (there have been 4) we have had either two or three constit codes for parents. Parent-Current, Parent of Alum (graduated) and optional Parent-Withdrawn. Then when you are reporting on past parent giving, you can pull Parent of Alum and Parent-Withdrawn so that you get the full amount collected in those years. If you removed the attribute just because they withdrew, you will not be able to do this. So leave it there and when pulling queries/reports, rely on the constit code and the attribute to pull reports/stats.
    Thank you- parent alumn and parent withdrawn sound like worthy additions to my attribute table. As we've added too many thing sin the past, I'm trying to be extra judicious as we move forward...

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