Mass convert non-constituents to constituents

Anna Silvestri

Hi, we decided to convert part of the non-constituents individuals to constituents. Currently, the only individuals who have their own constituent records are alumni, while all individuals related to organisations we deal with, are saved on RE NXT as non-constituents. This causes some issues, because we can't add actions to their own records, and it makes adding them as event attendees very time consuming. So we decided to convert all those non-constituent individuals labelled as primary contact.

Is there a way to mass convert non-constituents?

And if somebody went through this process already, is there any suggestions you'd like to share, like things that we might not noticing and will make our life difficult after the conversion?

Thank you!

Anna

Austen Brown

@Anna Silvestri - This will need to be done through export/import and will likely be quite the time consuming project. Essentially, you'll need to create an import file of the relationship records you want to convert to constituents, through Admin > Import. Then turn around and import that information back into RE as new constituents; then do an additional import to connect the new constituent through a relationship link to the constituent they were a partial record on. After all that, you'll then need to delete the non-constituent relationship record that is now a duplicate.

If anyone else has a better way to do this, I'd be curious to know what it is.

SmartTHING Developers

@Austen Brown You can use the SKY API to convert constituents into full records.

https://api.sky.blackbaud.com/constituent/v1/constituents/convert/{non_constituent_id}

We have this linked up to our SmartSYNC product if you want it to iterate over hundreds or thousands of records. You would export the non-constituent system record ID from the relationship using a query from the RE Database view and use that in the above to convert the record. You can also add constituent codes to those records as you do so you can easily identify them later on.

Karen Diener

I think Austen has a good suggestion, and this is the only way I've handled it in the past. It can be time-consuming and requires very focused and uninterrupted time. I'm sure the SKY API suggestion is also good, but in my experience, it isn't very accessible to a lot of nonprofits. Maybe it is just the ones I've worked with, but I've tried suggesting it many times and it is just a little too much for them to take on for various reasons.

In the meantime, I would give a lot of thought to adding full constituent records for your contacts. I understand that it is frustrating from an event management perspective, but you CAN identify the contact on an Action using the drop-down table:

Adding Primary Contacts as full constituents will inflate your constituent record count. Over time, that has potential to be pretty costly since Blackbaud is pricing subscriptions based on how many records are in your system. Users report significant increases when moving from one record band to another. These records are likely to have limited value in the long run as well. Once that primary contact leaves their organization, there is not always a lot of potential for you to reengage with them.

Karen

Christine Robertson

@Anna Silvestri I would recommend looking at Zeidman Development and their paid option for Individual Relationships. If you add that data destination, you can upgrade these relationships without duplicating them (saving lots of clean up time!). When I worked there, I wrote up documentation and recorded a video on how to do this - you can see that here: Can I use Importacular to convert non-constituent relationships into constituents? : Zeidman Development Support (freshdesk.com)