NXT Giving Pages Creating Duplicate Constituents

Billy Fenyes · July 2022

Hi Everyone, I'm used NetCommunity in the past when I was working with RE7 but we moved to NXT recently and started uses NXT giving pages. It appears that NXT is creating a new constituent record for everyone that gives through the pages when it automatically batches them. I have two questions about this:

NetCommunity allowed me to search the database for similar con records before creating a new one. Is there an option like this for the NXT pages?
The Merge tool in NXT seems to mark merged records as inactive, rather than deleting them. Is there a setting I can change to delete the old records so my system isn't swarming with literally thousands of duplicates marked “inactive."

Thank you for any help you can provide.

JoAnn Strommen · July 2022

@Billy Fenyes We experienced the same issue of duplicate constituents with registration for events last year. We haven't used it for donations due to these type of issues. But at that time there was no way to review record creation prior to processing.

And no, per BB “it's working as designed” . There is no setting you can change, you have to go to db view to delete the duplicates. I also checked the merged records as there was frequently duplicate data created by merging as we can not specify which bio data. Very labor intensive and disappointing. I can't recall what ideas there are in the idea bank to vote for a change on this.

JoAnn Strommen · July 2022

@Billy Fenyes And welcome to the BB Community forums.

Austen Brown · July 2022

@Billy Fenyes - As @JoAnn Strommen has mentioned, this is working as designed. I recommend you build into your batch approval process, review of all donor records. If titles are used throughout your system, it can be very easy to tell which donor records are created by the system as NXT donation forms do not currently have the ability to include a title. I recommend you review these new records from batch, and merge them with an existing constituent record if found. After you complete your merges and approve the batch, you can go to Tools > Data Health > Possible Duplicates > Merged Duplicates tab, to view all merges that will need to be reviewed in DBV; they will disappear as the empty source records are deleted.

Jeannie Goings · July 2022

@JoAnn Strommen working as designed … of course it is. Pricing is based on the number of constituent records. This is GOLD. ?

Whitney Shelton · July 2022

@Billy Fenyes I ran into this same issue when we switched from NetCommunity to the Online Donation Form in NXT webview. The duplicate matching has gotten much better since the first roll out. I still check for a dupe every single time and I always have to edit some of their fields (like title.) Austen Browns method for how to handle the batches and the dupes. It's the same process that I use after she suggested it to me Hope this helps

Faith Murray · July 2022

@Billy Fenyes this is one of the reasons why we still prefer to use the online donations forms through OLX, and then batch the gifts in database view. Do you have that in your subscription? In OLX, you can look up and match constituents while downloading the gifts, and you can set default new constituent fields for new donor records.

Dariel Dixon · July 2022

@Billy Fenyes We use the NXT giving pages, and the system will create a new record if the name and email don't match a constituent record. This isn't a problem for us, as we review each gift to update letter codes or appeal information. At that point, we can quickly determine if this is a new record that is a duplicate of an existing record just by searching for the name in the gift field. In our database, almost all existing records have titles, so if we see one without a title, it's a flag for review.

TBH, I don't think there's much reason to use a merge in this particular situation when you can search for the record and set the correct constituent before approving the batch. If there is some new information on the new record, I find it easier to just move it over and delete the duplicated record. It's just cleaner that way for me.

To be fair, this solution is much faster for me to search for the records in NXT than it is in NetCommunity. You just have to be diligent to search for the records before approving them, which is what you would be doing in OLX or NC anyway.

Billy Fenyes · July 2022

@Faith Murray I'm definitely tempted to keep using OLX or even NetCommunity but I have a feeling that Blackbaud will sunset these options eventually. It's probably not any time soon but I have hundreds of giving pages to make and I don't want to duplicate work down the line. Maybe that's silly but I really want the NXT forms to work for us. (It's also easier on the NXT forms to get help from out design team with those elements.)

Thanks for responding! :-)

Keith Wilson · August 2022

@Dariel Dixon:
You just have to be diligent to search for the records before approving them, which is what you would be doing in OLX or NC anyway.

I 100% agree with this!

Emily Bastow · September 2022

@Whitney Shelton can you elaborate on “Austen Browns method for how to handle the batches and the dupes”

Austen Brown · September 2022

@Austen Brown:
@Billy Fenyes - As @JoAnn Strommen has mentioned, this is working as designed. I recommend you build into your batch approval process, review of all donor records. If titles are used throughout your system, it can be very easy to tell which donor records are created by the system as NXT donation forms do not currently have the ability to include a title. I recommend you review these new records from batch, and merge them with an existing constituent record if found. After you complete your merges and approve the batch, you can go to Tools > Data Health > Possible Duplicates > Merged Duplicates tab, to view all merges that will need to be reviewed in DBV; they will disappear as the empty source records are deleted.

@Emily Bastow - This is likely what Whitney was referencing.

Emily Bastow · September 2022

@Austen Brown Thanks!

NXT Giving Pages Creating Duplicate Constituents

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