Merging Organizational and Individual Records

Ryan Kamstra

I have two detailed records in NXT. one is an Individual. The other is an Organization. They are duplicates that need to be merged. Both contain very detailed information, Gifts, Relationships, Actions, Fundraisers, etc. I need to merge them. There appears to be no existing process for users to transform Individual Records to Organizational Records—none that I can find any way. Ditto, merging Organization and Individual records. My manager reached out to BB Support--was told Blackbaud has a process, i.e. perhaps this can be done externally? Or do I simply need to manually recode all the information. Looking for Best Practices and clever tricks.

Tatyana Leifman

You need to transform one of the records to the type of the other in Database view. For now, this operation is only possible in Database view.

When you open the record in database view, got to Constituent—>Convert to

Tatyana Leifman

Note that some information will be lost depending on which record is being converted to which. The lost information will end up on the Note tab as "Conversion Notes" type. It usually includes info from the Bio 1 tab or Org 1 tab (depending on which direction you are converting the record).

JoAnn Strommen

@Tatyana gave you the answer. Because fields are different starting on the Bio 1 tab. The records have to be the same type to merge. So first step is to change record not the type record should be to the type that you want the one record to be.

You can merge them either in db view or webview. Webview works well as you can compare data side by side. In db view your system set up can cause an error preventing merge say if you don't allow two phone #s of the same type on a record. I usually do a snip if there's some data I want to be sure not to lose. Or I want to know which data was marked as primary should that change in merging.

After merging, check for any data that is duplicated and remove if you want a clean record.

Robin Kuehn

Just adding in that I find the BB Knowledgebase to be simpler (and significantly faster) than reaching out and waiting for BB support. I also have found this is a great place to learn if something is available in Webview yet. Here's the overview on converting record types:

https://kb.blackbaud.com/knowledgebase/articles/Article/41052

Ryan Kamstra

I also find it extraordinarily helpful.