Not assuming gender/sex

Abbie Stevens

Hello! I've noticed that when I'm manually adding a new constituent, the software automatically assumes their gender/sex based on the first name (and, it only has binary options). Is there a way to stop it from doing that? I couldn't find anything in the settings. We would prefer to leave that field blank for the constituent to fill in later if they wish.

Bill Carey

@Abbie Stevens
I believe there are other threads about this in the forums, but the place where an assumed gender is defined for each name is under Constituents > Configuration > First Names. If I recall correctly from past discussions, the only way to stop Altru from assigning a binary gender based on first name would be to set every first name in the list to “Unknown.” This would take many, many hours so we elected not to do it.
I agree with you, this is an outdated setup and Blackbaud should add an override for this so that orgs can have all genders default to “Unknown” if they so choose.