What do you do when a donor organization changes its name?

Kelly Olson

We have had a couple of instances where an organization that donates to us has changed their name.  My first thought is to update the constituent record with the new name and put the old name as an alias.  But by doing so, all the historical revenue that came in under the old name is now part of the record with the new name which can be misleading.  We lose track of which donations were made under which name.  So now I am thinking about having 2 constituents - one with the old name and one with the new name - and somehow tying them together.  Does anyone have any suggestions on how to cleanly track organization name changes?  Thanks.

Tina Edwards

Hi Kelly:


We do the same. I change the name and add the old one as an alias. I am curious why you want to track them separately though?


Tina

Dawn DeFrank

I've had the same question, and at first, I had the same thoughts. However, I decided to de-activate the old and create a new record. In this case, it was a small business that had two co-owners. The business changed it's name, and I believe it only has one owner now. I opted for the two records so we have a record of what was given under the co-owned business vs what will be given under the singly-owned business. 

Kelly Olson

Thanks Dawn and Tina.  I can see there being confusion in the future if a donor wall lists the old name but the revenue is listed under the new name in the database.  So I am going to go the 2 record route so that it is very clear which name was in use when the revenue was received.  I will make the original record inactive and I also created relationships of "New entity" and "Former entity" so that I can link the 2 organizations with a relationship.  


Thanks for the input.

Kelly