Where Should I Store Constituents' Industry/Profession

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Jackie Cistaro
Jackie Cistaro ✭
Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Hi, we want to start storing our constituent's industry and/or profession in their records.  I work for a school, and lately we're getting alumni interested in certain internships/jobs, so we'd like to be able to reach out to people in our database who can possibly help them.  Would you suggest creating an attribute for this?  I know there is a business tab that brings you to the organization relationship, but I'm not sure I want to store a person's profession in the organizational relationship record...in some cases we might not know where our constituents are working only their field of business.  I need something that's really easy to query on, so that's why I was thinking of adding an attribute.  Thank you for any suggestions!



Jaclyn Cistaro

Golda Och Academy
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Comments

  • Paula Alionyte
    Paula Alionyte ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
    Hi Jackie, 



    I would suggest you look at the fields on Bio 2 tab. From my experience, barely any organisations use target field at the very top and tend to name it differently (speak to Blackbaud support, they should eb abel to change it for you straight away) and store the information of their choice. The "location" of the field is very convenient from my point of view. Also, you can look into using other 5 fields on Bio 2 tab to suit the organisational needs - add income. employment status, willingness to mentor etc. 



    I am not sure if you have access to it, but Volunteer tab is very useful when it comes to mentoring and volunterring activities. I would suggest you speak to Blackbaud to find out more about it, in case you might find it more functional than Bio 2.



    Hope that helps and if you have any other questions, please feel free to ask!



    Regards,

    Paula
  • Jackie Cistaro
    Jackie Cistaro ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Thank you so much, Paula!  I'm definitely going to look into getting the "target" field name changed!  I had no idea you could do that.  And I checked, and that field is something that we can still query on so that would work out well.  I'm going to talk with my co-workers about changing some of the other fields you mentioned in the Bio 2 tab...we really don't use any of them!



    --Jackie Cistaro
  • Nicole S
    Nicole S ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 3 Name Dropper Photogenic
    YOu could use an attribute or you could re-purpose one of the fields on the BIO2 tab if you aren't using them.  I've seen other organizations do this.



    Even if you don't know the business or if they are not working, you could use a placeholder as the name and still keep the info on the business button.
  • Kate Sklodowska
    Kate Sklodowska ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 1
    I too work for a school with a large alumni base. I would stongly suggest NOT keeping this in an attribute or some other field.  It should be in the primary business relationship record. If you know their industryor profession but not the name of the company you can use "UNKNOWN" as the name of the company.  Storing this data in a place separate from the business relationship means having to keep 2 sets of data synced and clean - that's a disaster waiting to happen.
  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    I agree with post that keeping data updated if it's in as attribute could be challenging.  I think business relationship would be the cleanest most logical place even without company name.



    PS - to change what is displayed for a field name you just need the user rights to do so in Configuration.  In config go to fields > Constituent, find Target and change text entered under Display.  You can do this with most fields.  Then you have option to make field required, hidden or a lookuptable.  I'd suggest a table, maybe even the same as for org type - will save you a lot of headaches when querying if data is spelled/uniformly entered.
  • Jackie Cistaro
    Jackie Cistaro ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Thanks everyone for the great suggestions! I think for now we're going to try using a field on the Bio 2 tab...this isn't really going to be used for fundraising, but of course we'll use the organizational relationship if need be. We just need something to be able to quickly query on...



    --Jackie Cistaro
  • Matt Page
    Matt Page ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Photogenic
    We currently use an attribute to categorise our corporate donors by industry type, but I also didn't know about the Bio2 option so thatnks for mentioning that Paula and Nicole,



    Matt
  • Jackie Cistaro
    Jackie Cistaro ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Actually at the end of the day yesterday, we decided to go with the attribute route instead of the Bio 2 tab option so that we can include notes (comments) if necessary...



    --Jackie Cistaro
  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen ✭✭✭✭✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    You need to do what works for you. 



    I like the industry field of Org Bio 2 tab and just edited the existing table of industries for our use.  Same field/table is available when creating org relationship records from the constit record.  Can also pull field into constit info window on gift batch just for checking / extra info.

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