HELP! What to do with Parent Records?

Lara Couture
Lara Couture
Ninth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

Hello,

Our annual giving team wants to be able to communicate and solicit current parents. The parent & student information is tracked in another system (currently Slate (admin) then Campus Nexus; moving to Colleague). Annual Giving wants to get the parent information an load it into RE. I'm wondering how other higher ed institutions handle parent data. We are a small shop and the idea of managing this extra data is a bit overwhelming. Even with a purge policy which we have yet to write in general.

Currently, we keep the parent data outside of RE and only add the parents to RE once they make a gift. Then we create the record and connect the parent to the student.

I appreciate any advice the brain trust can provide.

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Comments

  • Christine Robertson
    Christine Robertson Community All-Star
    Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary

    @Lara Couture I've seen a lot of schools (both K12 and Higher Ed) add this information into RE as prospect data, but I think you're asking good questions on the front end. Here are my thoughts:

    • What will this do to your RE bandwidth? Will this cost you because of a massive increase to the number of constituents in RE? Will that cost have a return that makes it worthwhile?
    • How long would you keep them in RE? Forever? Until their student graduates?
    • How could you track them and solicit to them separately?
    • What is the rate of parental giving (as we look to send our oldest to college this fall, I can tell you that our ability to make a charitable donation to the school is absolutely going to be limited by the sheer cost of tuition!)?


  • Dan Snyder
    Dan Snyder Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Raiser's Edge NXT Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge First Reply

    @Christine Robertson has good points to consider. Our admission office uses Slate and I have a set query that I pull with student and parent data to enter them into RE. I just update the dates each term. I usually do this one to two times in prep for the Fall entries and one time for the Winter/Spring entries as we only have a handful start “mid-year”.

    With the changes to the Common App, we don't get as much parent data as in the past and we sometimes fill in the gaps from our student information system.

    Our whole process is to export the data from Slate to an xlsx file. I attach that file to Power Query template files which does the majority of the transformations we need to do, make the additional manual changes, and then import those records into RE, including linking the parent record(s) to the student. I can't get all the data into a single import, but with import templates saved as well in RE it is pretty quick once the files are ready.

    @Lara Couture


  • Lana Sain
    Lana Sain
    Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary Facilitator 1

    @Dan Snyder I know this is an older post, but I have a question on it if you don't mind: What kind of business rules are used at your school for keeping this data updated/synchronized? For example, if a parent contacts is also an alumnus and contacts the alumni office with an address change? Or, if after you've loaded parents into RE, what if a parent contacts Admissions or the Registrar with an update? Do you have a process around this? I'm asking because my school is moving to RENXT this fall, and I'm gathering info about how other schools handle this. Thanks in advance!

    Lana

  • Dan Snyder
    Dan Snyder Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Raiser's Edge NXT Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge First Reply

    @Lana Sain Great question! We have had conversations about this internally, but the truth is we don't have a great system for it. We can get student changes via a form set up by the Registrar's office but that stops when they graduate or leave. Some of the information requested on this form is parent information, so we could see those changes but then would manually update that in RE.

    Once they are alumni, our office really manages all the contact and therefore keeps RE updated, but that does not flow back to our student information system. If institutional research wants to do an outcome survey of 5, 10, 15 year out grads as an example, they will just ask us for a list for that single project.

    I am certain there is a better way, but it is not in play here. ?

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