Repurposing Bio1 consent fields

Suzanne Pasch
Suzanne Pasch
Fifth Anniversary Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions
Our leadership would like to move to treating "do nots" (Do Not Solicit, Do Not Mail, etc.) as opt-outs with a time limit (say 2 years). In order to do this, we need a field with date parameters, which the Solicit Codes don't offer. Have any other organizations moved this direction, and if so, how do you code it? We're looking at the newish "Consent" fields, but we're not sure how they interact with MailChimp, export, import, etc.


Thanks for any help you may have!

Comments

  • Alan French
    Alan French
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant
    Are you still going to have a way of marking people who absolutely shouldn't be contacted ever again? If someone says "stop emailing me or I'll see you in court", you're probably not going to want to put them back onto the mailing list in 2 years' time!


    I quite like the consent module, on the whole. We import Mailchimp unsubscribes as an opt-out consent record and that automatically updates the solicit codes. It would definitely offer you the ability to capture dates, however one of my bugbears is that there's no way to query on "last consent" like you can do for last action and last gift. So it's pretty easy to find everyone who opted out (or in) within a specific time period, but less easy to see if they've subsequently opted back in (or out). The solicit codes are a better indicator of current preferences.


    My other bugbears are that consents can only be exported from a query, they're not available in an export. Also they can't be deleted in bulk, only individually, so if you make a mistake with an import or if you wanted to remove the consent after 2 years then you'd have to go into each constituent record. Not huge issues for us, but sometimes an inconvenience.
  • Faith Murray
    Faith Murray
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper
    In the course of database hygiene targeting, a recent capital campaign, and planned giving restructuring, the question of whether to remove someone's "do nots" has come up a few times in our organization. With a person that WE have marked "DNS" (do not solicit), it is perfectly kosher to remove that label and begin soliciting again. We have done that for certain types of donors, such as Memorial donors, or alumni for the first year after graduation.


    However, if a donor has themselves requested not to be solicited, you should not legally begin soliciting them again unless they do something to confer implied permission -- like donating to an acquisition mailing, or indicating verbal interest over the phone.


    For us, many of our donors were marked DNS over a decade ago (before the Consent tracking), with no denotation why they were marked that way. We had to individually review their records, and personally reach out to some, before re-activating them.


    Since then, we have begun tracking reasons and extra notes in a DNS attribute, to fill in additional information about the DNS marking, such as whether it was staff-assigned, donor-requested, assumed based on income or life situation, assumed based on age, or any other notes. This way we can also query on the Attribute date or type. I wish the Consent area had a line for Notes or Comments so we could keep it all in one place, but such is life!
  • Suzanne Pasch
    Suzanne Pasch
    Fifth Anniversary Facilitator 1
    Thanks! Your IRL experience is really helpful.
  • Suzanne Pasch
    Suzanne Pasch
    Fifth Anniversary Facilitator 1
    Attributes was my other thought--thank you!
  • Austen Brown
    Austen Brown Community All-Star
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge: Product Update Briefing Feedback Task 3 bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge
    I agree with what others have said, it is very difficult to get away from the negative solicit codes especially when honoring constituent requests. We utilize a model of positive and negative solicit codes, with the positive codes primarily around email messaging content interests. All of this is tracked through the consent feature, which then updates the displayed solicit codes to match the associated consent business rule. In instances where we have made an internal decision to mark a constituent with DNS, we set the source for the consent record as "Internal Decision" this let's us know that we can reverse this if need be - all other consent additions are final unless the constituent communicates with us that they would like to be solicited/contacted moving forward.

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