Identifying Duplicates and Merging Constituents

Tamara Pickering
Tamara Pickering
Sixth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

For a larger project we are working on, I've been tasked with finding a way to identify and merge all of our duplicate records in RE…by a certain date. I don't have to dedup them all by myself, however, I need a plan that others can follow.

I ran the duplicate search in RE and it identified over 1,200 potential dups. However, many of the alleged dups are family members who should have independent records or random people who almost have nothing in common with each other…doesn't make sense that they are considered dups. I can spend an hour going through the results and only merge 3 legitimate dups.

I know we have a ton of duplicate records, any advice on how to best tackle this project?

Thanks in advance!

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Comments

  • Joe Moretti
    Joe Moretti Community All-Star
    Kudos 5 Third Anniversary Raiser's Edge NXT Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge First Reply

    @Tamara Pickering You are going at it the right way, but if you have not done a duplicate search in some time you will have lots to sort thru. My advice after you finish this it to do a duplicate search weekly, that way you do not have to deal with such a large number.

  • Austen Brown
    Austen Brown Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge: Product Update Briefing Feedback Task 3 bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge

    @Tamara Pickering - Welcome to BB Community! If you have RE NXT, there are two different duplicate searches in RE; one in DBV and one in WV. Each will return different results as they use different algorithms. I, personally, prefer to use the WV one, as you really should be merging there first to preserve WV only data, then potentially running another merge in DBV for data that only resides there.

    Here's a link to a step-by-step guide I've written up for duplicate management, if you're interested: https://www.facebook.com/groups/REUserGroup/posts/10159143807996219 (It is a post within the RE User Group Support Forum on Facebook).

  • Tamara Pickering
    Tamara Pickering
    Sixth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Joe Moretti Thank you so much Joe!

  • Tamara Pickering
    Tamara Pickering
    Sixth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Austen Brown We don't have NXT but I'm interested to read your instructions and join your group. Thank you Austen!

  • Tatyana Leifman
    Tatyana Leifman
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    @Tamara Pickering Do you use the report that the duplicate management tool in dbv generates? I've found the report very useful as it allows to eye the results without opening the records (and you can see which record has gifts, actions, etc.).

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