Changing a Constituent for a Gift

Miki Martin

I have tripped across a doozy, in my humble opinion. I have discovered that a sizable pledge made by a parish to our school over 10 years ago was entered under the priest's individual record. Apparently the parishes were not typically entered as organizations in the past. Instead they were listed on the first line of the address for the priest.

I have started adding these parishes as organizations so I can link them to their members, our students/parents/alums. That presents a problem, I think, in merging. I cannot just take the priest's record and convert it to an organization and then merge it with the organization record I had already created. Plus, then I need to go and add a new record for the priest so I have his information.

Is there another way to capture the gift information appropriately, i.e. with the parish instead of the priest? This might be an isolated incident, as other churches seem to have gifts listed under their record and not the priest. I cannot find any information on converting the constituent of record from one to another.

Thank you all!!

JoAnn Strommen

You might be able to just merge the gift info from the individual record to the org record. ??


You said you can't convert priest record to an org record. Why? Is there other gift info involved? I thought it sounded like a pretty good idea. Convert and merge. Add new individual record.

Tatyana Leifman

Do you have NXT? You can move individual gifts from one record to another in NXT. However, both records have to be the same "type," that is, either individuals or organizations. But in this case you can convert one record to the other's type and then convert it back once you finish moving gifts.


If you don't have NXT but you need to move all the gifts from the priest's record to the parish's, you can still convert his record to an organization (or the parish's to individual), move just the gifts (and, if relevant, assigned appeals) and then convert it back to an individual (or the parish's to an organization). And then just delete the notes that are automatically added when records are converted or, conversely, add an explanation why there was the conversion.


Tatyana.

Miki Martin

@JoAnn Strommen, that's one of the weird things with this. I have merged plenty of records. I am guessing since the priest has an individual record and the parish an organization I cannot merge them, as when I do a search the parish name does not appear, not in NXT or the database view.

@Tatyana Leifman, I wasn't sure if I could move individual gifts between records. We do have NXT so I will have to look into this later today when I'm at my desk for an extended period of time. If I can switch the one record between individual and organization, I'm thinking I could do that then. Fingers crossed!

Thank you, both!

Carlene Johnson

Here is the process I would use:

• Create a dummy individual record.
• Move those gifts you wish to move from the priest's record to the dummy record in Webview.
• Convert the dummy Individual record to an Organization record in Database View.
• Move those gifts from the Dummy Org record to the Parish Org record in Web View. (Or use merge functionality in Database View if there are more than one or two.)
• Delete the Dummy Org record. (The Org record can be automatically deleted when merging in Web View if you chose to merge in the step above.)

This is the same process I use when needing to move a gift from an Org record to an Ind record - just create a Dummy Org record, convert to an Individual and then move the gifts to the Ind record.

This way one doesn't need to worry about any record cleanup from converting from Ind. to Org. and back to Ind. again.

Hope this helps!

Miki Martin

It worked, @Tatyana Leifman! I converted the priest to an organization, changed the constituent of record on the initial pledge, and that pulled the pledge payments with it. I was able to then change the priest's record back to an individual. The money is where it should be and I have the priest as an employee of the parish. THANK YOU!

Miki Martin

@Carlene Johnson that is definitely something for me to keep in mind if I run into this issue again. Thank you for sharing!