What kinds of name formats do you use?

Alan French

Hi all, looking for some advice before we change the way we use name formats. Currently our format types are things like “individual informal”, “joint formal” etc. but because we want to address some donors differently in specific circumstances, we're considering changing it so we have a name format per type of activity we do, e.g. “event salutation”, “newsletter salutation”.

Personally I think this is not the best way to manage name formats and is going to create a lot of work to maintain just for the sake of a handful of (admittedly important) constituents whose name formats we could manage in other ways, but I just wanted to see if anyone had any insight on whether this is going to give us the flexibility we want, will play nicely with exports, is going to be a pain to maintain etc.

Kelli Crispin

@Alan French If you are always handling a specific group of constituents differently, you can use the existing name formats and customize them on just those constituents. For example, if you have a format that normally calculates text that looks like “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” but certain constituents prefer to be addressed as “Jane and John Smith,” you can go into that name format on those constituent records and type in the text you would rather display.

We have 14 name formats that populate on every new constituent record. I think we may have used 5 of the OOB CRM individual formats and created 9 of our own joint name formats to cover a variety of situations. Some of our schools/sites on campus wanted their own, so we have added a few more that can be added to constituents manually. Our naming conventions use formal/informal and salutation/addressee, but do not refer to the use of the format. A couple examples are UNC Default Joint Formal Addressee, UNC Default Joint Formal Salutation by Gender and Title, UNC Law Joint Formal Addressee. Many of the joint formats have complex logic to handle the order of records and how the names display if one or both have a title other than Ms/Mr/Mx or no title at all.

Zar Metzti

@Alan French
Hey Alan, we use different name formats and they can be useful. As you mentioned, it can be a challenge to maintain, but in our case good data policy and user ownership have allow us to take advantage of this feature. For example, alumni, event and named recognition are some of the key types we use.

Best of luck.

Amanda Brown

@Alan French Our main name formats are “Individual Inside Salutation” and “Individual Outside Addressee” which are on every constituent. If the constituent is in a household, then they will also have “Joint Inside Salutation” and "Joint Outside Addressee". We have a global change that sets these name formats based on logic for the titles, etc. Our users can update these name formats to match how the donor wants to be addressed.

We also allow name formats for our chapter directors, but only allow the inside salutation to differ in the address processing (so we have an “Inside Arizona Director” but not an “Outside Arizona Addressee”). This allows for informal salutations if the state director knows the donor(s).

Finally, we have a couple “Publication Listing” and “Certificate” name formats, as those might differ from how people want to be addressed in mailings (i.e. Anonymous).

Alan French

Thanks for sharing, everybody! That does give me some hope that other organisations are using specific types for things like events and are managing to make that work ?