Cleaning Contact Records

Shelby McNabb
Shelby McNabb
Seventh Anniversary Facilitator 1
in Organizational Best Practices General Discussions
Hi Everyone, 


One of the most out of control aspects of my database is the contact records on corporations and foundations. We have had a lot of turnover on our team, so we don't have a lot of institutional knowledge about old contact records. However, our current foundation and corporate managers have been with us for about a year, so they are starting to build relationships. I am considering cleaning out all of our current relationship records and un-checking the "contact" box on every single relationship that is not known by our current foundation and corporate managers. Has anyone else done this? Do you have any thoughts? The "contact" records are basically useless as they are right now, because there are too many and I do not know which ones are valid. 


Thanks for the input! Hope you all are staying safe and healthy! 

Comments

  • Shelby McNabb
    Shelby McNabb
    Seventh Anniversary Facilitator 1
    I would love to know in general how you all manage relationship records and exporting them for mailings such as acknowledgement letters, annual report, etc. I can see that using very specific contact types could be helpful, but it would take a lot of upkeep. 
  • Jennifer Rose
    Jennifer Rose
    Sixth Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1
    I'm going to follow this thread because I am also on the verge of wiping the 'is contact' flag from most organizations.  We are using it to capture employment contact data on individuals' contact tabs but are not great at keeping them current.  I've also discovered that the link between the individual and organization records can break in the background without any indication, so we are unaware of it. Meaning, when I change an address for an organization, even though I mark to update the address for all contacts, it does not update all contacts. This is especially frustrating when merging duplicate organization records where the link breaks on all individuals that were originally related to the 'source' record.


    Good luck.
  • Aldera Chisholm
    Aldera Chisholm Community All-Star
    Sixth Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge: Data Health #3 First Reply
    Unfortunately I have no tricks for keeping it current, it's just a bit of a pain. I have used it quite a bit as my last org did a lot of events, and we generally were inviting companies, and depending on the event, we would prioritize which contacts to send to. So, anyone who would receive an invitation from us would get "Is a Contact" checked, and then they would either be Primary Contact or Secondary Contact (invited to everything), or sometimes we would have Executive Contact, Stewardship Contact, and Event Contact for large orgs so that we could narrow down invites. 


    I used the Mail functionality to create the invite lists, as there I could use Org Address and select which specific contacts I wanted to mail to. We also used Contact Attributes to tag further detail but those are tricky as if not everyone has a Contact Attribute you may find yourself accidentally excluding people.


    Upkeep is certainly challenging, but my former manager demanded absolute accuracy with names on lists so it became a high priority. :)
  • Steven Cianciarulo
    Steven Cianciarulo
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Facilitator 1
    Keep in mind if you use any address processing features in export or mail to send to contacts, they won't pull if you don't have the contact box checked.
  • Sheree Norton
    Sheree Norton
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
    Where do you "check" the contact box?
  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 January 2026 Monthly Challenge 2025 bbcon Attendee Badge
    On the relationship record there are check boxes for employee, contact, primary business.  You'll want a plan for contact types.
  • Sheree Norton
    Sheree Norton
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
    I think we are talking about two different Blackbaud Products. You must be using Raiser's Edge and I'm using Blackbaud Grantmaking. Our relationships are called Affiliations and they are given a role. No check box on any of the screens.
  • Tracy Wadlow
    Tracy Wadlow
    Tenth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1
    Sorry, I'm a bit late into this conversation, but you should check query.  Relationships have a link box that is yes or no.  If relationships are linked, the addresses will update correctly, if the addresses are not shared, they won't.  I'm not familiar with Grant making, but the issue may be similar.


    Look at address menu and you can share addresses or unshare addresses.  Blackbaud doesn't have an easy fix yet for to globally link or unlink addresses i.e. spouses relationship addresses often get messed up.

    If you are using Import-o-matic to import, you also have to have the proper settings to update linked addresses.  We discovered our linked addresses were messed up as well and it was a huge manual process to fix them because Blackbaud doesn't have a process built for that yet.

    In IOM, you should be using Advanced address processing and look at individual and organization relationship settings.

    Please vote for https://re7.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RE7-I-1177




     

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