Deceased Record Finder Results

Stepheni Jordan

Hi there! My orgnaization recently purchased the DRF service and I have the results back which seem a little daunting. There are over 7,000 records that came back as needing to be marked as Deceased. I have segmented the results by the classifications given, A and B and C, and have been importing them in small groups. My concern is that I have come across several records where the primary constituent, who is listed first in the record, is still alive but the spouse, listed under Spouse, is the person who is actually deceased. The result from DRF is that the primary constituent on the record has passed and yet it really is the spouse who is dead. Please note, these spouses to which I am referring DO NOT have a separate record of their own. They are solely lised under Spouse on the Bio 1 tab.


Has anyone else encountered this problem? And if so, how did you go about working through that issue without looking up records with a spouse, one-by-one?

JoAnn Strommen

Whew!  We recently ran it as well. I did not know that could/would occur for non-constituent records. I may have made a poor assumption that the results were for the constituent and I'm going to want to scream or cry!!!!. LOL


I would definitely be chatting with support about that. If you do, please share any insights here.  

Stepheni Jordan

Hi JoAnn Strommen,


I did go ahead and give BB a call. From what I understand, becuase I ran the DRF on the entire database and didn't use a specific query or didn't select only Individuals durin the initial submission, it could and indeed did pick up those spousal records on a constitiuent record, that didn't have a separate record. So... I am in the process of going through the 1000 or so records I already updated and checking to make sure I am not makring the primary constituent deceased when it is really the spouse. 


In hindsight, I would have just done a query for maybe all of the records added in the past 5-7 years as a starting point. But I did consult 3 different Analytics team members, before I submitted the data for processing, who never mentioned running a query for the DRF to just review a subset of donors and not the whole database. 


If anyone has any tips or insights, please let me know!! 

JoAnn Strommen

Okay, you have me a bit concerned as to whom our results apply to so I contacted support as well.  I submitted all records as well and want to know if there was a setting where we chose different options. 


Initial response I received as that results apply to constituents with a record. I shared your comments Stepheni Jordan‍ and link to this forum thread. He is looking into it and will email me with findings. Will post when I hear back.

Leslie Choitz

Stepheni Jordan‍ and JoAnn Strommen‍,


Wow!  I cannot imagine getting back 7,000 matches.  I feel for you and completely identify with the frustration.  While the volume of my numbers cannot compare, here is what my experience has been. 


We first ran DeceasedRecordFinder in 2017.  I submitted more than 23,000 names. Because there was a limit to the number of records that could be submitted, the file was based on a series of queries and did not include non-constituents.  Nearly 1,400 possible matches were returned.  I had been warned by a user at another organization to check the results before importing anything.  I was dismayed and very frustrated that the results came back in a random order that could not be duplicated, making it very difficult to match them to what had been sent in.  The reports also do not have the constituent ID number or the address, making identification even more difficult. The BB support person I talked to was completely surprised that I would care what order the records were in.


The very first record I checked was wrong. The person on the DRF report - it might have been coded "death certificate" - was a regular donor and had just sent us a donation.  Clearly she was not the same person.  After spot checking some others and finding errors and ambiguities, I decided that each record had to be independently verified, if possible. 


I saved the report as both a pdf and an Excel file so that I make notes as I go and to keep track of where I am.


I use a variety of websites and searches to try to find obituary listings that confirm that it is actually an accurate match.  Legacy.com is helpful, but not all newspapers use the service or they archive the obituary after a period of time and you can only read the first 25 words or so.  A Google search with <first name> <last name> "obituary" and the state(s) where the constituent lived often turns up the actual obituary or other useful information.


Rather than run any automatic update, I enter the information manually on the constituent record, including putting the code in Attributes and a Comment about whether it was verified.  That first time through in 2017 took several weeks.  But it was worth it and cleared up a lot of questions.  I have run DRF twice since then.  The number of names returned each time have been greatly reduced (last year it returned 290, this year it was 124) and the results have been more accurate. 


Perhaps someone else will have a less laborious solution.  I wish you luck. 

JoAnn Strommen

Here is the reply I received from support on running Deceased Finder and whether it is looking only at constituent.  Info doesn't thrill me.  Don't have time to review every record that was 'death certificate'/relative verified. 

I was able to reach out to some internal resources on my side regarding your DeceasedFinder question.  I can confirm that DeceasedFinder only reviews Constituents with records.  In the example that you mentioned, DeceasedFinder may have thought the Constituent record was the spouse record and returned it as a potential to be reviewed as Deceased.  Therefore, these must be reviewed individually, and not just accept all of the results.  For example, the Husband and Wife live at the same address, and have the same last name.  Say that one is Sarah and one is Sam, those would be similar records and DeceasedFinder might not be sure which one is deceased based on the available data, so Sarah is the spouse who is deceased, but Sam was potentially the deceased record.  Again, DeceasedFinder only reviews Constituents.  However, you will need to review each individually in order to double check that the information is correct.