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Cleaning up 31k constituents

Yadelny De Leon

Hi everyone,

my company had 31k constituents uploaded from a platform named Neon1. The data that was uploaded seems to have been simply uploaded but not in a clean, correct way. For example, relationships to organizations aren't linked, multiple profiles created for the same organization, or individuals linked to empty profiles and 0 constituent codes tied to them. This makes it hard for me to be able to pull accuracy in how many active donors/members we actually have because its all jumbled up. We are leaning towards wiping everything out and starting over in batches, the correct way the first time.

I'm new to Raisers Edge NXT so there could be ways to do this that don't involve deleting everything and starting over. any suggestions or similar situations you've been in?

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Lee Grisham

I am sorry to hear that, @Yadelny De Leon, but I think cleaning it and starting over would be best. Did you have any implementation consultants to help you set it up? I would think most of that would have been covered when you met with them to help you get started as that is basic database stuff. Getting a good start is crucial when working with RENXT since clean up can take a lot of time and create havoc if you are unfamiliar with the processes as there might not be an easy way to reverse course. Not impossible, but not easy.

Yadelny De Leon

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/310838#Comment_310838

i was onboarded after the data was entered by a consultant. are they still reachable even after they've completed their task of importing data?

JoAnn Strommen

Have to say I agree with @Lee Grisham that starting over might be best.

Are these individual or org records? Are they expected to be duplicates of records already in your db? The imported records don't sound like they would be active/donor members if they are only records from the upload so I would exclude all of them when reporting.

Even importing will be a challenge to link org relationships. Orgs have to be identified, uniformly named to match even the most sofisicated import platform.

As someone new to RE, when you start in batches, just do a very few records. Then carefully review them. Is everything mapped accurately? Are all required fields filled? Is there data missing that could be imported - but is it worth importing? Not all data adds value. :)

Joe Moretti

I agree with the folks saying to start over and do the clean up before importing. The amount of time it will take to clean that mess up in RE is not worth it. "Consultants", always making a mess before asking.

Yadelny De Leon

is there any danger to deleting everything?

JoAnn Strommen

Key would be to create a static constituent query that only contains those records. As long as those are the only records in your query, you're okay.

With the user rights, you/someone should be able to run a global delete.

Karen Diener

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/310843#Comment_310843

Please be careful with statements like this. There could be a lot of reasons why this happened to the original poster and we do not know those reasons.

I am a consultant whose firm does a lot of data migrations and we always work carefully with organizations to migrate their data. Generalizations based on profession are demeaning and inappropriate.

Madeleine Holdsworth

@Yadelny De Leon

If you are referring to a Blackbaud consultant, I suggest contacting your account rep/customer success rep to see what your options are. A failed record import should not be acceptable. I recently worked on a migration from a different CRM to RE NXT as a consultant. We worked with the Blackbaud migration consultant and did extensive data checks to make sure everything was imported correctly (relationships, soft credits, recurring gifts, etc.).

Joe Moretti

To Karen, Hence why consultants were in quotes. Too many folks call themselves "consultants".

Karen Diener

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/310927#Comment_310927

I wondered about that - thanks for clarifying. Onus is on the person who hired the person representing themselves as a consultant to verify their credibility and insurance. It's an expensive world when it comes to Raiser's Edge and a lot of nonprofits end up cutting corners.