Deceased Finder "Reported By" Question

John Gulino
John Gulino
Second Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

Hi there, I have a question about the methodology behind Deceased Finder's “Reported By” data. Reviewing the documentation here does not give enough detail.

Specifically what I would like to know is how are constituent deaths “Confirmed by death certificate,” “Confirmed by relative,” or “Matched to obituary date?” And further, if this category is NULL, then why was the constituent flagged deceased?

Thank you!

Comments

  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 January 2026 Monthly Challenge 2025 bbcon Attendee Badge

    @John Gulino ? I have often wondered the same thing, especially for ‘confirmed by relative.’

    This is what knowledgebase says: (Article 60938)

    DeceasedRecordFinder service compares the records in your database with a group of national consumer databases and finds those records that are deceased within the last 15 years. While Blackbaud endeavors to provide the most accurate results possible, we cannot guarantee 100% accuracy. The DeceasedRecordFinder data comes primarily from the Social Security Death benefits database, which may or may not contain data on titles or suffixes (e.g., Jr. and III).

  • John Gulino
    John Gulino
    Second Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    Thanks, @JoAnn Strommen! Yes, I'm hoping to get some more details about the Reported By categories so that I can correctly factor them into my analysis.

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