How do you collect Grandparent Info?

Mary Zieten

We are a K-12 school. Part of what we collect from new families is grandparent info, which we are currently getting in a custom form in Education Management, that then needs to be manually entered into RE. I'm looking for an easier way to we can streamline the data entry into Raiser's Edge, without us having to manually create the constituents from scratch, keeping in mind that the current capacity for our form is that the data all ends up in one block on an export, so a direct import with something like Importacular would still require a lot of spreadsheet cleanup.

I was hoping that maybe there's a way to use the events module to facilitate the data entry, but I'm not sure if it would exactly do what we need it to do, or if there is an easier way that I'm missing.

Does anyone have that sort of solution in place? What's working for you? Thanks!

Heather MacKenzie

I feel like we've been able to create signup forms with Online Express before that pushed info into RE without having to actually make a gift. Maybe that?

Sandra Ross

We request Grandparent info with the summer registration forms as they will populate Core and we push to RE with RE Connect once we have reviewed and validated the records created.

Mary Zieten

That might work, and give us the option to review how they've entered the data before it hits our database. Did you just have a form field to allow them to fill in the grandchild name, so you know who they should be attached to?

Mary Zieten

Sandra Ross:
We request Grandparent info with the summer registration forms as they will populate Core and we push to RE with RE Connect once we have reviewed and validated the records created.

I've thought of this, but don't necessarily want to have all the grandparents in Core. Is there a particular reason you have them in Core? Community groups or something similar?

Sandra Ross

We use the Profile Update form and have families review all their info and update phones, addresses if needed. You can include Grandparent Info block on the same form.

Sandra Ross

No, to clarify, one of the student's parents logs in to complete all forms and the GP info is part of the Profile Update they review and edit as needed. Grandparents do not access at all. As to why GPs are in CORE we have Everyone in Core as it connects to our website for email purposes and RE Connect links to RE from CORE.

Mary Zieten

Sandra Ross:
No, to clarify, one of the student's parents logs in to complete all forms and the GP info is part of the Profile Update they review and edit as needed. Grandparents do not access at all. As to why GPs are in CORE we have Everyone in Core as it connects to our website for email purposes and RE Connect links to RE from CORE.

Ah, okay. We use RE:NXT as our primary email provider, so at this point, we only want them in RE, not in Core. We might have to move to that if we can't find another solution, so it's nice to know those fields exist on the profile update form!