Adding Constituent Demographics

Susan Chomsky

Our Development team is interested in getting Age at Household and other demographics added to our db records. Where do you go to get that for either appending or importing to the db?

Alex Wong

There are many tools out there for it, but Blackbaud offers them too, you will want to ask your Blackbaud rep about Data Enrichment.

Faith Murray

Our list acquisition provider is able to provide us with data appends at cost, because they have a bulk paid subscription with big data processors. It costs us about $250-350 to append a file of 20,000 records going through them. Going this route, you must use Import to re-upload the files. But you also get the ability to review the files for accuracy before uploading, because you get to see them in Excel before they upload.

Or, you can go the easy way through Blackbaud. You will pay more ($1000-1500 for any service not included in your annual package), but the data is able to be easily uploaded through your Data Services feature.

Both are good options.

Bear in mind that age appends have inaccuracies, as with any bulk append. When I have compared birthdate append data with known ages from our alumni base, I've found that the year is usually accurate (about 90% of the time). The month is less accurate (about 50%). And the specific date is rarely accurate. When doing age appends, I opt for a birthdate append instead, upload the full date as a Data Maintenance attribute, and then import only the year into the Bio 1 age field. Given the accuracy rates, I would not recommend doing birthday card mailings based off age appends in case the month is wrong. However, using it for subtler marketing efforts, such as Planned Giving mailings, can be beneficial.