Inactive Constituents

Chantel M Russ

Good morning, everyone!

Happy Friday!

How can I create a query of constituents marked ‘inactive’? Can someone please help me with this?

Thank you so much!

Chantel

Chris Nungesser

Hi @Chantel M Russ,

Happy Friday! ?

What Blackbaud software do you use? I have a feeling that we are in different systems.

Also, what do you mean when you use the word “Inactive”?

• Do you mean that have been officially marked as Inactive in the system? Like the Inactive field has been checked?
• Or do you mean Inactive less in the sense of a system term? Perhaps more like: the folks that haven't done business with you in a while?
  

QUERYING ON THE INACTIVE FIELD
If you mean they have been officially marked inactive, then, just to throw out a general suggestion, you should be able to query on that Inactive field. Can you create a Constituent query? Is that one of the Query options in your system? If so, I would look under the fields that you can select (like First Name, System ID, etc.) and see if Inactive is one of those available fields. If it is, you can create a query where the Criteria is Inactive is equal to Yes. That should get you a list of your Inactive Constituents.

QUERYING ON FOLKS WITHOUT RECENT ACTIVITY
If you mean inactive in the more informal sense, then that's a little trickier, but it can be done. In your Blackbaud software, can you include the results of one query in the criteria of a second query? In my system, that's called a Selection. In Raiser's Edge, I believe you might be able to accomplish this by Merging Queries. So perhaps your system has one of those functions.

If you can do Selections:
You would create a query of constituents that have done business with you recently (whatever criteria would make someone Active). That's one query. The second query will have two parts to it. The first part might be something like Lookup ID (or User ID) is not Blank. That's just saying show me any record with an ID (which is every record in the system). And then you add in the second piece of criteria which is your Recent Activity Selection. That part says the constituent does not appear in the Selection. So show me every constituent that does not appear in the recent activity Selection.

If you can Merge queries:
You would do similar to the above method above, but (probably) in the reverse order. Your first query would be constituent Lookup ID (or User ID) is not Blank. So pulling all constituents in the system. The second query would be your group of constituents with recent activity (however you all might determine recent activity). You would merge the first query into the second query and select the SUB operator. This operator means your merged query will show you all constituents that were in the first query as long as they don't also appear in the second query.

Here is a KB article on the merge query operators:

I hope something here helps. Good luck!

Chris ?