How are you using the Summary Notes in RENXT?

Deborah Drucker

Is anyone using the Summary Note in NXT and, if so, what kind of information are you putting in the summary?  For example, short bio, summary of relationship history with organization, or other?  I think the summary would be useful for development officers.  Thank you.

Carrie Aranda

We have let the fundraisers have some free reign with Summary Notes.  The instruction behind what should go in a Summary Note is information about the constituent (or gift, action, opportunity - they all have summary notes) that another person on our team needs to know about that constituent without having to comb through notes.  Most of it is about the relationship with the org, some tidbit facts about the donor (favorite restaurants, diet restrictions, etc) or what they like to support/attend.  Each fundraiser puts in different information but since we don't use that field for reporting, it is really a free field for them to use.  With so many restrictions about what goes in which field, they like this free-form type of field.

Michele Thompson

Our advancement team uses this area to add information that would be embarrassing to not know when making contact. An example is a major donor who suffered a spinal injury a few years back and is now paralyzed, or recently divorced from Janice. Those notes are fluid and easily changed. They are heads up type things that you would want to know without having to dig down into the relationships history, etc. Hope that helps!

Dan Snyder

We had struggled with this until Elizabeth Johnson‍ told me that those notes in NXT actually show up in database view as a note as well. So what we started doing was putting in the event bios that our researcher completes. While there is narrative information like what Michele Thompson‍ and Carrie Aranda‍ mentioned and that need eyes each time, we combine this narrative information with other things like major donor, planned giving society member, etc. that can more easily be exported and it saves our researcher a lot of time as really all she needs to update is the narrative information. At the same time, when we have a new gift officer, we have a lot of easy to access information right there for them.

Deborah Drucker

Dan Snyder‍ This is a good idea - we already have event bios which are similar to what you described - so just changing those the RENXT Summary notepad type would work well.  Thanks!