Honorary Degrees data

Chris Zello
Chris Zello
Sixth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

I'm wondering where others are recording Honorary Degrees that are awarded by their school? We are reviewing our practice, and I wonder what others are doing.

Are you putting it in with Relationships>Education, or as an Attribute/Custom Field?

If you go the Education storage option, do you record a Degree with a name to say “Honorary” so it doesn't mix in with the others who have done the course-work, or doesn't that need to be differentiated? Do you record Class Of? Do you invite the awardees to Alumni events and reunions?

Does the Attribute work simply enough, to have the name of the degree awarded in the Notes?

Thank you.

Comments

  • Dariel Dixon
    Dariel Dixon Community All-Star
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply PowerUp Challenge #3 Gift Management

    @Chris Zello I think you can put this in education. Most institutions use something like “Humane Letters” or something that isn't degree that can earned but is reserved for those honors. I think that adding it as a note is appropriate as well. I would even venture to say an annotation might be worth considering for those handful of individuals.

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

    @Chris Zello Great question. I inherited a bit of a mess with this.

    I'm only partially done with the clean up started some time ago - need to finish. Still have questions so hope to see more posts on what others do. Not satisfied yet with our process.

    We enter info as Relationship-Education. I added a school type entry of Honorary Degree and a major of HON.

    Yes, we enter a degree - learned there a quite a number of honorary doctorate types. We do enter class of and date graduated.
    If this is their only ‘degree,' we don't consider them as true alum so to prevent them from inflating #s and pulling in alumni pulls, I also created a constituent code of Honorary Non-Alum.

    Recording on records for alumni is much more valuable IMO than on non-alums.

    I truly wonder about the value of adding them. I see no history of an ongoing relationship, we don't have address info for most who are not alums. When asked about who we have coded as honorary degree recipients, I learned that we do not have complete records based on what our university library has.

Categories