Assigned Solicitor enter multiple times on one Constituent

Cheena DeAraujoDesir

Hi All,

I have run into this quandary in a few places I've worked. Some orgs add the same Assigned Solicitor multiple times on one constituent record. Sometimes it's assigned to a particular Campaign or initiative. Sometimes it's assigned to a fiscal year.

This drives me crazy for a number of reasons:

• It is harder to clean up.
• Some of it is old and out dated.
• They multiply in Webview opportunities

How do you guys track your Assigned Solicitors? What are your recommendations for this kind of tracking?

JoAnn Strommen

I've seen records with multiple assigned solicitors/fundraisers. Have been at org where they may have person #1 for capital campaign and person #2 for annual campaign or a different campaign. I am guilty of assigning campaigner for each annual campaign as a separate relationship. We wanted the history and to be able to pull solicitor reports by fund. (This was pre web-view.) At one point I think it was 5 yrs or so, we just did some clean up and put all the old ones as 'old' and deleted duplications.


I like the option of an end date and/or type of former. Using color legend can have all those former relationships be gray and current are clearly viewed in db view.

Mark Guncheon

By solicitor type: we have Primary solicitor, secondary solicitor and volunteer solicitor. The first two are for our solicitors (fundraisers). The third one is for board members and hospital presidents (we are a health system foundation). And once they are no longer a solicitor for a prospect, they become former primary solicitor, former secondary solicitor or former volunteer solicitor. Important to be consistent. Much of our solicitor reporting is based on the solicitor type especially since we are in multiple markets.

Karen Diener

This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, and falls under the general category of “don't overcode your database”. ? My general approach is to use a light hand. And as always, it also depends very much on how you want to report the information.

I have yet to see an organization that reports any sort of solicitor totals based on the Campaign or Fund of a gift. Most say things like “we need a report of everyone assigned to Tony Stark and what they gave this fiscal year.” That is a different request from “We need to see which gifts Tony Stark solicited this year”. That is a gift solicitor assignment, and not a Relationship solicitor assignment.

There is a lot to discuss related to this, but I'd suggest - based on my experience - that this level of detail in solicitor assignments is unnecessary. Some discussions should probably take place to figure out how the organization needs to report on this information, and then set up a structure to support that goal.

Karen

Cheena DeAraujoDesir

******UPDATE TO MY QUESTION:

Thanks everyone for your insight.


I am in total agreement to your statements about the use of solicitors.


I think the issue that is working me solid is the same solicitor assigned multiple times to one constituent. I find this very confusing and (to paraphrase Karen Diener) "overcoding the database". Do you all have recommendations to clean this up and remove these duplicates? Or should I treat it like Mt. Everest and ignore the bodies piling up?


Cheena

JoAnn Strommen

While I totally agree about not having superfluous data in database, I have seen and used " reports any sort of solicitor totals based on the Campaign or Fund of a gift." At previous org the solicitor performance report was probably one of our most pulled reports. Assignments were based on fund and many gifts for fund did not fall in CY/FY.


For a capital campaign 3-5 years after the previous, we entered solicitor assignment a second time if taken by same volunteer. We wanted the history and also were able to review effectiveness.


So, to those reading this post not looking at the clean up side, don't think you're doing something wrong if it is the best fit for your org needs.

Daniel Moody

Great question. At our organization, we would never concurrently have two PRIMARY assigned solicitors, but we could have a Primary Manager and a Team Member. Reserving the primary solicitor has made it much easier to pull regardless of start & end dates.

Jennifer Vincent

Personally, I'm a big fan of the Primary/Secondary relationship tracking, where the Primary is the one leading the strategy. I used the notes field on assignments to track anything relevant there (e.g., reassigned from Jane Smith due to interest in XYZ College, etc.) Anything related to campaigns or giving would be tracked via Opportunities.

Kathy Arnold

@Cheena DeAraujoDesir So when running a report for a 4 year period, is there a way to get only the most recent solicitor to show on the report?

JoAnn Strommen

@Kathy Arnold It depends on your data entry practice. Our current assigned solicitor is coded as "primary solicitor' so that name can be pulled on any reports.

When it comes to pulling a record without a current solicitor, pulling the former can be more challenging and can probably only be done with pulling multiple names sorted by date to if those are entered. If no assignment dates are used, there's no real way to tell the most recent.

Mark Guncheon

@Cheena DeAraujoDesir I would recommend "cleaning up the bodies." If you need to know what funds are involved in a fundraiser relationship, can't you pull that from any gifts added for that campaign? And if there are no gifts, then why not refer to the note you added when you assigned that fundraiser originally. Use notes. They are very helpful.