How to put Politicians into NXT

Emily Rathbun

Hi there,

We are trying to figure out the best way to place politicians into NXT. Right now, their seat (i.e. District #x) is the constituent, and the seat-holder is a primary contact/relationship. However, when a new person rolls into the seat, this information will inevitably change.

I was thinking it might make sense to change the politician's record from relationship to constituent, and add members of their staff as relationships to the politician. This way we can keep track of conversations and contact info with the politician and their staff, rather than having this all go under a constituent file for the entire district (since the person in that position, and all of their staff (and contact info) will change along with it). The main issue right now is that we can't add notes into a relationship file- only a constituent. So any and all correspondence shows it doing to District #x rather than the office of the specific legislator.

How do other agencies handle this situation?

JoAnn Strommen

Welcome to the BB Community, Emily.

At my previous org we entered the elected official as a constituent. We used a code of something like “Elected official” with dates of term. If I remember correctly we used attribute category to record type like ‘state legislature’ and description was district/area.

Just one way - it worked for us. Can be done with relationships, too.

Here, it is not something used - likely should be.

Dariel Dixon

I absolutely hate this practice. It's such a difficult burden to keep up with elections that may or may not be local. It's not just elected officials, but any person in a de-facto relationship.

It's worth considering having the office as a organization, and the elected official as a primary contact. For instance, Office of the Governor and have the current governor as a relationship. That way, any actions taken with that person are on the organization record, as that is primarily where the relationship is, not necessarily with the person in the role.

Vered Siegel

I've had this debate many, many times! Ultimately I think it comes down to the scope of your organization, which means it's not a hard and fast rule. A local neighborhood garden club will have a different answer than a statewide social service agency, which will have a different answer than a national think tank, you know?

But the way I always encourage folks to think about it is: Who does your organization have the relationship with? Is it the person, or the seat? In Chicago, it's often who you know, so individual Alder(wo)men are Constituents, and they can be followed as Constituents out of their office and into their next gig, which is often also important in some way. But if you're always going to have a relationship with the Senator no matter who it is, I'd think the seat is the Constituent and the individual as the Relationship with a Contact Type of “Elected Official” would work. And of course if you build a great relationship with them and they leave office, they can always be spun off to be an individual record.

Cindy Gericke

We maintain the official as a constituent with a constituent code of "elected official" so we can easily query on them at election time and throughout the year (we try to include them in all event invitations). After they finish their term, we hope to acquire their personal emails (often in their "away message" when our newsletter hits their old gov't email address inbox). As someone else mentioned, they may remain active and influential so keeping them on our email list is beneficial. We simply change their constituent code to newsletter recipient and/or donor if they also have gift records. Although it can be burdensome to update every 2-4 years, we often find an intern or volunteer willing to take on this task.

Rachel Bailey

Dariel Dixon:

I absolutely hate this practice. It's such a difficult burden to keep up with elections that may or may not be local. It's not just elected officials, but any person in a de-facto relationship.

It's worth considering having the office as a organization, and the elected official as a primary contact. For instance, Office of the Governor and have the current governor as a relationship. That way, any actions taken with that person are on the organization record, as that is primarily where the relationship is, not necessarily with the person in the role.

I like that suggestion, @Dariel Dixon. We have a Contact Type of “Previous Contact” for instances just like this so that we can see which individual we had an Action in that office with even after their term has ended.