Non-Constituent clean-up

Dariel Dixon
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in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

Howdy Community! I'm trying to determine the best way to handle the issue of non-constituent cleanup. We have a lot of individuals that multiple non-constituent records due to event participation and I would really try to determine a way to kind of merge or purge those records into one. I'm trying to see if there is an easy way to do this or if this going to end up as a problem that won't be worth solving.

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  • Austen Brown
    Austen Brown Community All-Star
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    @Dariel Dixon - There is a non-constituent merge utility/plug-in that you should take a look at it:


  • Christine Robertson
    Christine Robertson Community All-Star
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    @Dariel Dixon This is less of what to do, but I do NOT recommend the merge non-constituent relationships function. I found it cumbersome to use and it locked down records so that they couldn't be edited as expected.

    If possible, I would combine the data to one non-constituent relationship and use a relationship code to identify relationships to delete.

  • Dariel Dixon
    Dariel Dixon Community All-Star
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    See @Christine Robertson, that's the hard part. It's so difficult to combine that data, especially since most of it is event records. For some reason, searching for other non-constituent records to attach these event records to seems more difficult than I would have liked. By default, it only allows you to search for constituent records. It's quite frustrating to say the least.

    In addition, it's been well documented how difficult it is to query for non-constituents. But perhaps the merge utility will at least help in identifying these records.

    @Dariel Dixon This is less of what to do, but I do NOT recommend the merge non-constituent relationships function. I found it cumbersome to use and it locked down records so that they couldn't be edited as expected.

    If possible, I would combine the data to one non-constituent relationship and use a relationship code to identify relationships to delete.

  • Karen Diener
    Karen Diener Community All-Star
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    @Dariel Dixon:

    Howdy Community! I'm trying to determine the best way to handle the issue of non-constituent cleanup. We have a lot of individuals that multiple non-constituent records due to event participation and I would really try to determine a way to kind of merge or purge those records into one. I'm trying to see if there is an easy way to do this or if this going to end up as a problem that won't be worth solving.

    Just to make sure I understand, do you have a lot of non-constituent participants in event records, and are wondering if they should become constituents?

    The only way I've found to “easily” clean that up is to query on non-participants for a handful of events and include relevant information in the output. This was usually their name, address and contact info, who they were a guest of, and the event they attended. Sorting the output by participant name helped me see right away where there were potential duplicates, and then I would make a judgement call based on address and guest information. I would add the person as a constituent and then go to each participation record and link to the constituent record. I did do this in a school environment where the constituency is already somewhat focused, so that helped.

    If that didn't answer your question, my apologies! But it may help someone else who browses through this later.

    Karen

  • Christine Robertson
    Christine Robertson Community All-Star
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    @Dariel Dixon I haven't done it with Event Participants. I did it at a school with non-constituent family members and it caused more issues than it resolved. But, since you're looking at a different context, it could be worth testing for your situation.

  • Dariel Dixon
    Dariel Dixon Community All-Star
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    @Karen Diener: I'm certain that these individuals don't need to be constituents as the only data we have for them are as spouses or event registration as guests or invitees. I just want to make that we have one record for all of these participation records.

    Just to make sure I understand, do you have a lot of non-constituent participants in event records, and are wondering if they should become constituents?

    The only way I've found to “easily” clean that up is to query on non-participants for a handful of events and include relevant information in the output. This was usually their name, address and contact info, who they were a guest of, and the event they attended. Sorting the output by participant name helped me see right away where there were potential duplicates, and then I would make a judgement call based on address and guest information. I would add the person as a constituent and then go to each participation record and link to the constituent record. I did do this in a school environment where the constituency is already somewhat focused, so that helped.

    If that didn't answer your question, my apologies! But it may help someone else who browses through this later.

    Karen

  • Karen Diener
    Karen Diener Community All-Star
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    @Dariel Dixon:

    @Karen Diener: I'm certain that these individuals don't need to be constituents as the only data we have for them are as spouses or event registration as guests or invitees. I just want to make that we have one record for all of these participation records.

    Oh I think I understand. On a constituent record, you can link to a non-constituent in the Relationships tab. I've used that a lot and appreciate the functionality, but it is not an option for non-constituent participants.

    Karen

  • Dana Burton
    Dana Burton Community All-Star
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    @Dariel Dixon, I'd like to follow this to see everyone's thoughts as I can foresee this in my future. We have a growing number of non-constituents that we do not have contact information for.

    Do you have names only or contact information as well?

  • Dariel Dixon
    Dariel Dixon Community All-Star
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    @Dana Burton: Names primarily. But we have a lot of spouses that aren't connected.


    @Dariel Dixon, I'd like to follow this to see everyone's thoughts as I can foresee this in my future. We have a growing number of non-constituents that we do not have contact information for.

    Do you have names only or contact information as well?

  • Lee Grisham
    Lee Grisham
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    @Dariel Dixon This is sooooo annnnooooyyyiiinnnnggg!!! When we use an NXT event form, it almost always creates a duplicate Participant record that now floats out there not attached to anything. This is in addition to a Relationship record and they don't share information. The fact that Relationships can have Event Participation information on them is just maddening as to how there is no easy way to manage that unless you are going in one by one to add them to an event.

    I can see why Blackbaud wouldn't care a lick about this as it has absolutely no impact on their revenue since these don't count towards record bands. I don't see this changing anytime in the near future, just causing more headaches for database/ops workers as they try to answer why there are 5 duplicates when someone tries to add a spouse. ?‍♂️

  • Christine Cooke
    Christine Cooke
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    @Karen Diener
    Oh yeah… I remember that from the last time I used events in RE a thousand years ago. So messy! I ended up making every event participant a constituent because without doing that I also could not get a list to export that had everyone with the details we need (an org that required a bunch of details on the name tags). BB has never addressed some key infrastructure/function issues of Events and it sounds like it's carrying over to NXT?

    I think manually monitoring - constantly - is the only option I can think of. Unfortunately, with all of the downloading of purchase/sales there is always the potential of mismatch and extra/dupe records because folks give a slightly different name (nicknames, hyphenated or not) and it's never flagged as a match or dupe with what you already have. :-/

  • Melissa Anderson
    Melissa Anderson
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    @Dariel Dixon
    I'm not sure if this would be helpful because I am using the database view for events, but I created groups for my events (gala, 5k, etc) and then when I enter a new non-constituent to the event, it says there is already a non-constituent in that group and asks if I want to use that record. Then it shows me all the events in that group that the non-constituent attended. From there, we are deciding on a process to convert them to constituents (such as attended 3 events in that group, attended multiple types of events, etc). It also frustrates me to no end because we get asked to report out on non-constituents and historically, the records are not connected in any way.

  • Dariel Dixon
    Dariel Dixon Community All-Star
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    @Melissa Anderson: The issue I'm having is that I'm importing the guests in, and not manually entering them into the event. What's I've seen is that while importing constituent guests in is not a problem at all by Cons ID or Import ID, importing in non-constituents as guests seems to be a problem, even if I'm using the non-constituent Import ID.

    The frustrating thing about this is that this process works for about 15 - 20% of my non-constituent guests. The others, I have to import as new non-constituents, even though all of them already are in the database as non-constituents already. It's frustrating, irritating, and aggravating. I would be pulling my hair out if I had any to pull.

    @Dariel Dixon
    I'm not sure if this would be helpful because I am using the database view for events, but I created groups for my events (gala, 5k, etc) and then when I enter a new non-constituent to the event, it says there is already a non-constituent in that group and asks if I want to use that record. Then it shows me all the events in that group that the non-constituent attended. From there, we are deciding on a process to convert them to constituents (such as attended 3 events in that group, attended multiple types of events, etc). It also frustrates me to no end because we get asked to report out on non-constituents and historically, the records are not connected in any way.

  • Dariel Dixon
    Dariel Dixon Community All-Star
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    I'm still struggling with this. I'm trying to get used to using more features in web view (I don't know if unified view is going to stick with me), but this feature seems like one of those database view only features. Working with non-constituents seems harder than it needs to be.

    Since this is a plug-in, I'm not even sure this is on the table to move over to NXT. (I just realized I referred to the same product in 3 different ways…so confusing)

  • Alex Wong
    Alex Wong Community All-Star
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    @Dariel Dixon
    I have worked with RE Event for a long time as our org is a heavy event organization.

    That said, the issue you are talking about I am aware of and is annoyed by it as well, however, not worth the time previuosly to fix.

    A non-constituent guest of an event is all individualized, as you know already. John Smith is the constituent with Mary Smith as wife, and Joe Smith as son, on each event John takes Mary and Joe to, there will be a new Mary and Joe constituent record. Not to mention, if Mary Smith is a non-cosntituent spouse (relationship) record, there is no “linkage”. This makes it very difficult to know if the non-constituent attended multiple event or not. You can only tell from constituent perspective. This is unfortunate, but I don't know if we can really “blame” Blackbaud for this, as non-constituent generally also means there is very little (or none) info about them other than a name. It is not a good idea to say Mary Smith and Joe Smith is same person as another Mary and Joe with just name.

    That said, that's the old days of dbview event management. RE NXT web view event management actually allow the linkage between relationship/event guest non-constituent, however, this is manaul. When you “search” to add a new guest or relationship, the search can come up with non-constituent to link to. This is what I have advised our fundraiser to do. If done properly, you will be able to link non-constituent spouse as the non-constituent event guest participating as guest of the main constituent, and through that mean, you are able to track through their event participation across multiple event as non-constituent guest. If one day (Joe Smith the son) you decided to make them a constituent, their event participation will all be linked already.

    I do wish for Blackbaud to update their importing capability to allow for this non-constituent linkage (as non-constituent does not “really” have import id, you can't really do that with db view import now). However, SKY API (didn't test) should allow that to happen today, as every constituent or non-constituent is a “record” in RE and they have a “system record id” that can be used to create participant record with. Power Automate may be your savior here if you want to go down that route. If you do want to go down this route and need a hand, I think it is a worthwhile consulting project that I can assist you with, if interested, reach out to me at ffxkenshin@gmail.com

    EDIT: just confirm I can use SKY API to relink the non-constituent guest across relationship and event.

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