Cleaning up constituents marked as Inactive

Lesli Cashin
Lesli Cashin
Fifth Anniversary Participant
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions
I've recently inherited an RE database of 39,000 constituents.  9,500 of those constituents are marked Inactive.  That number doesn't overlap with Deceased or No Valid Address individuals, it is unique.  So far, I have not been able to determine the criteria used to define Inactive in my organization, as there is no RE Policies & Procedures manual and also, lots of turnover in the Development department, so, too many hands in the database.


What are some best practices, in terms of reviewing the Inactive list and determining what to do with these constituents.  It seems impossible to be able to review 9,000 records. 

Comments

  • Karen Hartt
    Karen Hartt
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
    I agree with John, a great place to start.

    We mark records inactive if they haven't given in over 10 years or the fund they supported is closed or moved on to another NPO, as is the case with a few of our supporting organizations.


    We also had a conversion of another database into our RE and it was done twice so 9000 records were duplicated and we couldn't remove them, so the IT staff marked them as inactive and globally added Conversion into the address info source. Most of the 9000 records were students without addresses. This process was documented. As I have time I review the old records and merge with a current record if possible.


     
  • Madeleine Holdsworth
    Madeleine Holdsworth
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge: Product Update Briefing Feedback Task 3 Name Dropper
    We have the same issue.  Definitely look for patterns. Also going forward, I recommend adding in Notes a reason for marking the record "Inactive".  It helps greatly when the user is looking at records trying to figure out why a record is inactive.  Add a Notepad Type in Config-->Tables for this (something like "Inactivated Record").  You'll be able to query it out in the future.  If you determine any patterns, you can query those out and add the Note through import for each grouping. Establish your business rules for marking a record as inactive and create documentation.  It's a daunting task, for certain - I feel your pain!  

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