Constituency Code Hierarchy

Shawnalis Cusato:

For those of you who have a hierarchy to your Constituent Codes, I have a question:  How and why did you do it?

How did you set it up?  Have you ever changed the hierarchy, and if so how did you re-set it up?  How do you maintain it?  How much time does it take?  Why did you decide to do this?  Because of reporting, querying, mailing needs?  If so, can you give me examples?

We change Current Students to Alumni after graduation every year and add Current Parent to some existing records at the beginning of the school year, but we don't have a hierarchy except that Current Parent should be first.  I'm exploring this option because we have trouble reporting on giving by Constituent Code. This seems like a big step to take so any advice or recommendations would be welcome.

Thanks.

 

 We are a small college and therefore have a relatively easy hierarchy.  Unlike JoAnn, I do change to Board Member as Primary for those on the board so it shows up on Bio Tab 1 for everyone else to see when opening a record. Alumni is next.   We also have faculty, staff, "friends" (non alumni interested in the school), student and org types of Foundation, Corporation, Organization, School.  If someone leaves the board they go back to being an alumni or friend but get a secondary code of "former board".  Same with faculty or staff with secondary codes of former faculty and former staff added.  Students of course become alumni when they graduate.  It really doesn't take much time, a little after the annual board meeting with changes there, graduating the students in May and thinking to make the change when a staff member leaves.  As a college we don't deal too much with parents.  That would add to the time considerably  I would think. 

Shawnalis Cusato:

For those of you who have a hierarchy to your Constituent Codes, I have a question:  How and why did you do it?

How did you set it up?  Have you ever changed the hierarchy, and if so how did you re-set it up?  How do you maintain it?  How much time does it take?  Why did you decide to do this?  Because of reporting, querying, mailing needs?  If so, can you give me examples?

We change Current Students to Alumni after graduation every year and add Current Parent to some existing records at the beginning of the school year, but we don't have a hierarchy except that Current Parent should be first.  I'm exploring this option because we have trouble reporting on giving by Constituent Code. This seems like a big step to take so any advice or recommendations would be welcome.

Thanks.

 

 I have been at three high schools and now a K-8.  My experience has been that each has done a lot of reporting by constituency group.  So therefore, we establish and maintain a hierarchy.  It is utilized for reporting mainly, but it has sort of a trickle down affect and also gets used to segment appeals, since each constituency has a different sort of relationship with us. (a current parent has a different involvement than a parent of alum or a board member or a grandparent etc.)  So the appeals are approached based on their relationship, therefore the hierarchy helps with segmenting.

I would rather establish and know that it's not another field that has to be changed, I would rather set it up on the bio 2 tab and change the few that change once a year at the beginning of the fiscal year.

Shawnalis Cusato:

 Christine, I have some follow-up questions, if you don't mind. 

Can you tell me a couple of reports where the CC hierarchy matters to your org?

Do you break an appeal into CC 'mini'-appeals, or do you have one appeal that you use packages based on CC's?

At the multiple places you've worked, have you had to re-organize the CCs on constituent records or were they already set in the proper hierarchy? If you had to re-organize, did you do it through import?

Thanks for your input.

 

-  The Comparisons and Summaries report.  Because our committees and boards want to know what percentage of participation and the dollar amount that Current Parents vs, Parents of Alums vs. Alumni vs. Board are giving through the year and want it compared to the year before YTD.

As far as the appeals it has depended on the org/school and who was using what kind of strategy.  I have relied on using one Appeal for each time of the year and when it is compared to the year before, it is date driven in reporting.  So FY 2013-2014 Fall Appeal is one column on reporting and the other column is 2014-2015 is the second column.  Sometimes, depending on the depth of reporting it goes back 3 to five years, and I pull by the calendar date and if they are digging into which appeal, then use Fall Appeal, Spring Appeal, End of Calendar Year Appeal, End of FY Appeal, Valentine Appeal and so on.  We have not packaged really.  At some of the schools there have been assigned solicitors, so that when the gift comes in for someone assigned to them, a report can be pulled so the person assigned to relationship build with those donors can keep track of who has given and who needs some more attention/follow up.

So

Shawnalis Cusato:

 Thank you!!  What a wealth of information!  And to think I didn't expect a reply!

Yes, the participation is exactly what we can't seem to get without an inordinate amount of work, and what promises to be easy to get if we give the CCs a hierarchy.

Have you found any situations where you wanted the CCs in a different order 'just for this one report/mailing/constituent'?

 There has maybe been once when there was a hiccup in a mailing and we changed the order.  But it was easy enough to adjust through segmenting and did not have to touch the CCs.  That is what makes the segmenting tool so fab [:)]