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Relationship Tab - Individual relationships - Gender Neutral?

Margaret Williams

Good day!

My Healthcare organization tries to be sensitive and accepting to Gender identities. This led to a discussion yesterday among the Data Governance Committee, when Profiles are produced what is the appropriate way to record and report family relationships?

Do you specify gender relationships? Or are you gender neutral?

Spouse - Spouse /versus/ Husband - Wife?

Parent – Child /versus/ Father – Daughter?

Sibling – Sibling /versus/ Brother – Sister?

Parent in Law – Child in Law /versus / Father in Law – Son in Law?

Extended Family – Extended Family /versus/ Aunt – Niece?

What do you do at your organization? Does it hurt the Development Officers ability to connect with prospects if the don't know the gender?

My Data Governance Committee is very interested in learning your thoughts?

Thanks!

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Comments

Karen Stuhlfeier

@Margaret Williams We use gender neutral relationship names and have never found that it hindered anything.

Dariel Dixon

@Margaret Williams I think this is a great conversation to have. First off, just having a committee for data governance is great. My organization is in the process of setting ready to start one ourselves!

But to the issue at hand, I think this is a more sensitive subject than most people realize. It really digs deep into the organizational culture. Some organizations would not do well in a gender neutral structure for a variety of reasons, whereas some orgs will strive under them.

I think Spouse is the easiest one. I've also seen the gender neutral “Partner” relationship used as well. It's worth noting that you can have a gender neutral relationship, but have a specific gender in the record. So if I have relationship of “sibling” with Leslie, you can look on the record and see that Leslie has a gender of “male”, if you are worried about that for gift officers.

That said, I really feel like “extended family” is too broad. That could almost be anyone. It might be worth considering how generic you want these relationships to be. If it is too broad, it may not fill your needs.

Faith Murray

@Margaret Williams, as @Dariel Dixon has said, it can heavily depend on organizational culture. For example, our org is religious, and so the motivation that affects your data policy really doesn't connect with our target base or affect our data policies in the same way.

That being said, I do actually prefer to use gender neutral labels in the Relationship tab as much as possible, and not because of social advocacy or PC-ness, but just because it's easier! Using Spouse as opposed to Husband/Wife, and Parent vs. Father/Mother has benefits because

it can cut your table entries almost in half
if you use a joint record for married couples, it reduces data cleanup if one parent dies (you don't have to redefine the relationship)
Having fewer table choices speeds up expediency in all other data processing, such as query lists
Sometimes the exact relationship is unknown and a broader term is easier to apply, resulting in more consistent entry
A user can still easily guess that "Parent" Sarah would be the mom while “Parent” Rick would be the father … so really no loss of data efficiency unless you expect to pull bulk mailing lists like “a special note for alumnus moms” or some such. (Anyone actually do that?)

The one relationship I have found that does not lend well to neutral labels are the “in-laws”: sister-in-law, brother-in-law, etc. These have been useful to note because you can't always tell from a name or title if a sibling with a different last name is an in-law or just remarried, and because the relationship is more extended (thereby weaker), it can affect stewardship if the primary sibling dies and only the in-law is left. To force this into gender-neutral labels, you would need to jury-rig a label like “sibling-in-law”, which doesn't flow so naturally.

I also agree you would need a more precise term than “extended family” to replace “aunt”. However, you could satisfy the same aim by combining the joint terms into one table entry: “Aunt” and “Uncle” into “Uncle/Aunt”, for example. And yes, we do have an entry “Relative” for when the exact relationship is unknown.

JoAnn Strommen

@Margaret Williams I use the options you cited other than Extended family primarily just to shorten up the relationship/reciprocal options. Do have one for Aunt/Uncle - Nephew/Niece.

When we get children names from alumni we rarely get gender info so this just makes sense to me.

Has not been an issue for development staff.

Sunshine Reinken Watson

@Margaret Williams I appreciate your org being sensitive to this. I set all relationships up as gender-neutral to avoid misgendering or making incorrect assumptions. We keep things simple with most family relationships under “family” with notes about the specific relationship if needed.

Spouse
Parent
Child (We don't have records for actual children. This is just a gender-neutral alternative to son/daughter.)
Sibling
Family

Elizabeth Johnson

@JoAnn Strommen There are options for gender-neutral Aunt/Uncle and Nephew/Niece. I did research back in late 2020 and went with Pibling/Aunt/Uncle and Nibling/Niece/Nephew. I also changed up in-laws to Child-in-Law, Parent-in-Law, and Sibling-in-Law. Others of note Fiancé and Fiancée became Betrothed and Boyfriend/Girlfriend (we don't track this often) became Datefriend.

La Donna Borth

@Margaret Williams Thanks for starting this conversation!

I'll be bookmarking this conversation, so I can reference a couple of things: 1. Data Governance Committee (love this idea!) and 2. Simplifying the Relationship Types.

This is a great conversation. My preference is to use Spouse over Husband/Wife. And, I do have Partner set up (which might be outdated?).

We have a ton of relationship types set up (has not been my priority to clean these up, yet). We even have 2nd cousin, Niece, Grandniece, etc. It's interesting to see how some organizations have found ways to reduce the number of relationship types and still have enough information for the fundraisers to understand the relationships.

Thanks to all for sharing!

Tara Cain

We also configured our system with gender-neutral designators as much as possible. That said, does anyone know of any more common gender-neutral options for aunt/uncle and niece/nephew? Those stumped us.

Tara Cain

@La Donna Borth We use “Partner” if the couple (of any gender or orientation) cohabits but isn't married. I don't think it's outdated in that sense.

Dariel Dixon

@Elizabeth Johnson: I wanted to thank you for this piece of information. I had never heard of the terms “nibling” and “pibling” before. They are definitely options, but I don't know if I would use them until the terms are more familiar to most people.

Also, I never considered tracking a relationship of Fiancé or Fiancée because I had always considered those statuses to be temporary or transitional at best.

I think I like “partner” because it really distinctly defies definition. It explains that 2 people are together without being too specific. The basis of the relationship may not matter.

@JoAnn Strommen There are options for gender-neutral Aunt/Uncle and Nephew/Niece. I did research back in late 2020 and went with Pibling/Aunt/Uncle and Nibling/Niece/Nephew. I also changed up in-laws to Child-in-Law, Parent-in-Law, and Sibling-in-Law. Others of note Fiancé and Fiancée became Betrothed and Boyfriend/Girlfriend (we don't track this often) became Datefriend.

Erica Guernsey

@Margaret Williams as for relationships we use spouse, parent, sibling, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew. I believe we have a field set up in attributes for pronouns, but we do not utilize it to my knowledge. I wonder how my org will begin to adjust practices to create accurate records for gender non-conforming constituents.

Nichols Condon

@Margaret Williams I love seeing these questions and all the responses from the brain hive! I want to also share another resource; Blackbaud is hosting a 4-part Industry Insights series in 2023 focused specifically on DEI. Our first session was today, which was level-setting on the ABCs of DEI. You can look for future webinars on our Customer Success Enablement page under Industry Insights. Thank you all for what you’re doing to instill a sense of belonging in the world.