Merging Organizations

Kelli Everett

If two organizations are merging, how do you handle it? Do you merge them in Altru? I'm thinking this will alter our perception in the future of what really came from where if I move them via merge to the new company. I thought maybe creating the organization to be merged might best be recorded as a subsidiary and just marked inactive to preserve that separate giving that occurred when the organizations operated independently.  Primarily, I am concerned there is some history that may get lost by merging. Any help or insight is greatly appreciated. 

Chrissy Haskell

Hi Kelli!

This Knowledgebase article should explain the merge process to you pretty thoroughly, https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/63108

This Knowledgebase article defines the difference between the target and source constituent record when merging, https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/121119?_ga=2.55971885.721245195.1592915404-519948673.1574871289


I hope that helps!

Kelli Everett

Thank you for your response, Chrissy Haskell‍. I understand merging records, but this is a special beast. It's not as simple as merging two of the same people. This is between two businesses, one business operated independently and supported us for many years and they now have sold to a new organization that has much less support over the years. I'm concerned merging will cause us to misinterpret the past because the future user will not know that certain gifts were made when one of the two operated independently. I'm concerned if all the revenue is under the new company, we may, for example, find ourselves soliciting the new organization for gifts made by the other organization that once existed. So, I don't want to ask the new organization, for example, to renew a membership they never had but that the old organization actually made. Hopefully, I'm not the only one losing my mind over this issue..