Gender

Roma Sharma · January 2021

Hi All - A question for the university sector regarding "Gender Field" in Raisers Edge, Do you capture any other gender information apart from Male or Female.

Many thanks in advance.

Kind Regards

R

Jeannie Goings · January 2021

We capture gender identity with values: male, female, demi-girl, non-binary, unknown, and undecided. Unknown is used when identity is not reported and cannot be determined by first name. Undecided is used by request; a person who is transitioning and has not decided.

Natalie Legras · January 2021

Hi Roma,

At my last org we started using pronouns in the gender field in addition to Male, Female, and Unknown. We used She/Her, He/Him, and They/Them, but you could certainly add more if necessary.

Natalie

Phillip Bicknell · January 2021

We're a campaigning animal charity, but:

We stopped assigning Gender to supporter records after GDPR came into force, May 2018.

Our logic was simple - we had no justification for knowing - it has zero effect on the campaigning we do. And add to that the list of self-identified genders was over 70 last time I looked. And whilst the majority of partner-relationships will be hetero, again we can't assume that - over time we might record more info as we develop our relationship with a supporter.

Likewise, we simplified most of our web forms to not bother with Title - just not necessary. We still use the title where we have one for postal communications, but for emails we just use First Name, with Friend as fallback.

And all of what you do should be in your publicly available Privacy Policy.

Jeannie Goings · January 2021

Phillip Bicknell‍ GREAT response! I have been trying to convince our leadership team to dump the honorifics and go gender neutral. We're not there yet, but I will add your response to the list of reasons why we should dump gender identifiers.

Sharon Sandberg · January 2021

Thankfully Blackbaud made it a field that we can customize. So, discuss with your folks and make some decisions on what suits your organization best.

Faith Murray · February 2021

Gender assignment is an evolving field, and not one that can really be fully avoided by omitting titles and such from the database. At some point, in talking with your donors or communicating to other staff about a donor, you will have to use a pronoun other than "you", and first names get really old really quickly. ("I spoke with Dan, and Dan wants to be enrolled in our membership club with Dan's start date on Dan's birthday..." or "Thank you for your gift in memory of Lucy. Lucy was a good friend, and in honoring Lucy's last wishes you enshrine Lucy's legacy in a mission Lucy cared for deeply" ... you get the idea.) It would be hypocritical to pretend donor-diversity in the database but not in consistent usage throughout the organization. That is why this needs to be a discussion and formal decision made with all of your staff and Board, in alignment with the values promoted by your organization. Many religious organizations may prefer to stick with a simpler menu, while an LGBTQ advocacy group may wish to go the full 70 labels.

As a side-note, the question also relates to marital fields in RE. Both of which are, as Sharon points out, fully customizable.

PS. Jeanne, if you have demi-girl, shouldn't you also have demi-boy? Putting the middle-road default label on a single gender seems dangerous. ;-)

Dariel Dixon · February 2021

I would just look into what the institution has done in regard to gender, and just follow that. I doubt that your organization hasn't made a decision in regards to that at the institutional level. No need to reinvent the wheel here.

Gender

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